Gestalt therapist told how to deal with love addiction

The state of falling in love gives a lot of vivid emotions, but everyone experiences falling in love differently. It often happens that when a partner appears, a person stops contacting friends, devotes time to a hobby, breaks away from life, dissolving in the subject of tender feelings. Women are more prone to this behavior, because they are more emotional and focused on caring for others, but men can also experience falling in love in a similar state.

Gestalt therapist Dinara Aribzhanova spoke about the reasons for this condition and about ways to save yourself by entering into close relationships.

"Losing oneself" is due to two factors - special chemical reactions that occur in the body during the period of falling in love (a person experiences strong positive emotions and is "attached" not so much to a partner as to his fantasies about him) and / or a person's inner conviction that he not valuable enough without a "second half". Such an attitude towards oneself is laid down in a person in childhood if he does not receive proper support from his parents (mainly from his mother).

Different scenarios

"If childhood went more according to a negative scenario, then in the future the individual does not have the feeling that

- I'm important;

- my life is important;

- the world is good and interesting;

“I want to get to know this world and try something new,” the expert clarifies. In this case, the longing for a “good” adult begins, capable of giving a sense of self-importance. sometimes (and that is why, having fallen in love, some people "disappear from the radar", wanting to spend as much time as possible with someone who compensates for the lack of love and acceptance. But the relationship of two mature personalities cannot and should not be similar to the relationship of an adult and a child.

"No adult can respond to another adult, as a mother can do for her baby," Dinara Aribzhanova explains the dependence mechanism.

What to do?

In order for an adult to get rid of a pronounced inner need for a loving and accepting "parent" and stop looking for him in the men / women he meets, long-term therapy, work with a psychologist is necessary. In parallel (to consolidate the result), you can go through a special 12-step program for people suffering from certain addictions online or in person.

It is equally important in the process of entering into a relationship to put yourself first, and the partner second. In a healthy relationship, in the first place in a person, he himself, and only then the beloved (th). This allows everyone to form a personal space, while staying together, enjoying each other's company and jointly creating a space in which both are comfortable and pleasant.

Too much care

Maintaining a balance of "give and take" is also the key to a healthy relationship. "In any relationship, it is important to periodically reduce the debit with the credit: how much I owe in a relationship, and how much I want and allow myself to do something for myself personally. If a woman has an imbalance towards "I should", then over time she begins to lose yourself, take less care of yourself, dissolves in a man, children, "says the expert.

Life without the feeling of falling in love may seem a little "fresh", but it is important to understand that this does not make it empty or meaningless.