is it normal to see someone's face everywhere?

[Purplerain1985]

Good evening, to everyone on this forum. Im feeling pretty down tonight and was wondering if anyone can relate to my situation. To make a long story short for those of you who don't know. My best friend of two years while struggling with depression, cut me out of her life with no warning. I've had a lot of ups and downs since then. I keep busy with things including work, despite my struggles. However something that happens to me pretty often in various settings, is I think I see my friend in public. I get all anxious and think it's her, only to realize that once I take a deep breath and calm down that it's not her. Happened at work last week and it was only a customer. Today on the way to work a similar thing happened. I was at a traffic light and saw a car from a distance (far enough to not get a good look at the people in the car. I convinced myself I saw her in the car even though I couldn't really see the people that good. Maybe this is my brains way of saying she's still in my mind, even if I try not to think about her.

Can anyone else also relate? I feel alone 💔

[deValentin]

Your experience makes me think of Heathcliff’s words in Wuthering Heights after his love Catherine married someone else. “I cannot look down to this floor, but her features are shaped in the flags! In every cloud, in every tree—filling the air at night, and caught by glimpses in every object by day—I am surrounded with her image! The most ordinary faces of men and women—my own features—mock me with a resemblance.”

This experience is similar to a cognitive bias called the frequency illusion (also known as the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon). This is a cognitive bias in which a person notices a specific concept, word, or product more frequently after recently becoming aware of it (Wikipedia). In other words, you see the person or the object that presently occupies your mind everywhere or everything reminds you of what occupies your mind.

When you first fall in love with a person or after an unwanted breakup, it’s normal for the person’s image to fill your mind. It’s a sign of how much she or he means to you in the present moment. It’s useless to consciously fight it, but, at the same time, you don’t have to excessively dwell on it. This more or less transient obsession may impair your judgment, push you to make hasty decisions, or persuade you that life is not worth living without that person in your life. The only “cure” is not to let that omnipresent thought or memory prevent you, as far as possible, from focusing on your other interests and hope that with the passing of time, it will leave you reasonably alone.