It doesn’t matter how awful a friend someone was, when they’re out of your life, grief can still hit hard. This can make you question whether you made the right decision in cutting them out. If you miss them this much, maybe they should still be in your circle? Maybe they weren’t as bad as you remember?

That’s why it’s vital to understand that grieving the loss of a friend – even when you made a smart choice in letting them go – is normal. The good news is that there are ways to cope.

“Unfortunately not all relationships are loving or healthy or even good for us,” Lianna Champ, a grief specialist, tells Stylist. “It can be particularly harsh if we’ve had a toxic relationship with someone who should have been loving but instead may have be abusive, cold or unloving and, to preserve our sanity, we have no choice but to sever all ties.

“It is so hard but we cannot wonder why people do what they do or don’t behave how we think they should, and we can even experience the heavy weight of guilt and responsibility for their negative behaviour. We can be shocked by the intensity of our feelings, and this can colour our whole life as we grieve for how differently we wish things could have been.”

Ahead, Champ shares her steps to recovering from the grief of a friendship you’ve lost.

How to deal with the grief of cutting out a friend