The ache of missing a loved one can feel all-consuming. Understanding how your personality shapes this experience, however, can help you move through it.
What’s Coming Up
- Why Missing a Loved One Hurts So Deeply
- How Your Personality Shapes the Grieving Process
- How Analyst Personalities Handle Grief
- How Diplomat Personalities Handle Grief
- How Sentinel Personalities Handle Grief
- How Explorer Personalities Handle Grief
- Staying Connected to a Loved One After Loss
- Frequently Asked Questions
- Further Reading
Why Missing a Loved One Hurts So Deeply
If you’ve yet to feel the bone-crushing weight of grief in this lifetime, you’re lucky. Most of us have experienced it firsthand and know the agony it brings.
The pain of missing a loved one cuts deeply. This is because it operates on many levels:
- Physical absence: The empty space where they used to be, the missing texts, the silence where their voice should be.
- Emotional absence: No one to share certain moments with, inside jokes that die on your lips, the specific understanding only they provided.
- Identity shifts: Part of who you are existed in relation to them. Without them, you must figure out who you are all over again.
These different dimensions of grief sometimes overcome you in turns – other times they crash over you all at once. You’re not just missing a person. You’re missing your routines with them, your shared understanding, and the version of yourself that existed in that relationship.
Research from UCLA demonstrates that when these waves of grief wash over you, they activate the same regions in the brain as physical pain. This is why missing someone can literally hurt. Your brain processes emotional absence through the same neural pathways designed to alert you to physical injury.
Understanding the seven stages of grief provides helpful context for how long grief lasts and what to expect as you work through it. But the ongoing experience of missing someone requires strategies that match your natural way of processing emotion.
Knowing your personality can transform how you work through grief. Take our free personality test to discover insights that help you process loss in ways that work for you.
How Your Personality Shapes the Grieving Process
Your personality doesn’t just influence small preferences – it fundamentally shapes how you experience and process grief.
In our framework, we group the 16 personality types into four different Roles: Analysts, Diplomats, Sentinels, and Explorers. Personalities within each Role share core traits that influence how they naturally respond to loss, what comforts them, and what strategies actually help when the ache of missing someone feels overwhelming.
Understanding your Role’s tendencies can help you stop fighting against your natural grief process and start working with it.
How Analyst Personalities Handle Grief
INTJ (Architect), INTP (Logician), ENTJ (Commander), and ENTP (Debater) personality types share a strong tendency to intellectualize loss as a way to manage overwhelming emotions.
They analyze what the relationship meant, how it shaped their life trajectory, and why grief keeps hurting when logic says they should be moving forward. This objective distance can appear as composure, but oftentimes, intense emotions are churning internally.
Analyst personality types can become frustrated by the illogical nature of grief. They understand rationally that the person they miss is gone, yet their brain keeps reaching for them. This disconnect can feel maddening.
Healthy Coping Strategies for Analysts
1. Allow yourself to feel.
Give yourself structured time to simply experience emotions without trying to understand them.
2. Use journaling strategically.
Journaling works exceptionally well for Analysts because it satisfies both their need to do something productive and provides a safe outlet for processing their emotions.
Write about the person you’re missing, write to them, write letters to yourself, and write down your memories.
Journaling is also an ideal activity for analyzing your grief, as long as it doesn’t become a strategy for avoidance.
3. Channel energy into meaningful projects:
- Build something in their honor
- Contribute to causes they cared about
- Pursue goals they encouraged
This provides purposeful action while maintaining connection.
What Doesn’t Help
- Using logic to push away your pain
- Isolating yourself, even if social interaction feels uncomfortable
- Rushing grief, which has its own timeline
How Diplomat Personalities Handle Grief
INFJ (Advocate), INFP (Mediator), ENFJ (Protagonist), and ENFP (Campaigner) personality types often experience missing someone as an overpowering emotional reality.
Diplomats tend to wrestle with profound questions about meaning, connection, and mortality. The existential dimension of loss can weigh heavily on their heart and mind. For them, it’s not just that the person is gone, but what their absence means about life itself.
Their deep empathy naturally extends these questions outward. They worry about how others are coping and what the loss means for them. They are vulnerable to absorbing others’ grief as their own burden to carry.
Healthy Coping Strategies for Diplomats
1. Embrace creative expression.
Write, create art, make music, or find other ways to externalize complex emotions. Create something tangible that captures what you can’t quite put into words:
- A playlist of songs that remind you of them
- A memory book filled with photos and stories
- A piece of art that expresses your grief
- A poem or letter exploring your feelings
2. Let meaning emerge naturally.
Explore how this loss connects to your values and life purpose, but don’t force insights prematurely. These lessons will reveal themselves over time.
3. Choose your confidants carefully.
Open up with trusted people where you feel safe to share about your own grief in addition to supporting them in theirs. Focus on reciprocal relationships where you can be vulnerable too.
4. Practice self-compassion.
You naturally extend deep empathy to others – direct some toward yourself. Give yourself permission to miss your loved one messily.
What Doesn’t Help
- Rushing to find silver linings or lessons before you’re ready
- Neglecting your own grief while supporting everyone else
- Judging yourself for not handling your grief with the grace you imagine you should
How Sentinel Personalities Handle Grief
ISTJ (Logistician), ISFJ (Defender), ESTJ (Executive), and ESFJ (Consul) personality types find comfort in routines, rituals, and traditions that honor the deceased.
Sentinels are likely to miss their loved one most through physical, tangible reminders of them. From their disrupted daily routines to that person’s favorite foods – they may struggle when everyday moments become sharp reminders of who’s missing.
For these types, the loss of a loved one can feel deeply destabilizing. But despite feeling like grief has knocked their legs out from under them, they’ll do everything to maintain their composure and “be strong” for others. Unfortunately, this can mean suppressing their own needs.
Healthy Coping Strategies for Sentinels
1. Create meaningful rituals.
Visit a special place regularly, maintain traditions you shared, and establish new routines that honor them.
2. Keep purposeful reminders.
Choose tangible ways to honor them:
- A photo display in a meaningful location
- A memorial garden you tend regularly
- An ongoing project in their name
- A keepsake that reminds you of positive memories
These provide the concrete connection with their loved one that Sentinels need.
3. Allow vulnerability.
Strength includes acknowledging when you’re struggling. Give yourself permission to seek the support you need, even when you feel like you should be there for others.
4. Express through action.
Maintain something they started, care for people they loved, or complete projects they valued. Actions may help you channel your grief more authentically than words might.
What Doesn’t Help
- Suppressing emotions to maintain appearances
- Refusing support because you believe you should be able to handle everything alone
- Avoiding necessary life changes because they feel like betrayal
How Explorer Personalities Handle Grief
ISTP (Virtuoso), ISFP (Adventurer), ESTP (Entrepreneur), and ESFP (Entertainer) personality types often process grief through action and physical experiences rather than extended reflection.
Because grief tends to hit in unexpected waves, they deal with it as it comes rather than getting stuck in drawn-out, continuous processing. And when missing a loved one overwhelms them, they’re likely to channel grief’s raw energy into staying busy.
This might look like restlessness or denial, but it’s simply how their brains naturally process loss. For these personalities, the pressure to “sit with grief” can suffocate rather than heal.
Explorers tend to view living life as a way of honoring the person they’ve lost. This often feels like the most authentic way of carrying love forward for these types.
Healthy Coping Strategies for Explorers
1. Channel grief through physical outlets.
Your body processes what your mind can’t quite articulate. Choose activities that feel right for you:
- Intense physical exercise that releases tension
- Hands-on activities that engage your body
- Outdoor adventures that connect you with nature
- Dance or movement that expresses emotion
2. Honor them through experiences.
Take the trip, try the adventure, embrace the life your loved one valued.
3. Practice brief, intentional processing.
When you experience an intense moment of missing someone, take 20 minutes to miss them intensely.
What Doesn’t Help
- Complete avoidance through constant distraction
- Seeing yourself as shallow for not wanting to dwell on grief
- Forcing yourself into extended talk therapy if action-based healing works better for your processing style
Staying Connected to a Loved One After Loss
When you find yourself missing a loved one you’ve lost, you don’t have to choose between honoring their memory or moving forward with your life. You can do both.
Talk to them in your mind when facing decisions they’d care about. Integrate their values into your daily choices and major life decisions. Celebrate their memory on significant dates without making those dates solely about pain. Share stories and memories with others who loved them.
The key is integration.
Coming to terms with death is one of life’s greatest challenges. Be patient with yourself. The person you lost will always remain part of your story even as you write new chapters.
Frequently Asked Questions
What to do when you miss a loved one?
When you are missing a loved one, honor the feeling without fighting it. Acknowledge that you miss them, engage in activities that maintain connection (looking at photos, visiting meaningful places, talking about them), and practice self-compassion.
Why is grief so painful?
Grief is so painful because it activates the same regions in your brain as physical pain. This explains why missing someone literally hurts. It’s a genuine reaction of your pain-processing system responding to the loss of an important person in your life.
How do you say you miss a loved one?
When you’re missing a loved one, express it in ways that feel authentic to your personality. Write letters, create art, speak their name in conversation, share specific memories, or demonstrate through actions like maintaining their traditions. There’s no required script – what matters is that your expression of grief feels genuine.
How can I comfort someone who is missing a loved one?
When someone you care about is grieving, listen without trying to fix their pain, acknowledge their loss specifically, and offer concrete help rather than generic “let me know if you need anything.” Simply being present and allowing them to miss their person without rushing them to feel better usually provides comfort.