Why Yearning Is Bad for Mental Health and How to Stop It

It is frequently a sudden tightness that occurs in your chest or it is something that wakes you up at 3 AM without giving you any warning. It is a profound craving for a person who has left, a moment that has elapsed, or a life that you never had the chance to live.

We refer to this sensation as yearning.

While poets say that it is the price of loving someone deeply, neuroscientists consider it a real chemical craving. If you are reading this, you are probably wondering one main question: Is yearning bad for mental health, or is it something completely normal?

The correct response is that the psychology of yearning spans a wide spectrum. On one end, it imparts meaning to your life. On the other hand, it can become the main symptom of a clearly identifiable mental disorder.

The decision of where you end up on that spectrum depends on three things: how long the craving has lasted, how strong it feels and whether it prevents you from living your daily life.

Why Does Yearning Hurt So Much Physically?

Before we can answer whether yearning is bad for you, we need to figure out why it hurts. The pain of missing someone is hardly ever just a feeling. It's often accompanied by heavy chest pressure, stomach upsets and an exhaustion so deep that no amount of sleep can heal it. There's real science behind it, so you are surely not making it up.

Your Brain Treats Loneliness Like a Broken Bone

Neuroimaging studies reveal that being separated from people you love activates the same area in your brain that deals with a bone fracture or a burn. This is why the physical pain of grief can be so overpoweringly real.

Generally, in the time of cavemen, if you were alone, your chances of survival would be greatly reduced. Separating from others is still regarded by your brain as a serious danger, so it even issues a very painful signal which is meant to force you back to people even when you are perfectly safe at home.

Why You Cannot Just Stop Thinking About Them

When you love someone to the core, your brain gets used to the constant and comforting chemical hit that they give. If you cut them out of your life abruptly, your natural dopamine and opioid levels take a nosedive.

You go through a withdrawal state, which, when seen through a brain scan, looks very similar to drug withdrawal. So, please don't take it as an incapability on your part to get over someone. Your brain is just executing a craving loop and sheer willpower was never meant to be the one to shut it down.

What Chronic Longing Does to Your Heart

When intense craving is extended over several months, your stress hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline, are always at a high level. This is like a constant alarm that eventually depresses your immune system and ruins your sleep completely.

In very rare situations, Takotsubo cardiomyopathy a strong wave of emotional pain, can set off Broken Heart Syndrome, which is basically a sudden surge of hormones that temporarily stuns the heart muscle. Although the majority of people are able to recover completely, it is not true at all that grief has any kind of physical impact on your body as there is no medical evidence to support this.

When Is Yearning Turned to a Mental Health Disorder?

Feeling the absence of loved ones is a very emotional part of being human. However, there is a borderline where normal sadness changes into a condition that doctors can diagnose and treat.

Major medical organizations have officially acknowledged Prolonged Grief Disorder by including it in their diagnostic manuals. The primary symptom they focus on is one and the same: a very strong, persistent longing for the deceased.

How much is too much time to grieve?

Generally, in grief, the extreme desire for the lost person gradually diminishes after a few months. Although the pain still comes in waves, there are longer and more gentle intervals between them.

The American Psychiatric Association, which added Prolonged Grief Disorder, notes that the desire remains at a high, steady level. Medical guidelines indicate this after 6 months, while others put the limit at 12 months, but the diagnosis is not made based on time alone. The grief must also be so intense that it prevents you from living your daily life.

Signs That Yearning Has Crossed the Line

To help identify what this looks like, here are common Prolonged Grief Disorder symptoms:

• A lasting sense that a core part of who you are died alongside the person.
• A refusal to accept the loss as real, even months or years later.
• Emotional numbness that shuts out joy or closeness with the people still present in your life.
• Avoiding anything linked to the loss or, conversely, obsessively visiting the places and routines you once shared.

If most of your waking hours go toward wishing for a different past and that heavy habit is costing you your job, friendships or basic self-care and this is likely more than standard grief. It is a recognized condition that requires professional support.

Why Do You Keep Replaying the Same Painful Thoughts?

When missing someone deeply, that yearning often breeds a heavy mental habit called rumination. This is the compulsive replaying of sad scenes and endless (what-if) thoughts. While research shows this habit heavily fuels both depression and anxiety, it is incredibly common to catch yourself thinking, If only I had done that differently or Why did this happen to me?

Because this loop feels like active problem-solving, it can be incredibly hard to figure out how to stop ruminating. However, the reality is that you are simply re-living the pain without changing the result which keeps stress hormones high and blocks the mental shift that healthy grieving actually needs.

Can Yearning Actually Be Good for You?

If this kind of longing causes so much damage, one might naturally wonder whether it serves any purpose at all. Surprisingly, psychologists who study lifelong development say that it actually does as long as it happens under the right conditions.

What German Psychology Calls the Life Longing

There is a beautiful German word, Sehnsucht (pronounced ZANE-zookht), that perfectly describes a deep ache for an ideal life that remains just out of reach. In the psychology of Sehnsucht, Research by Scheibe, Freund, and Baltes from the Max Planck Institute found that this specific kind of longing can actually give life meaningful direction.

For example, if there is a constant yearning for a more creative life, that ache is simply a signal that creativity is a core need. Similarly, aching for a partner gently flags that closeness is currently missing. This feeling becomes toxic only when demanding that the ideal show up right now. Instead, if treated as a compass for setting goals rather than a scoreboard for judging yourself, it stays completely healthy.

Looking Back Without Getting Stuck

Not every backward glance has to hurt. Remembering good times to remind yourself that you are loved and have lived well is what researchers call restorative nostalgia. This is a wonderful tool because it builds self-worth and acts as a buffer against loneliness.

However, the danger lies in reflective nostalgia which unfairly compares the past to the present and concludes that the best days are already gone. Because that specific belief pattern tracks closely with depression, it is important to be gentle and catch it when it starts happening.

What Other Cultures Understand About Grief

While Western culture often treats emotional pain as a problem to fix fast, other traditions take a much more compassionate view.

For instance, in Portugal the word Saudade describes a soft, sad longing for something absent. Feeling is never seen as a weakness; rather, it is taken as beautiful proof of having the depth to love fully. Likewise, in Japan, the concept of Mono no Aware teaches people to value beauty precisely because it will not last, much like the way cherry blossoms matter more because they eventually fall.

Ultimately, how pain is framed completely changes how it heals. By shifting away from thinking you are broken just because you are still sad and instead seeing that you are sad simply because you loved deeply enough to grieve, the entire course of recovery can change.

3 Proven Ways to Turn Down the Pain

If yearning is currently wrecking sleep, focus or relationships, specific tools are necessary. The goal is not to delete the beautiful memory of the person missed. Rather, it is simply to bring the pain down to a manageable level so life can move forward again.

1. Make Room for the Feeling Instead of Fighting It (ACT)

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) flips the usual advice completely on its head. Instead of trying to push painful feelings out, ACT gently teaches how to stop wrestling with them. Because fighting a thought makes it come back much harder, this approach is incredibly validating.

For instance, try closing your eyes and scanning your body. Find exactly where the yearning sits: maybe a knot in the throat, a heavy weight behind the breastbone or a hollow feeling in the gut.

Picture drawing a soft circle around that spot to give it a clear border. Then, breathe slowly into that space not to make the feeling magically vanish but to let the nervous system know the feeling is allowed to be there without needing an immediate response. When telling oneself, I do not like this but I have room for it, the internal alarm often quiets on its own.

At Savant Care, therapists pair talk-based ACT with somatic yoga therapy. This unique approach uses breathwork and guided movement to actively process grief in the body not just in conversation. Because trauma and grief live in the nervous system, adding this physical practice makes the emotional relief stick much faster and last far longer.

2. Catch the Thought Before It Spirals (CBT)

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) compassionately targets the specific, repetitive thoughts that turn natural yearning into deep despair.

When catching a scary thought, such as I will never be happy again, try to pause and name it out loud, ‘I am having the thought that I will never be happy.’ That one simple move instantly puts a helpful gap between the person and the overwhelming belief.

After creating that gap, test the thought. Did one calm or focused moment happen this week? Almost always, the answer is yes. So, swap that extreme claim for something closer to the truth: There is real pain right now but pain is not a permanent state and hard stretches have been overcome before.

This is absolutely not about faking a positive attitude. Instead, it is about gently checking the worst thoughts against actual facts and decades of clinical trials show that it truly works.

3. Ground Yourself When a Wave Hits (5-4-3-2-1 Method)

While yearning aggressively pulls the mind into the past, grounding exercises gently guide it right back to the present moment.

When a sudden wave of grief hits, look around and name 5 things that can be seen, 4 things that can be touched, 3 things that can be heard, 2 things that can be smelled and 1 thing that can be tasted.

The trick here is to be very specific. Notice the exact grain of wood on a desk, the rough texture of denim on a knee or the quiet hum of the fridge in the next room. The tiny detail is what matters most, because the brain simply cannot process fine sensory input and run a painful memory loop at the same time.

Somatic yoga sessions at Savant Care build directly on this same beautiful idea. When a therapist guides supportive body scans, breathing patterns and grounding movements during a safe session, this skill is actively trained in a clinical setting. As a result, it becomes complete second nature at three in the morning when it is needed the absolute most.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is yearning a mental illness?

Not one by itself. Yearning is just a natural human reaction to loss or separation. But one may consider Prolonged Grief Disorder or depression in case the yearning is extremely deep, lasts for over six to twelve months, and essentially prevents the person from living a normal life.

Why does a person get physical pain in the chest when missing someone?

As the emotional stress life threat triggers the same signal of the fear system of our body (fight or flight) that physical stress or threat would, the body reacts forcefully. Stress hormones cause muscle tension, increase heart rate, and narrow blood vessels. Besides, the dACC region of the brain, which is responsible for processing physical pain, is also involved in processing social pain. Thus, the chest pain is not only figurative but also very real.

What are the ways to stop yearning for someone?

Usually, the more you try to suppress the feeling, the stronger it becomes; a better approach is to accept the feeling without doing anything about it (using ACT). Also, one can try measuring the leading thoughts against the reality (using CBT) and consequently, when the feeling becomes too strong, one can use their senses to get back to the present moment (using 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 grounding).

The Bottom Line

Is yearning bad for mental health? That depends on what you do with it.

If it traps you in a past you cannot change, it can grow into a condition that grinds down your body, your relationships, and your ability to get through a day.

If you learn to sit with the ache, listen to what it tells you about what you value, and aim that energy toward building something new, the same feeling becomes a force for growth.

Pain is not the enemy. Getting stuck in it is.
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Sources

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2. Eisenberger, N. I., Lieberman, M. D., & Williams, K. D. (2003). Does rejection hurt? An fMRI study of social exclusion. Science, 302(5643), 290-292. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/14551436/
3. Harvard Health Publishing. Takotsubo cardiomyopathy (broken-heart syndrome). https://www.health.harvard.edu/heart-health/takotsubo-cardiomyopathy-broken-heart-syndrome
4. American Psychiatric Association. (2022). Prolonged Grief Disorder. https://www.psychiatry.org/patients-families/prolonged-grief-disorder
5. Eisma, M. C. (2023). Prolonged grief disorder in ICD-11 and DSM-5-TR: Challenges and controversies. European Journal of Psychotraumatology. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10291380/
6. Scheibe, S., Freund, A. M., & Baltes, P. B. (2007). Toward a developmental psychology of Sehnsucht (life longings). Developmental Psychology, 43(3), 778-795. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17484587/