Finding out that someone has removed you as a friend on Facebook can be a painful experience. With “unfriend” becoming the “Word of the Year” according to the New Oxford American Dictionary, we figured many people must be experiencing the pain on a daily basis. That’s why we’ve done some in depth research to discover how to most effectively recover in no time at all! So wipe those tears away and say goodbye to the pain because we’re about to provide you with the ultimate 12 step recovery guide for being unfriended on Facebook.

Step 1: Walk It Out

The best thing to do as soon as you get the emotional surge from a friend severing your virtual connection to them, is to go outside and do as the rapper Unk says: “Walk it out”. Whether you step outside and loudly as possible for 30 seconds straight or simply hold your leg in a straight position while you walk awkwardly down the street, it’s probably best to do something that takes your mind off of the pain you currently feel.

Step 2: Admit That Sometimes You Are A Bad Friend

Nobody’s perfect and sometimes we do things which hurt others. Maybe it’s best for you to just admit that sometimes you are in the wrong and accept that you have done something to damage your relationship. Dale Carnegie once said that “The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it.” Sometimes we aren’t so good at avoiding arguments so if you happen to have engaged in an argument, admitting defeat is much more graceful than to hold a grudge.

Step 3: Spend Hours Determining Who Unfriended You

There are a number of applications which let you know who has unfriended you recently. If you haven’t installed the application it can take a while to figure out which of your friends unfriended you, especially if you have a lot of friends. If you really want to seek revenge you’ll need to figure out who unfriended you, right? So stop doing whatever productive task you were focused on and get to the bottom of this mystery!

Step 4: Write A Haiku About The Pain They Caused

“You’re very angry
Not loving your friend Mary
Because it’s over”

Write a Hiaku as a note and then tag all your friends! This way you can let all of your friends know the pain that your ex-friend caused you. You can only hope that your other friends will sympathize with you and will choose to unfriend the person who is your current source of pain and hatred. Take those negative emotions and spread them to all your friends! This should help you feel much better.

Step 5: Ask Your Friend For Forgiveness

If you prefer to take the high road, you can squash any argument you had and plea for your friend’s forgiveness for whatever “unforgiveable” action you took. Sometimes we can’t be the best friend and you understand that. Explain to your friend that it was flat out wrong to flirt with their significant other and that you will cease communication with them in order to save your existing friendship!

Step 6: Apologize To Your Other Friends Because You’ve Failed

You are a failure in the eyes of your ex-friend so it’s time to accept your mistakes and make them part of who you are. Tell your friends that you have failed at one friendship and you don’t wish to do the same with them. Promise to make new sacrifices in order to ensure a strong future relationship. Then proceed to post loving messages on each of your friends’ walls to explain how much you value their friendship.

Step 7: Unfriend Someone Else

Maybe you aren’t ready to take the high road yet. It’s time to seek revenge!! Go unfriend one of your existing friends so they can feel the same pain you are currently enduring. It’s only fair for your friends to share the negative emotions currently surging through you, right? Kill a relationship for absolutely no reason at all and then wait for them to reach out to you. If they don’t contact you, kill another friendship until you are confident that one of your other friends is in pain!

Step 8: Add 10 More Facebook Friends

Now that you’ve killed off a couple relationships, it’s time for you to seek a net-positive result. Friend a bunch of people in order to have more friends than you first had when you hadn’t been unfriended. This way, your friend will become jealous of you. Let’s be honest, your ex-friend most likely spends their waking hours focused on your personal Facebook friend count. It’s a competition and you aren’t going to let them win this one!

Step 9: Admit That You Have Become A Facebook Addict

After you’ve spent 15 hours trying to seek revenge and have publicly expressed your pain on Facebook, it’s time to admit defeat: you are an addict. You’ve spent all this time and have exhausted your emotional energy for the sake of a single friendship on Facebook. It’s probably not the best way to have spent your time, but at least you are so exhausted that you no longer have the ability to feel strong emotions!

Step 10: Perform Some Positive Thinking Exercises

You’ve embraced the pain and have spread it to your friends but it’s time that you recover from the unfriending process. Perform some positive thinking exercises. For example, create a list of all the things you are grateful for. Then meditate in silence and thing of joy and goodness flowing through your body. As the positive sensations resonate within you, you become a new person!

Step 11: Spread Love And Joy Around Facebook

Take this goodness and spread it among your friends, especially those that you unfriended out of anger and those who’s walls you wrote negative statements on. Tell them things like “You are the best friend ever!” and “I don’t know where I’d be without you ”. If you want to get real serious with spreading love and joy you can send some virtual Facebook gifts so that your friends know that you really care.

Step 12: Go To Sleep

I understand that being unfriended is painful but you have now spent an entire day focused on the person who caused you pain and then recovering from it. Rather than spending more time perusing through your Facebook friends and finding more friendships to damage, it’s probably a good time to go to sleep. Tomorrow is a new day and you will wake up well rested and filled with the love from your remaining Facebook friends.