What does it mean to miss a person? When do relationships of emotional dependence arise?

Parting with friends and family various reasons. This could be a friend moving to another city, because of which friendly relations may simply come to its logical conclusion. It’s more scary when a loved one passes away. Of course, it is very difficult to be away from the person you love. Although it is very difficult to stop missing someone, there are still things you can do to ease the pain of loss. Start by analyzing your feelings. Take care of your emotional needs. Distract yourself by doing something useful and constructive. If possible, find ways to communicate with the person you care about.

Steps

Get Over Your Feelings

Allow yourself to grieve that your loved one is no longer around. The first thing to do is accept your feelings and emotions and allow yourself to grieve. Don't keep everything to yourself. Give free rein to your feelings. Each person experiences grief differently. Do it as you see fit.

• Give yourself enough time (say, a few days) to review letters and photographs, listen sad music or cry while hugging your favorite stuffed animal.
• Once the feelings and emotions have subsided, promise yourself to do everything possible to return to your normal daily routine.

1. Trust a loved one. Talking about your feelings with a loved one will provide you with the support you need. Talk to a close friend or relative. Tell a loved one about what is happening in your life.

   • You might say, “I’m so sad that Alexey left. I need to talk to someone about this."
   • If you have an idea about how your loved one can help you deal with your feelings, tell them about it. For example, you could say, “Let's watch a romantic comedy together in memory of Olga tomorrow night!”

2. Write down your feelings. Pour your feelings into in writing. If you keep a diary, write down what emotions and feelings you experience. If you don't keep a diary, use a regular piece of paper or write notes in notebook your phone.

   • You can also write about your feelings by addressing your message to the person you miss. You can send a written letter to the person you miss so much or keep it for yourself to re-read when you feel very sad.

3. Remember pleasant moments. When a loved one passes away, all attention is focused on negative points associated with the day of departure or the day of death of a person. Instead of focusing on the negative, think about happy memories that were in your life.

   See a psychologist if you need professional support. Most likely, you are going through a difficult time right now. You may be feeling sad and regretful because loved one no nearby. If you find it difficult to come to terms with the absence of a person or the inability to participate in their life as you did before, consider meeting with a psychologist.

   Take a break

   1. Organize your daily life. Although you may be tempted to ignore your responsibilities when you walk into a room, remember, sticking to a routine can help you overcome emotional turmoil. Having a daily routine will help you get things done no matter how you feel. Plus, you'll stay active and busy. This will make you feel like you are living your normal life again.

   2. Communicate. You can't replace a person, but others can help you deal with your feelings and move forward. Make an effort to develop new relationships and strengthen existing ones. Build relationships with positive people who can support you.

      • Join a new club or become a member of an organization where you can connect with new people.
      • Strengthen your relationships with your friends. Encourage them to spend more time together. Go for walks or create new traditions, such as having lunch together on Sundays or organizing a movie night.

   3. Study or learn something new. Dedicate time to expanding your knowledge. If you are a student, dedicate time to studying a specific subject. If not, choose a subject that you have always been interested in and pick up material related to it. Read books or watch videos. You can also take an online course to learn a new skill.

      • If you are in school, spend time studying math or in English. You can also try to learn foreign language, study the art of French cooking or take guitar lessons.

   4. Choose a hobby. What do you like to do? What activity lifts your mood? Having determined favorite hobby, allocate more time in your schedule for it. Hobby is great way improve your skills and use your time more constructively. Plus, doing something you love will help you feel better (at least for a while).

      • If you like to spend time on outdoors, choose a new route and organize a hiking trip. You can also try photography, knitting, painting, baking, gardening or collecting, and playing games.

   5. Play sports. Exercise gives good opportunity take your mind off sadness and negative emotions. In addition, playing sports increases the level of endorphins (“happiness hormones”), so physical exercise improve your mood.

      • Go jogging, cycling or swimming. You can also try your hand at one of the fitness programs, such as Zumba or Pilates.
      • Spend at least 30 minutes exercising most days of the week.

   6. Avoid using substances that can cause serious harm to your health. IN difficult period In life, it may be tempting to distract yourself with alcohol or drugs. However, such actions are destructive and dangerous. Do not use alcoholic drinks or drugs to distract from sadness and negative emotions.

      • Instead, enlist the support of your loved ones and do something that can distract you from negative thoughts.

Writer Paul Hudson breaks stereotypes to smithereens and puts everything into perspective about “missing” someone!

Are people even capable of being bored? Or do we simply lack memories of certain people? Perhaps we miss the feelings we felt when we were close to a specific person? Let's try to figure this issue out together now.

You may think that missing someone and missing the memories of someone are the same thing, but in reality, this is far from the case. To be honest, we are almost incapable of loving someone for who they really are. Yes, and miss this particular person, perhaps, too.

In fact, we love and value people not as they are, but as we can imagine them to be - which, in turn, depends on how well we know them. And although such an explanation cannot reassure us, it still gives food for thought to our mind: “why are our emotions, and especially the feeling of love, sometimes so changeable”?

People are bound to have their own conclusions after communicating with other people. It is in our nature, and we are unlikely to ever be able to change it. And when making conclusions about another person, we thereby create in our mind a set of ideas about this person. And as our relationship with him develops, we gradually adjust these ideas at the right moment for us.

However, sometimes it happens that in specific life circumstances our ideas about this person have little in common with reality - and this often leads to the fact that, having achieved the attention of the object of our love, we soon lose interest in him.

We stop loving a person whom we thought we knew inside and out, precisely because we are faced with reality, and not with our fantasy, and this is far from the same thing. People pass information about other people through the prism of their perception - this is why memories of a particular person can give us a distorted idea of ​​him. And by “reviving” these memories, we introduce additional deformation into them. People are very, very complex individuals.

Sometimes our memories of a person capture him as he really is - or at least as he once was. But at heart we are all incorrigible romantics.

We prefer to remember the feelings we experience in the presence of this or that person, rather than remembering the events themselves.

We focus our attention on strong (and usually pleasant) emotions, allowing them to cloud our memory of that person.

But it also happens that we are not deceiving ourselves at all. Sometimes we really have every reason to miss someone. Unfortunately, the opposite is just as likely. It is very possible that you are missing specific person, namely what ideal image this person in your mind. This person could practically wipe his feet on you, but as soon as a couple of years pass, you will only remember the good things. This protective function our memory.

You miss someone close to you, and this is quite understandable. People don't like being alone. Yes, some of us are better at it than others, but only out of necessity, not out of necessity. at will. There are no people who choose loneliness voluntarily - unless, of course, they are mentally normal.

Yes, we all like to be alone from time to time - but only from time to time. Sooner or later we become too sad and lonely, and we begin to look for at least someone with whom we could share our lives. This is natural, and you should not be ashamed of it. But what we should be ashamed of is longing for people who treated us in a completely inappropriate way. Yes, on special occasions (for example, on a birthday) they could act incredibly nice to us, but there weren’t really that many of these special occasions. Because otherwise they wouldn’t have to be called “ special cases", it's true?!

So, if you're longing for someone who constantly hurt you because they didn't care about you, take a deep breath, take a step back, and try to look at things realistically, without leaving any resentment or fantasy in your soul. only specific facts. You simply cannot afford to meekly endure all the antics of people who take advantage of you and treat you worse than you deserve. You just can’t - that’s all.

You only miss this person when you are alone. But there is actually a very simple way to see the difference between true love and everything else we mistake for it. And, if people feel like they are missing someone from the past, then most likely they are sad or lonely and nothing more, so let’s not complicate our lives and look for new reasons for joy!?!

In those moments when we want to lean on someone, but there is no one nearby, we inevitably look into our past. But this is not love. This is a convulsive grasping at straws in an attempt to stay on the roof. When we reach a bad point in our lives, we don’t want to be alone - because if someone is with us, it will be much easier to endure adversity. We are all human, and therefore we tend to strive to simplify our lives. But it is not real love. This is the loneliness that plays on our nerves. It is this that twists our imagination to the maximum, feeding our memories false feelings, mostly consisting of heavily edited reality.

If you only miss someone when your life is going down, don't kid yourself. In fact, you don't need this person at all. But on the other hand, if thoughts about him do not leave you even in the happiest moments - well, congratulations, this person is really worth missing. If at this moment, looking at yourself from the outside, you, first of all, think “Oh, if only I could share this moment with this person”... well, then there can be no doubt - you really love him. After all, it’s not even the person himself that you miss. You miss yourself - the way you were in the company of this person.

When we look back and remember those we once loved, the things we experienced together, and the memories we shared...we are actually remembering ourselves. The way we were when we were together.

People are extremely self-centered. This is our nature. And since we can’t do anything about it, it’s worth accepting it - at least for the purpose of better understanding ourselves. We don’t remember the person we once loved because it’s simply impossible. After all, we never deal directly with the people around us. We interact with our ideas about these people. And these ideas are extremely changeable. We are quite capable, having climbed into the depths of our own memory, to change the way we perceive the people around us, as well as the feelings that we experience towards them.

But be that as it may, the fact remains: those things and people that we consider most important are precisely those things and people who have had the greatest impact on us and our lives. But this is exactly what most people forget: We remember not the people themselves, but how they influenced us. Yes, we remember their actions that caused certain emotions, but in fact, we are almost always interested in the result (those emotions), and not in what caused it.

So it turns out that we miss not even the person himself, but the reality in which we were thanks to his presence. We miss how we felt and who we were when we were with these people. And for good reason - after all, those “we” whom we miss were much better than us now, because now we are lonely, but before this was not the case.

Of course, this could just be a feeling of nostalgia playing out, but be that as it may, this is exactly the reality in which we live - whether we like it or not. People are truly capable of loving the same person “until death do them part.” We are capable of yearning for him, and are quite capable of understanding what we lost when we parted. But not all the people we yearn for are really like that.

Much more often we waste our time, energy and emotions on people who do not deserve our attention. Learn to distinguish between real longing for a person without whom life is not sweet for you, from nostalgia for bygone days- and your life will certainly change for the better.

• November 1, 2018
• Psychology of relationships
• Ekaterina Kulagina

We so often talk about missing someone or something. But have you ever thought about what it means to miss a person? Can this feeling really be called positive? Does it speak about our attitude towards someone, or is it solely a manifestation of our selfishness? Perhaps you didn’t know something, and all this time society was imposing its wrong standards on you? If a person can't say that they missed you, is that really an indicator that they don't love or value you? What is "bored"? You can find answers to all these questions in this article.

Some terminology

Word interpreters will tell you that the word “bored” has two meanings:

1. To be bored means to experience boredom from idleness. Thus, many schoolchildren get bored in lessons where the topic is simply not interesting to them. In this article we will not talk about this, so we read the meaning of the word further.
2. To be bored is to languish due to the absence of someone or something. Based on this term, you can be bored due to the absence of a job or a certain person. This term is more suitable to our topic.

Do you get bored when you have free time?

This is very important point. Think about when and who you missed in last time. Were you busy at that moment? Or was it just then that you got the idea? free time? Have you been unable to occupy yourself with anything? The opinion of psychologists on this matter is twofold.

Some people believe that it is completely normal to not feel bored if you are very busy. For this reason this group psychologists refuse to acknowledge the following statement: “not missing a person means not loving him.” Accordingly, if your boyfriend is after long separation with you with a smile on his face says that he did not miss you at all, this does not mean that you should be upset and give him a strong slap in the face for such offensive words. It is believed that you should be happy for your loved one and for his rich life, full of events of various nature. But why does the second part of psychologists and the whole society think otherwise?

You get bored even when you are very busy with your life

So, the second group believes that being bored means cherishing someone during their absence. It's hard to imagine that loving person can calmly endure separation from her loved one and continue to enjoy life. It’s another matter if you started to miss the person already when you were busy with things. The thought that you won't be able to meet your girlfriend or boyfriend tonight as usual haunts you. This is an indicator that you feel uncomfortable without the company of dear people, even if you really know what to do with yourself.

This point of view is more common in society and among the rest of psychologists. But even in this case, there are pitfalls that can tell about your feelings for a person. As Frederic Beigbeder wrote: “Here you go simple test for falling in love: if, after spending four or five hours without your lover, you begin to miss her, then you are not in love - otherwise ten minutes of separation would be enough to make your life absolutely unbearable.”

Do you miss the person or your feelings?

What does it mean to miss a loved one? Understanding this issue is quite difficult. Think about what would happen if this person were with you. Perhaps you start to miss him when you start doing the things you used to do together? In this case, it is not this person that you miss, but that social role which he performed in front of you.

Do you miss your wife when you realize that you have to cook dinner yourself? In this situation, you must understand that this is more like selfishness on your part, and not like love for your spouse.

Miss your ex

After breaking up with partners you once loved, you may realize that you miss these people again. What does it mean to miss a loved one from whom you have long separated (whom you may have abandoned yourself)? If your relationship really reached a dead end before breaking up, then it is unlikely that you really miss the person.

What is it like to miss someone who hurt you? Don't think that your love for him (or her) is still alive and you will only be happy when you are reunited again. It is a trap. It’s better not to even try to step on the same rake twice in anticipation of a new result. In all likelihood, it's not the person you miss, but the pleasant memories and the feelings that are associated with it. Have you already remembered how this relationship began? About how you first met and stuff like that? In this case, what you miss is not the person, but the emotions that you experienced with him. Stop deceiving yourself.

Missing your past self

There is another possibility as to why you might miss your ex. Perhaps you don’t really remember what the person himself was like at the beginning of your relationship or you simply don’t try to remember this. But you remember very well what you were like. Undoubtedly, young, happy, beautiful, successful. And you feel like you were only like that because you were in that relationship.

Be that as it may, you unconsciously draw a parallel between your past image and the closest person who was with you at that moment in your life. Realize that you can be anything you want to be, no matter who the people are around you.

Now, perhaps, you know what it means to miss a person and why you begin to experience such feelings. We wish you good luck and pleasant relationships with others!

I suspect that we are always bored because we are lonely and have nothing to fill our lives with. This is what makes the person on whom we project our restlessness important to us: supposedly, if he were nearby, then everything would be different... The real, non-projective importance of a person in our life is definitely not determined by the level of boredom or longing for him.

I travel a lot for work and study. My loved ones stay at home. But I rarely miss them and precisely when there are pauses in interesting work or studying: I’m not busy, boredom arises, a nagging feeling of wasted time - and this boredom is experienced as a “beautiful”, “good” longing for those who are not around. This is also socially approved, like a sign of seriousness and devotion. But no. Boredom and melancholy are a sign of boredom and loss, restlessness, and nothing more.

You may miss your people - there are many acquaintances, but not many people you want to be close to.

And when I arrive, I observe the reaction of my twins, who do not know how to do it correctly. Mila says to me: “Dad, I didn’t miss you!” And I praise her: it’s not that I’m “not important” to her. This is about the fact that her life is full, there are other beloved close people nearby, and she and her sister, at 5-6 years old, are up to their ears in figure-gymnastics-swimming-piano... I am important to them. There is no time and no reason to be bored. Happy and joyful together.

Masha Martynova, HR Manager

I'm not sure that people only get bored when they're bored. And with a very full life, you can think about a person constantly. Is this a sign that the person is truly important? In my opinion - yes.

I also like Beigbeder’s: “Here’s the simplest test for falling in love: if, after spending four or five hours without your lover, you begin to miss her, then you are not in love - otherwise ten minutes of separation would be enough for your life to become absolutely unbearable "

Mikhail Frolov, marketer

You may miss your people - there are many acquaintances, but not many people you want to be close to. I want to be not in a crowd of people or friends, but next to my person, to be with him all my life, sharing emotions, keeping him close.

To figure out who this is for you, think about who you would take with you on a multi-year trip. trip around the world. It’s even easier for adults to understand this. The main thing is not to regret later that you didn’t spend best years and time for a person if he is no longer with you. It will simply be your memory.

Anastasia Bodenchuk, philologist

My opinion is the opposite of the psychologist’s: if I miss a person, it means I miss him. I'm used to trusting my feelings. Is this wrong?

How many times have we told our loved ones, friends and relatives this seemingly harmless and touching phrase. Believing that it speaks of our love and will be pleasant to the one to whom it is addressed. Some lovers, not yet parted, repeat to each other: “I already miss you.” They think this is a manifestation of love. In fact, this harmless phrase testifies not to love, but to emotional dependence. And if it is repeated too often and becomes an obsession, then this is a signal. Something needs to be done urgently!

Let's try to translate this phrase into the language of logic. When you say “I miss you!”, you are admitting your own powerlessness to occupy yourself with something. It is as if you are tying your loved one to yourself with strong ropes. And he involuntarily tenses up, now he needs to do something about it to relieve your boredom. That is, you emotionally cling to him, tie him to you. To put it simply, you manipulate him. What is he doing? Sometimes it flies to you on the wings of love and brings a large bouquet of consolations and surprises. But sometimes, especially when he doesn’t have time, money or desire, he isolates himself from you, not wanting to take on such responsibility: to relieve your boredom. Someone would console him, support him and bring him out of his state of sadness.

In principle, there is nothing wrong if we sometimes say to each other “I miss you!” This is normal, natural and natural. Only if it does not acquire hypertrophied forms.

What is emotional dependence?

Here's how the psychological dictionary writes about it:

Emotional addiction is the loss of personal autonomy (or sense of personal autonomy) due to emotional reasons. At the same time, the subject of this dependence,

Firstly, experiences suffering due to either the inaccessibility of the object of his feelings, or the inability to change his behavior, or the presence of inadequate power of the object over him;
Secondly, feels the impossibility of liberation from addiction;
Thirdly, appears to be under chronic negative influence connecting his feelings to his life path, general well-being, decision making and behavior

Indeed, when we enter into a close relationship with someone, we unwittingly fall into emotional dependence. Him Bad mood- and it deteriorates for you, he gets worried - and for some reason you begin to experience excitement. And so on ad infinitum, like communicating vessels. Many believe that this is natural and normal, because close people are communicating vessels that mutually influence each other, maintaining each other in a state of balance.

But, you must admit, we cannot always be close to a loved one and be in the same state of mind. Sometimes we are visited by fatigue, irritation, satiety with relationships and others, at first glance, negative manifestations our character or psyche. But with a close emotional connection, all of ours are immediately reflected on the one who is nearby, if he is emotionally dependent on us. This is actually a huge responsibility, which is seriously annoying for many people. After all, if they’re bored without you, then when you’re around, you should break into pieces, but cheer them up, increase vitality, maintain interest, be cheerful, inventive, empathic, etc. It’s crazy how many “shoulds” there are! Isn’t it better to get rid of this and go on a free swim without all these “shoulds”. This is how even the strongest emotional connections are broken. And the culprit is the notorious “I miss you!”

Imagine a girl who cannot live without her beloved, endlessly pesters him with her emotional presence, demands attention, support, emotional charging, etc. And suddenly she finds herself rejected by him. You never know. Maybe he’s tired of being a warmer, a vest and a laughing clown for her. Maybe he just wanted to live his own life, separated from her whims and whining, tenderness and snot, control and guidance of life. And so she was left alone with her boredom.

"I miss!" - she yells at him in text messages and on Skype. "I miss!" - screams on Instagram and Facebook.

You won’t envy the one to whom this phrase is addressed. But much more worrying is the one who yells, that is, becomes emotionally dependent on another person. It is quite difficult to get rid of it, since it lies deep in a person’s subconscious and is most often associated with childhood, in which the child’s emotional connections with parents and loved ones were disrupted.

Emotional dependence can arise not only between lovers, but also between parents and children, between friends, relatives, sometimes neighbors, and even between a seller and a buyer in a supermarket. And this happens because at some certain stage and in certain circumstances, the person with whom we are in contact makes up for some current emotional deficiency for us. For example, you were always missing kind words addressed to you from your mom, dad, brother, friend. And then a person appears in your life who generously showers you with compliments and affectionate nicknames. He endlessly confesses his love to you and satisfies your thirst to hear kind words of praise addressed to him. And that's it, you're already hooked. Are you ready to do everything so that he is always next to you and always says these sweet things to you, not always sincere words. Sometimes, of course, you doubt their veracity. But you don’t want to destroy your illusion. You're welcome. You are glad to be deceived, because “the darkness of truths is dearer to us than the deception that elevates us.”

But such relationships are sooner or later doomed to die, because they are not based on reality, but on your dependence on positive emotion caused by the words of this person. He is manipulating you to some extent. Consciously or unknowingly. Yes, it is not difficult to manipulate you, because, without knowing it, you fall into the category of victimized individuals (people inclined to be victims) who suffer without the doping of attention and love.

When do relationships of emotional dependence arise?

As a rule, we become emotionally dependent on other people difficult periods our life. When we desperately need someone who would bring us back to normal life, comfort us, help us. It happens:

V turning points life(loss of family, job, death of a loved one, breakup, etc.);
during the transition to new stage life(graduation from college, moving, new job, marriage, gender reassignment, etc.);
during periods of overload(submission of a quarterly report, project, exams, deadlines, holidays, emergency situations in one or another area of ​​life);
when we get sick;
when we are far from home, from usual life(on vacation, in prison, at a conference).

When we become emotionally vulnerable, we seek an outlet. This protective function of our psyche can play a cruel joke on us if during this period we develop close relationships with someone who can use our vulnerability for their own purposes. And for ourselves, we must understand that very often our ardent love that flared up at the resort is just the need of our psyche to feel safe in an unfamiliar environment. As soon as we return to the usual rhythm of life, it fades and gradually fades away. If of course there was in a simple way compensation for anxiety, not the love of your life.

Most often people fall into the traps of emotional dependence:

dependent, waiting and requiring control and guidance;
problematic individuals with a lot of debts unresolved issues, protracted conflicts;
People, occupying a socially dependent position child, pupil, student, subordinate.

Who can they become dependent on?

From a boss, an oppressive family member, a dishonest lover;
from a consultant, seller, distributor, guru, sectarian, preacher;
from a teacher, parent, husband, more.

How to avoid emotional traps?

The first remedy is to realize that you are emotionally dependent. Once you realize this, you will understand that it is stupid to call your loved one every five minutes to let him know how much you miss him. It may be difficult for you not to do this, and you will experience frantic anxiety about why he doesn’t call, why he doesn’t write, or has he really forgotten about you. But it will pass.

In order not to get bored, keep yourself busy so that you don’t even have time to think about the subject of your emotional dependence. It's better if it's all-consuming and interesting activity. Even good book or New film can save you from longing for someone you miss so much.

Become more an independent person. Minimize Dependencies various kinds. If it is still difficult to get rid of material dependence, be human independent thinking. Don't lose your opinion, have own needs, desires. Develop as a person. Learn to take responsibility for your actions.

Become an empathic person for those around you, not just for those you depend on. Empathy - conscious empathy emotional state another man. An empath is a person capable of empathy. By redirecting yourself from yourself to others, you will feel relief. It is better to let others depend on you than you on them. Although, no, give them freedom and give yourself freedom - this is the most the right way avoid persistent emotional dependencies.