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“Closure isn’t a destination we reach, but a journey of acceptance we undertake. Healing begins not when others provide answers, but when we learn to sit peacefully with our own emotions.”
I had a friend I trusted whose presence was a constant in my life for almost two decades.
Every time I gathered the courage to voice my hurt about his inconsistent behavior, he refused to acknowledge or address uncomfortable issues by pretending they didn’t exist.
During our friendship, he vanished more than once—leaving me alone with an echo of unanswered questions and a heavy heart.
Whenever this happened, I struggled with a need for closure that was not met.
He continued neglecting our friendship until it deteriorated for good.
Once again, I was left without closure.
Left to make sense of things alone, I did what most of us do: first, I questioned myself, then I started asking questions.
How did I define and experience closure when relationships or emotional connections that mattered to me ended?
What psychological factors explained why he wasn’t interested in closure?
Was closure an inherent part of my human nature, or a social construct that provided me with an illusion of certainty?
And perhaps most importantly: Was my need for closure helping or hurting me?
As I delved deeper into closure’s complex psychological nature and its effects on our emotional well-being and mental health, I discovered it had permeated every aspect of my human experience for as long I could remember.
From childhood through adolescence, adults encouraged me to shake hands, apologize, and “make up.”
I was taught to believe that emotional turmoil required immediate, clear-cut resolution—even when I wasn’t emotionally ready for it.
This mindset led me to exaggerate normal emotional reactions to change and impermanence.
What is Closure?
Social psychologist Arie Kruglanski first coined the term “need for closure” in the 1990s.
He defined it as “wanting to find clear answers to questions to help reduce uncertainty and confusion.”
I had been trying to heal from emotional pain by understanding what happened to me, believing that if I made sense of my friend’s unloving behavior, I would feel better and avoid similar hurt in the future.
The Big Idea
When we accept that closure isn’t always possible or needed for happiness, our desperate need for answers naturally subsides.
A mental and emotional shift happens when we stop focusing on others and turn our attention inward.
Through this lens of self exploration, we develop deeper insights into our psychological patterns and emotional needs.
Why do we need Clousure?
Life moves us through many transitions: from childhood to adolescence, from student to graduate, from single life to partnership, from self-focus to parenthood, and from career to retirement.
At the end of one phase, we continuously and unconsciously go through a transition and adjustment period before beginning a new chapter.
We seek closure because we want certainty, but we forget that certainty itself is an emotion linked to feeling safe—not absolute truth or facts.
If we don’t feel safe, we cannot move from what psychologists call the precontemplation phase to the learning phase.
When my friendship ended, it put me in transition. I felt both eager about new opportunities and new friendships, but at the same time experienced a sense of loss about leaving behind the old.
After many hours of contemplation, I began to see that while closure helps my brain organize experiences into patterns—acting as a psychological bridge between life phases— growth can only occur when I accept impermanence and uncertainty as natural parts of life.
Learning to be comfortable with this duality—my brain’s need for understanding alongside my acceptance of impermanence—became a crucial part of my healing journey.
The Evolution of Coping with Uncertainty
Evolution has favored those who act decisively.
Our brains are highly motivated to generate feelings of certainty, even when those feelings are unwarranted and lead to mistakes.
Throughout history, humans have used rituals and ceremonies as psychological tools to process experiences, cope with loss, and move from endings to new beginnings.
Closure is deeply embedded in both our biology and culture.
Understanding the Root Causes of Our Need for Closure
Research shows that basic human needs and emotions shape how we deal with and respond to change.
Let’s explore the most common behaviors driving our need for closure in modern society.
Cognitive Dissonance: How we handle conflicting beliefs and the mental distress that comes from holding contradictory thoughts
Cognitive dissonance is a well-established concept in psychology, first introduced by Leon Festinger in the 1950s.
It is the mental discomfort we feel when holding contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values—this drives us to resolve the inconsistency by changing our beliefs or behaviors.
Imagine someone you’ve known and trusted deeply for many years. Then one day, you uncover evidence that they’ve been deceiving you behind your back.
Where before there was only one belief, now two conflicting beliefs coexist in your mind:
“The person I trusted loves and cares about me,” vs. “This person is deliberately hurting me”
This emotional conflict creates mental distress, leading you to either deny or minimize evidence to preserve your existing belief in the friendship.
You confront the painful reality and reevaluate your understanding of the relationship.
Or you create justifications for your loved one’s behavior to maintain both beliefs simultaneously.
Uncertainty: The psychological impact of unclear situations and how we naturally seek to resolve ambiguity
Imagine starting a new job where your role and responsibilities aren’t clearly defined.
Each day, you’re uncertain whether you’re meeting expectations or directing your attention on the right tasks.
Your manager’s feedback is vague or nonexistent, and the company’s goals shift so often that you’re constantly second-guessing your decisions. This makes it challenging to plan your work and creates anxiety about your performance.
Each day, you’re left longing for clear direction, defined expectations, and concrete feedback about your performance.
I like to think of it as closing open loops in our minds.
These unresolved situations or questions create mental loops that we instinctively look for ways to close them to regain psychological comfort and clarity—even if we don’t recognize this search as a need for closure.
Uncertainty is an experience composed of a wide range of emotions—not a facts or ultimate truth.
These emotional responses are natural and help explain why we often seek certainty and closure in uncertain situations.
Most of us haven’t learned how to sit with our discomfort.
Loss of Control: How unexpected life changes drive us to seek understanding and reassurance
Imagine you unexpectedly lose your job because of company layoffs.
Not only was the decision made without your input and your professional future suddenly uncertain, but you had no opportunity to prepare or plan for this change.
In this scenario, you pursue closure by analyzing why you were laid off, obsessing over your past performance, finding “reasons” while you seek reassurance about your professional capabilities and future employment.
Information Overload: The way too much information lead to mental exhaustion and hasty decisions
If you’ve ever researched a major purchase, you’ve likely spent hours reading detailed reviews, comparing technical specifications, and analyzing pricing options and other details.
The overwhelming amount of information makes it difficult to determine what’s most relevant, leading to mental exhaustion and analysis paralysis.
When faced with indecision, our need for closure intensifies, often resulting in hasty decisions to escape overwhelming feelings.
Social Pressure: How external expectations can force us to rush through emotional processing
Most of us can relate to going through a difficult breakup or loss.
Friends and family keep asking “Are you over it yet?” or saying things like “It’s time to move on.”
While you’re still processing complex feelings and emotions, you feel pressured to declare you’re “completely fine” even when you’re not.
You rush through the natural grieving process to meet others’ expectations before you’re emotionally ready to move on—leaving you with unresolved feelings that resurface later.
Why Seeking Closure Can Be Self-Defeating
You Make It About Them, When It’s About You
Research by Kruglanski and Webster found that the need for closure is an internal psychological process.
When we try to get others to make us feel better, the emotional distress we experience continues for a longer period, instead of feeling better.
Authentic healing is “about you, not them.”
When we focus on our own growth and healing, we achieve more sustainable emotional closure than when we remain fixated on getting answers or closure from others.
While we can’t control others’ actions or get them to provide the closure we seek, we have the power to work on our own healing and growth.
Note to Self:
The path to resolution lies in accepting reality and redirecting your energy toward self-development rather than seeking external validation.
The Paradox of Pursuing Closure: How Seeking Resolution Can Intensify Distress
In my search for closure, I ended up creating more anxiety and rumination compared to when I accepted life’s uncertainty.
A study published in the Journal of Research in Personality (2018) found that individuals who pursued closure after relationship breakups took significantly longer to recover emotionally than those who didn’t.
The researchers found that the constant search for answers and resolution often prevented natural emotional processing.
Neuroimaging research by Lieberman et al. (2011) revealed that labeling negative emotions – a common closure-seeking behavior – intensifies the amygdala’s response, amplifying emotional distress rather than relieving it.
Pursuing closure created unrealistic expectations about achieving perfect understanding.
This became particularly damaging when I repeatedly revisit the past.
When I remained stuck in unhealthy attachments to painful situations, it hindered my natural emotional processing and healing.
Note to Self:
Letting go of control and allowing emotions to flow naturally works better than chasing closure.
By focusing on my growth and healing, I achieve more sustainable emotional resolution than fixating on getting answers from others.
The Need for Closure is Driven by Fear and Attachment
My need for closure stemed from deep-seated fears, emotional bonds, and behavioral patterns I formed in early life.
Neuroimaging reveals that uncertainty activates the same neural pathways as physical threats, explaining why ambiguous situations trigger such intense emotional responses in some of us.
The combination of our biological responses and psychological attachment patterns creates a powerful drive for closure, which manifests in several ways:
Fear of abandonment contributes to an excessive need for reassurance and definitive answers.
Fear of uncertainty drives our compulsive need for closure.
Fear of negative evaluation pushes us to pursue quick resolution to avoid judgment from others.
The inherent limitations of our biology make changing these responses difficult, forcing us to confront uncertainty with only the current emotional and mental tools at our disposal.
As I developed a more secure attachment style, I handled unresolved situations with greater flexibllity than when I had an anxious attachment style and a rigid need for immediate closure.
I realized that achieving a better emotional life meant shifting my focus from seeking closure to developing the skills for handling change.
It Prevents Natural Healing and Processing
Actively pursuing closure interferes with our brain’s natural healing mechanisms.
Our brain and body naturally know how to deal with difficult experiences.
To heal properly, we need to let our feelings and emotions come up on their own in a safe environment, instead of forcing them or rushing the process.
A study found that when individuals process trauma at their own pace without pressure for immediate closure, they showed better psychological and physical health outcomes.
Many subsequent studies have later confirmed this research, including work by Bonanno showing that attempting to rush emotional processing extends our recovery time.
Neuroscience research verifies these findings by showing that emotional processing happens through complex neural networks that need time to integrate experiences.
Pushing for premature closure, can short-circuit these natural processes, leading to:
- Not fully processing my emotions
- Hiding or avoiding my feelings of loss
- Quick fixes that didn’t solve the underlying issues
- Higher rate of emotional setbacks in the future
When I strted to respect and honor emotions to process naturally and experience them fully without rushing toward closure, I created the much needed space for sustainable healing.
Note to Self:
Closure is not fast, fun, or easy because it is not an item on a checklist; it is wisdom in the making.
It Creates Unrealistic Expectations and False Hope
One of the most common cognitive biases is the assumption that every event must have clear, identifiable causes and explanations.
This tendency is called “Deterministic Bias,” or “Causality Bias.”
This bias is problematic because it ignores the inherent complexity and ambiguity of human reasoning and the reactions and behaviors it generates.
This deterministic belief creates false, unrealistic expectations about the level of understanding we can achieve—even if we had a clear, definitive explanation.
I wasted time searching for answers my friend could not give me, or that don’t exist, unaware of the limits of my own understanding.
Understanding why he made those choices wasn’t what led to emotional healing.
The endless analysis of past events and the search for explanations trap us with the belief that understanding the past will eliminate our suffering.
I have accepted that closure is not a onetime event or a single moment in time when I finally “get over” something.
It is best understood as a nonlinear, ongoing process of acceptance and healing that develops over time as I take more responsibility for my emotional intelligence.
When I viewed closure as a single event rather than an ongoing process, I experienced more difficulty recovering from the loss of my friend.
Note to Self:
Rather than seeking perfect resolution, it’s more helpful to maintain flexible perspectives and accept that most of my experiences may never be fully “closed.”
It Keeps You Stuck in the Past: The Cycle of Rumination
Repetitive thinking that continues despite being unhelpful or counterproductive is strongly associated with increased depression and anxiety.
When we continuously seek closure for past events, we experience what researchers call “goal-related rumination” – a cycle where unattained closure turns into a blocked goal, leading to persistent negative thoughts.
Such rumination significantly impairs emotional recovery and psychological well-being.
Brain imaging studies show that repeatedly seeking closure activates brain regions linked to negative emotions and pain, effectively keeping emotional wounds from healing.
In our attempt to repeatedly seek closure for past events, we maintain stronger neural connections to painful memories, making it harder to move forward.
By replaying past events and conversations, we prevent ourselves from fully engaging in present opportunities and relationships.
Our cognitive and emotional energy remains trapped in events we cannot change, which hinders our natural emotional processing and ability to move forward.
The problem isn’t closure itself—it becomes dysfunctional only when I rush it, force it, and—most importantly—when it becomes a habit.
Note to Self:
The only way to move forward is to stop revisiting the past and be present in the moment, allowing yourself to create new, empowering memories.
How Does Our Need for Closure Evolve When Circumstances Change?
When we remove the circumstances that initially created our need for closure, several psychological dynamics may occur.
How Distance Weaken Our Need for Closure
When I worked as a nursing science educator and mentor, I met many students who didn’t get accepted into their dream university.
At first, they obsessed over every detail of their application, constantly wondering if a different essay topic or more extracurricular activities would have changed the outcome.
They felt overwhelmed, not because they were not accepted, but because they wanted to understand exactly the reasons.
However, as they began attending their alternate choice university and made new friends, the intensity of those questions faded.
Their need for closure naturally diminished as they built a new reality, shifting their attention from past disappointments to present experiences and future possibilities.
A trigger only persists when we continue to feed it.
How New Life Events Transform Our Need for Closure
Imagine someone who initially sought closure after a romantic breakup.
Though their need for relationship-related closure fades with time, they redirect this need toward their career instead.
They become intensely focused on getting a promotion or changing careers, making this new situation their primary source for seeking certainty and resolution.
In psychology, this is called “displacement”—where emotional needs shift from their original source to a new target.
Until we transform our underlying beliefs and relationship with closure, it will continue finding new situations to attach itself to, even as original circumstances change.
Does Our Need for Closure Persist After Its Original Triggers Are Gone?
Yes, our need for closure can survive independently of the original circumstances that created the need for it.
The psychological imprint of past experiences maintains the belief that closure is the solution even after circumstances change—until we consciously break this pattern.
When we lack the courage to accept difficult and uncomfortable situations, our brains find simpler ways to find peace and comfort in unresolved matters.
It does this to protect our self-image.
When something ends without a clear explanation, we tell ourselves “it just wasn’t meant to be,” “everything happens for a reason,” or “things will work out, eventually.”
These statements are defense mechanisms, simplified explanations we create to help us cope with uncertainty and unresolved situations.
“It just wasn’t meant to be” is how we explain things to ourselves, instead of taking responsibility for the actual reasons behind what happened.
“Everything happens for a reason”– is one of the most dysfunctional ways we make sense of difficult situations by telling ourselves that difficult things happen for some bigger reason or purpose.
“Things will work out eventually” is another harmful way we avoid facing difficult emotions.
Rather than taking responsibility, we create a narrative that time alone will resolve everything.
Simple explanations act as psychological protection mechanisms that help us cope with uncertainty, even if they provide a false explanation of what happened and hurt us in the procces.
“Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t.”
Emotional habits and thought patterns persist independently, even when the original triggers no longer exist.
After years of self-inflicted suffering, I finally understood that taking complete responsibility is the only way out of self-defeating habits.
Closing Thoughts
This act of letting go lies entirely within my control.
When I recognized that letting go lies entirely within my control it clicked for me.
Closure doesn’t depend on external factors or others’ actions but on how I choose to respond.
Letting go of resentment doesn’t mean I condone or excuse my friend’s hurtful actions and neglectful behavior—it means freeing myself from the emotional prison of seeking closure.
To create a better life, I must release my need to tie up every loose end—because it’s neither necessary nor realistic.
When faced with change and loss, I practice sitting with the emotions from unresolved situations. This practice has deepened my comfort with ambiguity and uncertainty.
In doing so, I’ve built confidence in handling uncertain situations and learned to appreciate the journey rather than focusing solely on endings.
For several years, I was trapped in a cycle of trying to make sense of my friend’s cruel inconsistency and his heartbreaking stonewalling.
When I removed him from the equation, I began seeing closure as a collection of thoughts, beliefs, actions, and habits.
A simple primitive lens through which I had choosen to see the world—not absolute truth.
Through this process, a more grounded perspective emerged—one that transformed my relationship with closure.
I now see life as a series of bridges I must cross and how I cross them shapes how I view and tell my life’s story, not what happens to me.
No longer resisting life’s natural flow of constant change, I am free to be guided by my own insights and experiences.
Each step along this path is my responsibility, regardless of what anyone else is doing.
It is incredibly liberating to embrace the fluid, ever-changing nature of life, rather than chasing certainty.
Instead of seeing unresolved situations as problems to be fixed, I now have a choice to view them as opportunities for practicing deeper acceptance and mindful awareness.
The awe is found in life’s unfolding chapters—those moments of transition, self-discovery through uncertainty.
It is this expansion of the self that holds the most profound opportunities for learning and transformation.
Right now, I am in a place between worlds—no longer fitting into my old life, not yet settled in my current one, and still haven’t arrived at my next destination.
Though frustrating at times, I know these moments of transition, uncertainty, and self-expansion hold the deepest wisdom.
I’ve been here before.
So I take a deep breath and let go of what no longer serves me, including my friend who is hurting and struggling.
I allow myself to be where I am, in this moment and this moment only—no longer grasping, or forcing the future, no longer resenting the past or the present.
The most rewarding aspects of my journey lie not in closure, but in the questions I continue to explore and the stories that remain beautifully unfinished.
What unfinished stories in your life are waiting to teach you that sometimes the most beautiful endings aren’t endings at all?
Books on the psychology behind closure:
- “Closure: The Rush to End Grief and What It Costs Us” by Nancy Berns: This book delves into the concept of closure itself, examining its social construction and questioning whether it’s always necessary or even helpful.
- “Healing From Loss: Daily Reflections and Meditations on Coping with Grief and Finding Closure” by Earl Grollman: This book offers a more spiritual and introspective approach to finding peace after loss, focusing on self-reflection and acceptance.
- “The Grief Recovery Method Handbook: The Action Program for Moving Beyond Death, Divorce, and Other Losses” by John W. James and Russell Friedman: This book outlines a specific program for processing grief and finding closure through a series of actions and exercises
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