How to Forget a Friend Who Meant a Lot to You
Not all friendships will last forever. In fact, friendships may end for a variety of reasons. Despite the rationale for severing ties, losing a friend can be a painful process. Fortunately, there are several ways to move forward with your life after you’ve lost someone who once meant a lot to you.
1. **Do not play the blame game.** Assigning blame is unhealthy and breeds anger. While both you and your former friend may have been at fault for the dissolution of your friendship, you are not in control of the each other’s thoughts, feelings, choices, or actions. Understanding that both you and your friend have roles to play in the ending of your friendship is important and will help you to consider the potential reasons for the end of your friendship from both your point of view and from the point of view of your former friend.
2. **Work through your negative emotions.** Be aware that you may feel anger, guilt, sadness, or grief over the loss of your friendship.   This is completely normal. It is important to process and work through these feelings on your own or with the help of a licensed mental health professional. You might work through your emotions by:

Writing about your feelings
Talking about your feelings
Making art about your feelings
Channeling your feelings into something else
3. **Allow yourself to go through your emotional process.** You may feel a range of emotions when faced with a loss. It is important to allow yourself to process these feelings and understanding where these emotions come from.
Think about whether there's anything in your past that this might be bringing up for you that could be impacting how you feel.
4. **Ask yourself why you feel the way you do over the loss of your friendship.** Do you miss the person? Do you miss the support that your former friend had given to you? Do you miss the activities that you used to do as friends? Understanding why you feel the way you do is the first step in coming to terms with your emotions.
5. **Let yourself feel as deeply as you need to.** Do not try to block out the negative or painful emotions that accompany the dissolution of your friendship. Temporarily sitting with the pain or negativity will eventually allow you to move beyond those feelings and heal.
However, avoid dwelling on these feelings for an extended period of time. While you should acknowledge and confront your emotions, feeling down on yourself and mulling over these emotions for months on end will only drag you down.
6. **Understand that healing takes time.** In order to heal from this loss and move forward, you must be patient. Rushing through your natural process is unhealthy and will not resolve your negative feelings properly.
Recognize that you may have trouble letting your guard down around new people, initially. This is fine.
7. **Acknowledge that people change and grow.** You are not the same person that you were when you met your friend, nor are they the same person they were when they met you. Over time, everyone’s interests change and those changes can cause distance and disagreements between friends. Understanding that this is a normal fact of life might help you better accept the end of your friendship.

Think about who you were when you met your former friend.
Think about who your former friend was when you met.
Think about the reasons you became friends with this person.
Think about who you are now. How have you changed during the time you were friends?
Think about who your former friend is now. How has s/he changed?
Write down the significant changes you and your friend experienced in a list form from the time you met until your friendship ended.
Read over your lists and understand that change, while at times imperceptible without scrutiny, is inevitable. You and your former friend have both changed and it is possible that you are no longer compatible as friends as a result. Understanding and accepting this fact without placing blame will help you move on.
8. **Accept that your friendship has ended.** While acceptance can be difficult, it is an important step in moving forward with your life. Moreover, accepting the situation means that you have made peace with it and are no longer tormenting yourself with what-ifs, details of the dissolution that cannot be changed, or negative emotions.
View your friendship as a learning experience for future friendships. Note what worked, what didn’t, and how you want to select friends and form relationships moving forward.
9. **Focus on the things over which you have control.** If you focus on the actions of others, you’ll dwell on what-ifs and moments that cannot be changed. Instead, try to spend your time and energy on your personal actions. Moreover, focusing on your choices and actions will help you to live in the present, rather than focusing on the past. Examples of personal actions and choices you can focus upon include:

Acknowledging and working through your emotions
Acting with kindness and generosity toward others, including your former friend
Deciding to spend time with your other friends and family members
Working to move forward with your life
10. **Cut off all contact with your friend.** This will allow you to gain distance from the person, which will enable you to refocus time and energy that you previously would have given to your friend. Better still, when you stop interacting with your friend, you are less likely to think about them as well. Finally, in ceasing all contact with your former friend, you are ensuring that no negative interactions between the two of you come to fruition. You might consider cutting off contact with your former friend by: 

Blocking their phone number
Ignoring and/or deleting emails
Not returning text messages
Unfriending or blocking them on social media
Avoiding them in face-to-face situations
11. **Engage in an activity to distract yourself from your loss.** You might decide to go shopping, to go see a movie, or to go for a walk if you are looking for a short-term distraction. If you think you’ll need a longer activity, you might consider taking up a hobby or donating your time to help others. Regardless of what you decide to do, it is important to fill your time in some way in order to positively channel your energy and emotions. Activities you might enjoy include, but are not limited to: 

Dancing
Making music
Reading
Exercising
Playing a sport
Undertaking an art project
Volunteering your time at a charity organization
Mentoring someone else.
12. **Learn how to be your own friend.** Being your own friend means learning about yourself and accepting yourself for who you are. Practice self-compassion by speaking kindly to yourself and finding solo activities that make you feel confident and empowered.

For example, you might enjoy writing or hiking by yourself.
Set some personal goals and make a plan for achieving them. Make sure these goals are something personally meaningful, not a way of getting attention from your former friend or making them jealous.
13. **Spend time caring for yourself.** You need time to process the dissolution of your friendship. While you are processing your loss, you need to make sure that you are caring for yourself. Make sure that you are eating properly, getting enough rest, working through your emotions in a healthy manner, and not isolating yourself. Remember that sometimes you need to put yourself first. You can improve your well-being by:

Seeking out the company of friends and family when you are lonely
Eating healthy foods in appropriate quantities
Getting adequate exercise
Spending time alone in order to recharge and relax
Sleeping regularly at night
Investing your time in activities you enjoy
14. **Confide in a trustworthy friend or family member.** Keeping your feelings bottled up will hurt you in the long run. This doesn’t mean that you should reestablish communication with your former friend, but certainly you should talk about your feelings with someone you know, love, and trust. Your friend or family member can offer you support and love through the act of listening.  While they are not a replacement for your former friend, your friend or family member can diminish the impact of your loss.
15. **Make new friends.** Be open to finding new friendships that fit where you are in your life right now, instead of just trying to hang onto the past. Know what traits you are looking for in a friend as you are getting to know new acquaintances. You might even look for positive qualities in your former best friend in the people you are befriending.  Here are some ways to make new friends:

Strike up a conversation with a stranger in line at the grocery store
Talk to the barista at your local coffee shop about his or her interests
Go to an art or music show and talk to people there
Meet people online through social networking sites
Open the lines of communication between the yourself and another person
Participate in mutual self-disclosing behaviors with others
Invite new acquaintances to hang out with you
16. **Talk to a mental health professional if the loss feels too immense for you to process alone.** Mental health professionals are impartial listeners and it is their job to avoid making judgments. If you need to vent to someone, or if you feel that the loss of your friend has created a severe imbalance of emotions for you, please do not hesitate to seek help. You do not have to go through this loss alone.
17. **Adopt a pet.** While an animal cannot replace your former friend, you can form a new and important bond of companionship and love with an animal, which might help you reconcile the loss you have experienced. Studies have shown that owning a pet also leads to lower stress levels, better psychological health, and emotional support. All of these emotional and health benefits would certainly be a pro for someone who is dealing with the loss of a close friendship.
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