Written by Ranya AlHusaini, Mindset Transformation Guru
Ranya Alhusaini is a mindset transformation guru. Besides, she is a Hypnotherapist, Rapid Transformation Therapy Practitioner and NLP. Ranya dug her way through self-discovery, curiosity and knowledge.
Love addiction often entangles individuals in unhealthy relationship patterns, leading to a gradual erosion of self-worth. In this article, we explore how these addictive behaviors undermine self-esteem and offer insights into breaking free from the cycle to rebuild a positive sense of self...
When does love become addictive?
Love addiction is compulsively seeking the experience of love with someone new. A psychological urge to satiate the unsatiable hunger of worthiness. Love addiction is chasing the fantasy of love. You are continuously clinging to certain tendencies, resulting in harmful consequences. While addicted to love, you are dependent on unhealthy behaviors like cravings, obsession, mood swings, and magnified pain. A heartache imagined by your mind and reflected in your imagination. Around this corner, you want to be seen in an idealized image. During love addiction, you are constantly battling a painful conflict of; despair, loss, avoidance, fear, and shame. Love addictive behaviors can weaken your vital energy, keeping you terrified of yet another loss, betrayal, and the vanishment of an idealized partner. During love addictive scenario, you are constantly battling a pile of intrusive negative thoughts, stripping you of peace of mind. Thinking to yourself – Will they abandon me if they discover the real me? Shame on me, but I am not even worthy of love! I keep running from them and yearning for their love! I am addicted to pain; I am addicted to unhealthy love. It’s a heartache and I can’t find a way out! Can I ever feel worthy without the addictive behaviors.
The condition of your mindset during love addiction
Craving love can exhaust your vitality. The exhausted effort consumed drastically under unhealthy behavioral patterns can reflect undesirably on one’s self-esteem and emotional well-being. Chasing and addicting love can be a rewarding process; said your mind. While in love, you are producing a compilation of neurochemical hormones [love hormones] like dopamine, oxytocin, vasopressin, and serotonin. An intense emotional story inside the addict’s mind may reveal certain aspects of their past they want to escape from. On blurry nights, love addicts are yearning and fantasizing an idealized image and blocking its realization from reality. Remember, your mind will always cancel two conflicting beliefs.
Love addiction can chronically deform the brain circuit interactions between genetics, environment, and life experiences. During addiction, your brain changes its functional behavior in rewards, stress, and self-control. As one’s personality can compulsively attract addictive patterns like; Lack of responsibility, chasing pleasure, poor self-esteem, poor diet, traumas, childhood emotional unmet needs, and impulsive behavior. Addictive behavioral patterns are yearning toward; liveliness, worthiness, and rewards. Rewarding system in the brain plays an integral part in memory, movement, motivation, mood, attention, and living life excitedly. A love addiction mindset can be exceedingly obsessive, depressive, and compressive in expression if reciprocation is not shared. During love episodes, you are constantly seeking pleasure over quality. Obsessively preoccupied with experiencing love. The obsessive preoccupation of feelings can be a leading factor in making poor decisions. The mindset during love addiction is a neural firework released instantly as encountering, chasing, and pursuing love. Love-addictive scenarios can be triggered by circumstances of; abandonment, finding importance, and traumatic abusing events. The four elements defining love addiction are; craving, compulsion, control, and consequences. Answering these questions can evaluate your struggle: What is your need from a loving relationship? How do you define love? How do you feel if you are not in a loving relationship? How do you behave in a romantic pursue? How do you chase another love interest? How do you chase romantic relationships? How do you take care of your general well-being? Do you keep up with your recreational activities, hobbies, and friends? Do you find yourself doing things out of your consent just to keep the calm water in your relationship? Are you using manipulative tactics to keep your romantic relationship alive? Do you feel anxious, obsessed, stressed, or even angry when your partner is not responding or acting to your own agenda? Are you obsessed with romantic fantasizing? Are you yearning for loving relationships every single hour? And finally, what is so addictively tempting to be in a loving relationship?
What are the four types of love addiction?
See here.
Obsessed love addicts
Are addicts who are overwhelmed with an obsessive and compulsive approach toward love. Obsessed love addicts struggle detaching from an unhealthy relationship. When Obsessed, you are fixated on another person as if they are one of your possessions. In here, the person is repetitively saying “I can’t live without you” or “You are the apple of my eye” or “I love you more than I love myself”. The obsessive person can idealize the romantic scenario/s leading them to an unfulfilled reality. However, the main cause of obsessive love addicts are structural and functional abnormalities in the brain due to underlying emotional background story. A longer episode of obsession can be a triggering factor to act out of character, committing aggression or abusing their partner. In this area, the person may experience delusional jealousy/ beliefs and possessive thoughts about the fidelity of the other person. Sometimes those addicts fantasize an illusionary relationship with celebrities and strangers. However, the symptoms of obsessive love may triple the ripple on the preoccupation of romantic thoughts, the fear of loss/abandonment, unhealthy emotional turmoil, and poor self-care routine. Obsession is the aftermath of post-traumatic stress, obsessive-compulsive disorder, childhood emotional neglect, and borderline personality disorder. Questioning the deepest layers of obsession: What needs do you get fulfilled while pursuing the object of interest? What makes you severely need the person of interest? How overwhelming it can feel while pursuing, chasing, or approaching your love interest? Do you keep your promises? Do you have complete control over your feelings with your love interest? The intense degree of obsession can unravel your unworthiness.
Codependent love addicts
Codependency is an emotional behavioral condition enabling healthy relationships. Codependency is another name for relationship addiction. You are clinging to the ties of a relationship because of: low self-esteem. The codependent person can rely on the enabler for emotional support. You seek continuous appreciation to the determent of your worth. Codependent love addicts are empty, resentful, and drained due to low self-worth. To identify how much codependent you are – where yes to the below questions signify the intensity of your codependency behaviors: How deep you can identify your feelings? Do you love setting boundaries or feel resentful when you find someone setting healthy boundaries? Do you find difficulty staying alone? Do you find difficulty with the concept of intimacy? Do you have difficulty making your own decisions? Do you find yourself chasing a love interest to gain attention? Do you fear abandonment? Are you avoiding conflict and finding difficulty standing for your own core values? How does responsibility in your life looks like? Do you suffer from resentment, anger, and passive aggression if you don’t get what you want?
Narcissistic love addicts
Narcissistic love addicts play a dominant role in their partner’s life. They are possessive, completely in charge, manipulative and exploitative. Narcissistic love addicts are abusing their partner’s basic needs while using them as a source of attention, validation, admiration, ego-boosting, and servitude. Narcissist love addicts cannot downplay nor accept any matters coming between their own happiness. Narcissists are drastically low in worth and confidence, overpowering their existence by exhibiting a grandiose presence. The narcissist’s main role is exploiting their partner, and using them to their satisfaction and benefit. During the relationship, the narcissist may appear aloof to their partner ignoring them mostly to ensure an ongoing cycle of attraction and chase.
Ambivalent love addicts
Ambivalent addicts are characterized by avoidant personality disorder. Ambivalent addicts are addicted to the feeling of love and romance. They crave love and yet find themselves fleeting its existence. Ambivalent addicts can intertwine between love and escapism. For them, loving scenarios are fantasized, idealized, and objectified inside one’s mind. Ambivalent personalities are constantly chasing an idealized fantasy of love. They are on the chase of an idealized romantic scenario; fleeting instantly its existence. Ambivalent are terrified from intimate closeness and connection, they are affixed on a strong belief they have grasped from childhood. At the subconscious level, you are repetitively reciting “I was anticipating my parent’s inconsistent attention, awaiting their presence most of the time. Due to this, I might appear seductively unavailable challenging a fantasized existence.
What is the cause of love addiction scenarios?
The reason for chasing love is precise to your personal history. In most situations, love addiction is a symptom of an unfulfilled emotional need. Love addiction can mask over the lack of self-esteem, self-worth, and self-love. The root cause of love addiction can dive into the depth of fear, loss, and unsatiable hunger for love. Amplifying the deprivation from an unfulfilled childhood’s emotional need. Childhood’s unmet needs are fundamental needs of safety, love, support, and freedom of expression. A deprived child can attach themselves to anyone paying them attention. As an adult, you become compulsively convinced that no matter how much you are filing your cups, you are still void.
What are the signs of unhealthy loving patterns?
Unsatiable love hunger.
Affixing the romantic partner on a pedestal.
Obsessively pursuing your partner
Preferring life next to the partner.
The fluctuation of contradictive feelings: craving, withdrawals, euphoria, and emotionally depending on the other.
Fearing loneliness and abandonment.
Seeking emotional comfort from unrequited love.
Failing to decide on your own
Prioritizing the relationship over family and friends
Feeling obsessively depressed if love is not reciprocating.
Constantly chasing romantic relationships regardless of its quality, definition and context to your life
How love addiction, and self-worth are associated?
Love addiction can stem from a dark corner of your psyche, at the rock bottom of your unworthiness. Love addiction can disdain your valuable presence as you sit there waiting for more validation, attention, and worthiness from your love interest. The constant battle from an unhealthy relationship can birth more depression, anxiety, and selfless moments. Playing on the chords of manipulation, love addicts can come out from a relationship battered due to the high level of jealousy, possessiveness, obsession, mind games, and abandonment. You find them constantly emphasizing and prioritizing their partner’s presence. Life is only next to a partner while neglecting everything else. Throughout the relationship, those addicts are chasing newer opportunities in love as intensifying the search for more happiness, excitement, and worthiness. The ongoing chase of love can catalyze to fill over a void from a childhood trauma.
How do limerence and love addiction intersect?
Between love and attraction, a fine line to fantasy. During a limerent phase, you are mostly focusing on your love interest, forgetting everything else. Whereas in love addiction, you are nonchalantly jumping from one relationship to the next. In both, the chaser is finding their worth, importance, and liveliness from an external source.
The limerent objectifies anxious desires to the point of chasing their partner. Limerence frequently stems from an anxious attachment style rooted back to childhood. You are obsessively experiencing intense passionate romantic love while pursuing one partner at a time. You are desiring a deeper connection of reciprocation. Limerence can also include intrusive and melancholic thoughts about the sincerity of a love interest.
What are the strategies to overcome unhealthy love patterns and upgrade your self-worth?
The strategy of uncovering your personal history and discovering the cause of your addictive relationship patterns can be challenging. A journey to your subconscious mind is a triggering factor to severe mood swings if not investigated wisely. Remember, the subconscious mind’s justification can emphasize a prioritized pledge of; protection, importance, and punishment.
Identifying your feelings in every addictive involvement can repetitively speak to the depth of your emotional deprivation. Seeking supportive/professional assistance can be designed on collaborating, elaborating, and situating an integrative solution based on the below assessment:
Understanding your personal story can mediate deeper travel of self-love, acceptance, and awareness while prioritizing emotional flexibility. Learning more about your childhood memories, what your parents did not do to you, and how your parents reacted to your needs. And whether your parents exchanged healthy bonds with you.
Learning about your feelings can be a guiding light toward the nature of the chase, desire, aspiration, and goals in love.
Tracking your life in a journal of thoughts can medicate and decompress your emotional expression while perceiving the deep corners of an unfulfilled desire. How is your mind digesting and evolving forward in life?
Repeating how worthy you are for other reasons than being in love. Evaluating your important presence in the universe as answering the depth of your doubts: What is the purpose of your existence? Emphasizing repetition can empower your mind positively. What you repeat, you remember, and what you remember, you will never forget.
Embrace your past self, your inner child- and become the guiding, loving parents. Become the loving, positive, and empowering parent guiding yourself to a safer land, a happy environment, and a positive atmosphere.
Keep calling your valuable essence while feeling, thinking, and prioritizing your worth. You are worthy because you are a beautiful creation of existence adding value to the world.
Boosting self-love practices, like exercising, enjoying uplifting music, self-care routines, and joining like-minded supportive gatherings.
Start your mindset transformation journey with just one click away
You might feel awkwardly attached and tangled in an exhaustive, addictive scenario. Leaving you battling an overwhelming unhealthy romantic attention. Self-love can be a fulfilling journey into the depth of your worth, navigating through the harsh waves of yesterday. Are you ready to discover what is the root of your unhealthy tendencies? Click here. Are you ready to unleash toward the horizon of faith, love, and sincere connection? Chat now to know how mindset transformation sessions can motivate healthy living and loving and prospering environmental standards.
Ranya AlHusaini, Mindset Transformation Guru
This is Ranya AlHusaini – a mindset transformation guru. My mission is to motivate professional women to unlock their self-worth and live a balanced life. With so much curiosity, and self-awareness I have developed my way with strength and determination. My expertise was well maintained as I took years to understand and develop my own through different modalities, and from there I understood human's nature and reaction. The modalities I use and consult throughout the session are NLP, Rapid transformation Therapy technique, and Hypnosis. So if you want a switch, or a makeover in your life hop in for a mindset transformation session! I have attached a photo of myself as well!
