When you are in a relationship and even when you do not yet have the relationship as such with the other person, sometimes we can confuse two feelings that, although very similar, are totally opposite, such as love and obsession. Love is a fairly deep and intense feeling that even changes the chemistry of our brain. For all this, it is easy for a person who is in love to fail to identify to what extent the love they feel is becoming or has already become an obsession.
In this Psychology-Online article: How to know if I have an obsession with a personwe are going to show you some of the signs that what you feel is an obsession and not a crush.
Obsession with a person: symptoms
A person who is in love can do crazy things for the person they love or make decisions that they would never have imagined they could make, such as, for example, going to live in another country to be close to them, devoting a large part of their time and/or money to be with that person, take very long trips to be able to spend one more day with him/her, among many other things.
Below we are going to show you what are the main symptoms of a person who is experiencing an obsession and not love. ? Pay attention to this series of symptoms because if you identify with one or most of them, it is a great indicator that you are obsessed with that person.
You are thinking about that person ALL the time.
You spend all the time thinking about that person, to the point that you are beginning to forget about yourself, your interests and even some of your needs. You’ve noticed that you’re having a hard time concentrating on your work, school, and pretty much everything you do.
You frequently forget important things that you have pending to do because that person occupies each and every one of your thoughts. Your thoughts towards that person are based mainly on the concern generated by imagining that at some point he/she could meet another person and stop loving you, carefully planning the next meeting, thinking about what he/she could be doing right now without You, how he may be feeling with you, you fear that he doesn’t love you as much as you want, among many other thoughts that only cause tension and stress.
You are aware of everything he does
You keep an eye on him/her and spend all your time spying on him/her by all possible means. So you use social networks to realize or at least have clues about where he will be at the moment, who he will be with, what he will be doing, among other things. You are also aware of whether he has met new people and if so, you start to investigate who they are, where he has met them, etc. That is, you become a private detective whose only priority is be informed at all times of every movement the other person makes. You even tend to check his cell phone, (in case you can have access to it) reading his messages one by one, finding out about all his contacts, reviewing all his photos, etc. In short, you don’t stop planning new strategies to keep up to date with that person in detail.
Obsession and insomnia
Sleep is another aspect that is related to falling in love. People in love generally tend to sleep less due to the degree of excitement caused by thinking about the person they love. For example, they can go to bed imagining how and when their next meeting will be, how much fun they have with that person, creating stories related to the next meetings or imagining what their life together would be like, among other things.
This, to a certain extent, is normal and typical at this stage in which a person is extremely in love, especially at the beginning of the relationship or when they are just getting to know each other. However, we can say that this has begun to become an obsession when the days, weeks and months go by and you continue not being able to sleep well, and you sleep fewer and fewer hours, the thoughts that before were more positive and related to the perfect love story, now they have become extremely negative and catastrophic since while you imagine yourself with the perfect relationship, there is always the horrible fear of thinking that the other person could abandon you. You spend a long time feeling ill most of the time physically and emotionally due to lack of sleep, you often have dreams and/or nightmares about that person, you notice that you feel worse and more exhausted every time.
Insecurity with oneself
You notice that with the passage of time, probably since you met that person, the confidence you previously had in yourself has decreased considerably. Before you considered yourself more independent, more happy, you felt that your happiness did not depend on anything or anyone and now you find that the opposite is happening to you.
Right now you feel that without that person life would not have much meaning for you, you feel good being only by their side, you feel very unrest when they are separated and you have the constant feeling that at any moment he could abandon you. By focusing solely and exclusively on that person, you have begun to put aside everything you liked to do, you no longer enjoy being with your friends and family as before, you feel more vulnerable and dependent on the other person. It may also be that you no longer dare to start new projects or set new goals since you feel unable to achieve them. In short, being with that person, more than helping you become better and feel happier and more secure, you notice that with each passing day you feel worse about yourself and more attached to him/her.
Obsession with a person: your world focuses on them
You have realized that you have reached a point where you no longer talk, much less visit your friends and even your family since you dedicate all your free time to spending it with that person. You feel like you don’t care about anything or anyone else, whether it’s other people or the circumstances you’re going through, the most important thing for you is that person. The only thing that worries you is be good with him/her because right now it is the only reason you have to be happy and if something were to go wrong between you, you are sure that your world would collapse.
It may also be the case that if you were a person who really liked meeting new people and interacting with others, now you are hiding from everyone and that great interest that you had before seems as if it had vanished from one day to the next. All your plans, your life goals, your day to day life are focused on that person and on you, on no one else.
This article is merely informative, at Psychology-Online we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.
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