If you are reading this because you recently ended a friendship with a toxic person, please know that the pain you may feel right now will eventually pass, and that sometimes ending a friendship is healthier than sticking around with a person who doesn’t have your best interest at heart. I recently ended a seven-year friendship that became extremely toxic towards the end. While it has been difficult getting over that loss, I have picked up a few tricks to help make the healing process a little bit easier. Hopefully you find these tips to be helpful as well, and that they help guide you through your recovery.
1. Spend Time with Your Other Friends or Family
When a friendship ends, regardless of whether or not it was toxic, it’s very easy to feel lonely and isolated. When you’re feeling lonely and isolated, healing becomes a lot more difficult. Instead, try to push yourself to spend time with your friends or family. When you’re feeling glum, see if you can get a few friends to join you for dinner or create a study group. Or, if you need some familial support, try calling or Skyping a relative. The important thing is to surround yourself with people who love and care about you, people who will remind you that you deserve healthy, happy friendships.
2. Treat Yourself
Self-care is especially important whenever you’re going through a particularly rough time. After leaving a toxic relationship you might feel a lot of insecurity or doubt about yourself, so it’s important to set aside time to care for your emotional, mental, and physical wellbeing to help counteract those negative feelings. Self-care can also be a great distraction when you’re starting to miss your toxic former friend. So, do a face mask, watch your favorite funny movies, or go for a jog if you’re the exercising type! Do something that makes you feel good for the sake of feeling good. Once you feel a little bit better, healing will be much easier.
3. Keep Yourself Distracted
In my experience, even though I was mad at my former friend for what she did, I still missed her. There were times where I felt tempted to text her or check up on her on social media to see if we could ever possibly be friends again. However, I knew that running back to her would only result in me getting caught up in a cycle of toxicity again. So, I decided to distract myself. Whenever I would miss her, I would text someone else. If no one else was available, I’d focus completely on my studies, read a book, or listen to some of my favorite music. The more you keep yourself distracted, the less likely it will be that you’ll feel compelled to reach out to your toxic former friend.
4. Get Outside Help if You Need It
Sometimes, we’re able to heal from difficult times on our own. Other times, we might need some outside help, and there’s no shame in that. So, if you notice that you’re feeling depressed for long periods of time or that your academics or social life are starting to decay, you might want to consider speaking to the Counseling Service here on campus. I’ve personally found them to be extremely helpful, but if they don’t work well for you, they’re always happy to help you find the right therapist off of campus.
While ending a toxic relationship can be painful, it’s important to remember that you’ve already taken a very big leap forward towards healing yourself. By keeping in contact with loved ones, practicing self-care, keeping yourself distracted, and getting outside help if you need it, the wounds incurred from your toxic friendship and subsequent breakup will eventually heal.
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