If you are suffering from unrequited love, do not look for problems in childhood. It’s like looking for the keys not where you lost them, but under the lantern, because it’s brighter there, as in a joke. The problem of your addiction has nothing to do with your childhood.
Let me repeat it again? Your childhood has nothing to do with it, your addiction is your habit now. You can get rid of it. Now, not in the past.
Do not listen to those who tell you that you will get out of one addiction and immediately fall into another, because there are unresolved problems in your childhood. You don’t have any childhood, it has long passed, all your unresolved problems are in the present, and the main unresolved problem is your addiction.
All addictions are very similar: what is alcohol, what is play, what is food, what is love, and if you see this similarity, it will be much easier for you to understand what to do.
Conventionally, any addiction can be divided into a physical part and a psychological one, as well as a physical-psychological one, which cannot be divided even conditionally. There are three parts, and we will now consider them.
Any addiction has a physical part, not only chemical, but especially chemical. This is an altered metabolism in which the substance is already built in, and without the substance, physical breakdown begins, dangerous and sometimes even fatal. The organism cannot exist without matter, it has changed, rebuilt in such a way that now matter is its necessary part.
The physical part is felt most rigidly, painfully, but rather quickly exhausted. An organism that does not receive a drug, but instead receives some vitamins, medicines, water, recovers rather quickly and begins to function normally. However, problems with the physical-psychological and psychological parts of addiction remain.
Please note that the physical part of the addiction cannot be related to the past. In the past, a person physically managed without drugs, lived for himself, but at the present moment of his life his body is different, he dies without it. Tomorrow the withdrawal will pass, the body will rebuild (adapt) and again be able to do without this substance.
Love addiction also has a physical part. It is panic and pain throughout the body, especially in the region of the heart and solar plexus, when a loved one disappears from life or is about to disappear. The presence of a loved one is inscribed in the physical metabolism, it is not injected into the veins and not inhaled into the nostrils, but it is seen, it is breathed, it is touched, it is fed. For physical existence, a person needs not only substances that enter the body, he also needs light, he will not be able to live in complete darkness, he needs visual and tactile stimuli, he needs impressions. Their minimum is vital, otherwise a person may die. Here is a favorite for a love addict — a physically necessary element of life.
But as in the case of an alcoholic and a drug addict, mortal panic, sweat, trembling and tachycardia from separation from a loved one pass quickly (although sometimes medication is also needed, like a chemical addict, so that a person does not die at that moment). A person ceases to experience acute withdrawal, and the physical and psychological part of addiction comes to the fore.
And this part again has nothing to do with the past, with your childhood, with your youthful experience. None. People with different childhoods and experiences experience this part in exactly the same way. Its essence is that a loved one in the present is the only source of pleasure (and meaning), and therefore stress relief. Our stress accumulates every minute and if a person does not have ways to constantly relieve it, he soon begins to feel very unhappy and busy. Highly. Literally depressed. And for a strong addict, there is only one way to relieve stress — addictin (favorite).
It’s not your mother’s fault for this, and not even the neighbor who scared you by taking something out of his pants, not the harsh first teacher and not the boy who made fun of you in the third grade in response to a declaration of love. That’s not why you’re a love addict now. All this is left in the past, and the addiction has formed in the present, and when it leaves your life, you will be free and happy. Despite the fact that the past will remain as it was. But you won’t care, you’ll stop drooling over him, looking for problems in him. And now do not slobber, do not waste valuable energy on nonsense. You already have little energy.
An alcoholic who has got rid of the physical part of his addiction, that is, has overcome withdrawal, begins to slide into apathy due to physical-psychological dependence. Those who do not understand what addiction is are angry with him: “Well, you already feel normal, the pressure is normal, there is no tremor, go to work, get busy, why are you again looking for someone to drink with.” Many see this as the selfishness of an alcoholic. No, this is the main part of the addiction. He no longer dies without alcohol, but he still cannot live without it. He has no strength for life, he feels like a powerless and useless vegetable. Therefore, thoughts come to drink, to feel at least for a while joy and self-confidence, that is, a normal state of energy. There are no energy sources other than an addictin for a strong addict, you know?
Love addict is the same. He seems to be alive, but in fact he is still dead. It has no energy or meaning of its own. He looks at the world and does not find anything interesting in this world. And if he finds it, then only in connection with his beloved. And that might even make it worse. Here is a cozy cafe, how nice it would be there with Her. Here are the flowers, I would give her, she would like it. Here is a movie about love, and tears from the eyes, that would be the same with Him. The good news is to discuss it with him. The whole world around the beloved, he is his center, everything else without this center literally falls apart, unsuitable for joy. How an alcoholic who has decided to quit understands that neither walking without a bottle of beer, nor watching football, nor chatting with friends without vodka, nor going to the bathhouse, nor fishing, nor even just going to bed and falling asleep, everything turned into a dull shit — returns to alcohol, and the love addict, who decided to leave the love gestalt, again plunges into it, not finding a replacement in the world.
How to overcome this part of addiction, I have already described many times: to rebuild life so as not to be next to the addict again and again, in thoughts about him, to RETURN the sources of energy lost due to addiction (addiction takes away the sources, they are no longer in addiction, but they can be restored), to find new sources that did not exist before, little by little, gradually, to gain your circle of resources, it is difficult, but there is no other way. It is important that this part is also finite, gradually the old neural connections weaken, new ones appear, at first it becomes simply possible to do without addiction, and then it is already easy and even pleasant. Under special circumstances, the exit occurs quickly, sometimes in a few days, when there is something to focus all your attention on and what to get carried away with, in the worst conditions it takes about a year to fight, but everything is individual. Sometimes the struggle with addiction is a step forward, two steps back, there is no progress for years.
Many are interested in how hypnosis helps with love addictions.
In short, there are several types of hypnosis, mainly prohibitive and inducement. The strongest is prohibitive, with such hypnosis you can stop a strong love addiction in 2-3 sessions, if a person is especially impressionable. On average, you need 5. This is a strong hypnosis, but it has many side effects and I believe that it should be used only in the most extreme cases, when the addiction is life threatening (or for people who have the resources, they will not die without an addictin) . The effect is based on the fact that addictin is associated with a threat to life and integrity, a person is instilled with fear of addictin (you can do the same with alcohol, with the game).
But hypnosis, even the most successful, does not solve the problem of apathy. As long as there are no sources of energy, a person will still feel bad, very bad, he simply will not return to the addict, but thoughts about the futility of existence will visit him. It will still remain at the bottom of the pit. Only RESOURCES help to get out of the pit, the very attention towards resources already helps, and especially success in connecting them. Helps right away! And nothing else pulls out of the pit (nothing at all, don’t look for it). Only the pumping of resources and the formation of energy sources. As soon as the minimum is formed, a person begins to LIVE in the full sense of the word: he becomes motivated, active, satisfied, even happy. Sometimes a hundred times happier than before addiction.
But what about the psychological part of addiction? And this is the part that prevents the addict from pumping resources normally, leaves him in a state where he can fall back into the same addiction or a new one. This is an external locus and the habit of waiting for help and pleasure from outside, this is egocentrism, this is inadequate self-esteem and unwillingness to work on it, these are all those ego bugs that I talk about continuously. This is a job for a therapist, perhaps, to help a person understand something about himself and see his distortions. But even without a therapist, a person can cope if he wants to work on himself, to make himself stronger. This work is absolutely ineffective without the simultaneous pumping of resources, just sitting and sorting through your complexes, fears, delusions, and wrong attitudes in your head is a meaningless job. And at the same time with resources, doing this is not only useful, but also necessary. Otherwise, resources will begin to slip due to the fact that the locus is constantly moving out or self-esteem either soars to the ceiling, or falls under the baseboard.
But even here it is useless to look for problems in childhood, which is what many people do in therapy. In childhood, everyone has an external locus, and self-esteem is dependent. There is no other way. Only in adulthood can a person become independent and begin to manage himself. Scolding mom because she praised little or controlled too much is pointless, because while a person was under the power of mom, small, he could not become a full-fledged personality, even if mom was the most correct. He must grow up now, breaking away from his mother, from the best or from the worst, it doesn’t matter. In the meantime, his thoughts are all about his mother and how she spoiled him, he is a baby.
One therapist who dealt with childhood problems, and whom I respected very much (just don’t ask for contacts, they aren’t available, and in general I don’t recommend specific therapists, look for yourself, please), pretended to deal with the mother and father of an adult patient, with his resentment towards them, but in fact he tried to unhook his locus and self-esteem from them and help him realize that mom and dad had nothing to do with it and had long been personifying his own complexes and fears. Here’s another approach that might be useful.
â € ‹â €‹ â € ‹â €‹ â € ‹â €‹ â € ‹