Goddamn it, I've just spent the last two comments of mine playing at armchair paychologizing and now I come across this post? Lol. I'm going to develop a reputation if this keeps up...

I think what you're experiencing is in a sense a sort of mild, unprocessed grief. Or at least I think it's worth approaching it from that angle. (If we're going to dig right down into it, the much richer term sehnsucht fits here but I'm going to come off like such a pseud if I go down that path...)

If we take it that you're experiencing a sense of loss this will help frame the experience. This isn't the same sort of traumatic loss like the unexpected death of a loved one or a break-up but the type of loss that you experience when you do something like remember back to when you were in school and you had a circle of friends and a rich social life where you all experienced so much of life together and yet now you're working in a cubicle farm having superficial "How was your weekend?" conversations with coworkers and idle chit-chat with the grocery store staff member who is being polite and showing interest in you because it's their job, and this is the reality of your day-to-day social interactions.

So it's a gnawing sense of loss rather than being wracked by an all-consuming grief, if that makes sense.

People who have gone through a serious process of grief due to the death of a loved one will probably recognise that first form of grief as being the later stages of a grief process. And I think that fits, really.

Ultimately how you choose to understand this feeling of loss is personal and I don't believe that you can just click your fingers and choose how to experience it but if you don't allow yourself the opportunity to resolve this then it will persist in your life and potentially even start to take up more space until you are finally faced with the necessity of tackling it head-on.

How people process grief is very individual and there's no right way of going about it. Once you're an old hand at experiencing grief you tend to be more comfortable with the process because you know yourself better and, although every experience of grief will take on different characteristics, you tend to intuitively know your way through it a lot better and the knowledge that you've gotten through the previous episodes of grief steadies you through the present episode a lot too. Sort of like how a toddler will burst out crying over the smallest slight because that experience of hurt might be one of the first times they have ever experienced it - it might even be the very first time - but as you grow older you still feel that same feeling of hurt but the fact that you've been through this experience plenty of times before gives you a perspective that tends to smooth out the rough edges.

With that in mind, I think it's worth considering that you have the opportunity to relate differently to these experiences.

While at the moment you have indicated that you spend your time engaging in avoidance, which is completely understandable - one of our primary coping strategies is avoidance and there's nothing inherently wrong with that, it seems as though your avoidance is becoming counterproductive.

The upshot of this is that it might be worth exploring ways to respond to this experience differently with the view (not the expectation though) that by responding differently it will gradually open up opportunities to change how you relate to this experience. Apologies if this is too abstract btw.

It's a gradual process and you need to be gentle and forgiving with yourself through this but I'd encourage you to treat these reminiscences like you would a houseguest. Try to extend an attitude of hospitality towards this feeling and welcome it, if only a little. See what it brings for you. Allow it space and time but, like any houseguest, you don't have to let it into every room of your home and you don't have to give it run of the house. If it is being too pushy, you can ask it to leave. If it comes calling but now isn't a suitable time, you can tell it to come back later when you're able to make time for it. If you have had enough of its company, then it's okay to ask it to leave.

But you will have to make time for it at some point because if you try to put it off forever then it will kick down your door.

As for the how of processing the grief exactly, there's plenty of ways that people express their feelings in this process and either you will already know some of the ways that have worked for you from your prior experiences of grief or you'll be able to find tons of ideas for ways to process grief in articles and books so I won't condescend to tell you how that looks for you and I won't bore you (any more than I already have) by making a list.

Ultimately, a person who has resolved their experience of loss of a loved one will still find themselves reminded of those times they spent together but they tend to have a more neutral or even positive relationship to those reminders. Instead of feeling bereft or empty they might feel happy, worthy of love, valued, encouraged to seek out new experiences that fulfil this need in their life, or it might just be a fond memory that doesn't really have any influence on their present experience. Or all sorts of things.

I hope that you are able to find ways of allowing yourself the space to process these feelings and that you can come to a place where you are comfortable treating these feelings as welcome guests in your life, however that might look for you.