LIMERENCE: To Heal from Heartache, Face Rejection (and Reality) Honestly

when you're sad inside and feeling empty romantic obsession can sometimes feel like the brand new direction that you've craved all your life it's a fresh breeze it's a reason for living and for a person with unhealed trauma the feeling of falling in love with another person can quickly turn into a portal where you abandon yourself life becomes all about them and things begin to fall apart in your own life other people can see you're acting in a destructive way but when the other person doesn't feel that way about you and your obsession with the person is the thing that's making you feel like life is worth living you may find yourself making up any reason you possibly can why you should continue to pour your emotions your love and your hopes into this relationship that doesn't even exist this is limerence it's an infatuation that's not actually a reciprocal stable relationship and two signs that it's happening are you're searching for hidden signs that the person who doesn't want you secretly does want you or belong with you and two you find yourself giving mystical meaning to ordinary things all in the service of keeping the fantasy which is actually destroying you alive up in the air you know full of energy for you so it is like being under a spell how do you break it because leaving this fantasy can often feel like your world is crashing around you and it's painful so people have a very hard time even when they know they need to stop it it's very hard to do so i have a letter today from a woman i'll call lisa she writes hi anna i was emotionally neglected as a child with an alcoholic father an anxious mother most of my adolescent memories are of crying alone and pleading for someone to care i was also the youngest of my siblings so i was often left out and took on the role of scapegoat lots of rejection exclusion etc i've released this resentment and have understanding and compassion for my family but i'm still having trouble rewriting the story i'm not sure what she means by that i've got my fairy pencil i'm going to be circling things that i want to come back to i'm going to read her letter through then we'll come back and see if we can help lisa okay the rejection pattern continued as i've had the recurring cycle of falling quote hopelessly in love with people who are unavailable not ready not willing etc and when i say in love i mean unhealthily obsessed romanticizing endlessly for years continuous rejection has kept me in a state of feeling not good enough okay my current conundrum is complex the most recent manifestation of this pattern began about two years ago we met while traveling and i felt that soul recognition feeling at first eye contact we also recognized very quickly our shared passion of creating an off-grid community and we received the message that we were supposed to work together on that mission our destinations were aligned so we decided to drive across the country together he reminded me oddly of my father it started slow we didn't share intimacy until a few weeks in then we had sex and all my emotions wounds attachments fears hit me like a train and the first few times this happened he held really good space for me like almost too good and i wanted to cling to that feeling of finally having the support i'd been yearning for it did help me heal some of my father wound so beautifully this scared him because he doesn't want me to be dependent on him in any way his walls went up quickly after that and he pulled back which only triggered my anxious attachment to reveal itself even more we were able to work through it enough to maintain connection and when we parted ways we decided we would stay in a long-distance relationship until we reunited in the place that we would start community together while apart i was the only one that initiated any contact when we would talk it always felt cut short like he wasn't fully present or interested he always had something better to be doing he said he just wasn't great at long distance when i would express my concerns it actually would only push him further away so i quote broke up with him a few times because it was too difficult for me to bear although breaking up with him didn't actually ease my longing and heartache it made it worse fast forward a year later and we are reunited him and i and a few other friends who were gifted land this whole experience was so divinely guided dreams coming true i get to live in a beautiful fairy jungle with my soul family the only problem i'm still infatuated with him and he only wants to be friends because in his words he's not ready for a relationship we're living together sleeping in the same room basically together 24 7 but with no intimacy verbal reassurance validation or deep connection i started experiencing cptsd flashbacks and having intense emotional pain my expression of that pushes him away energetically thicker walls we spiral into our toxic avoidant and anxious dynamic and he doesn't feel inclined to do the work to meet me in the middle because we're not in a romantic partnership the rest of the farm family started to see my big emotional outbursts and it i became draining for them so everybody is setting boundaries my inner hurt child receives this personally as exclusion and rejection feeling so similar to being excluded by my siblings growing up i continue to be triggered explode feel guilt and shame apologize and plead for understanding they don't seem to really understand they just feel exhausted and so do i so i decided to take space and here we are i've been gone for about a week now i'm still experiencing anxious attachment now toward the whole family and i feel left out i really want to be able to live there and reach harmony because it feels so much like my home my tribe and where i'm supposed to be i feel that his reflection in my life is very karmic and has brought a lot of healing for both of us he shows up as best he can and offers the support he feels comfortable providing it doesn't seem to be enough for me because i always want more and that's frustrating for him i know i need to release attachment and expectations of him and move in to acceptance that he does not want a romantic partnership with me i'm not sure how to not take it personally and stop feeling so sensitive around him any words of wisdom would be appreciated okay gosh lisa this sounds so painful and i'm really glad you wrote we're going to go through this again and i'm going to help you hear what you're telling me but what i hear is that you are working so hard to take what's actually happening and turn it into something magical and meaningful and i'm assuming this is because it's so painful you can't face it so this is going to be you know i don't want to be hard on you but it might be hard for you to hear this because because i think what's going on is a lot plainer than you've allowed yourself to see okay so this is really common for people with cptsd you're not alone this is this is how limerence works i know you know that's what this is all right limerence for anybody who's new to the word it's infatuation obsession with somebody usually does not characterize an actual relationship that's reciprocated and one of the key signs is that you're looking for hidden meaning in things hidden signs that this is actually a big deal relationship even though the other person doesn't know it yet okay that's and that's what's going on here that's what i hear so you start out you tell us a little bit about your past and this part has just made me so sad you were emotionally neglected as a child i'm so not surprised when i hear how this is playing out for you alcoholic dad anxious mother all right so there's the roles and most of your teenage memories are of crying alone and pleading for someone to care and it just sounds like that's exactly what's going on right now so in a way you're the situation you've got yourself into right now has you sort of in an adolescent place a child-like place where you know the problem with being a teenager is you don't get to leave you kind of have to just endure it so you were the youngest of the siblings you often got left out and took on the role of scapegoat okay left out that sure came up again huh still having trouble rewriting the story so i don't know what you mean by that i think you mean you know changing the course of your life and i will help you do that but if you mean trying to pretend what's happening isn't happening like rewriting a story i'm going to help you not do that i want you to look at the story how it's really playing out because that's the truth is what you need to heal all right so the rejection pattern continued and you've you'd had yeah rejection so much rejection and you've had a recurring cycle of falling hopelessly in love with people who are unavailable not ready not willing and when you say love you mean unhealthily obsessed romanticizing endlessly for years and you know what you're right that is different than love obsessing on somebody is it's just kind of like a place you go in your mind it's an escape it's not really the verb of loving another person and you know if we are going to be strict about it if you really love someone and they don't want to be with you then you would let them not be with you you wouldn't put any more energy into trying to make them into something that they're not that's what real love is that's a tall order when you're obsessed with somebody i know and you say continuous rejection has kept me in a state of feeling not good enough so yep there it is so but i want to help you become empowered in this story to see how this is actually a situation you're creating all right so you say the most recent manifestation began about two years ago you were traveling you say we met while traveling and i felt that soul recognition feeling at first eye contact so i don't know if you know this but that soul recognition at first eye contact is a limerent belief a limerent behavior that you know i realize you may have a spirituality where you believe that souls suddenly find each other and then it all works out but i can't tell you the number of letters i get from people who are using that kind of new age belief system or spirituality which might otherwise be helpful or meaningful to them they're using it to put themselves in terrible situations and this is where it begins i feel a soul recognition but because of the way you were raised i'm just going to say and the way it played out what you're recognizing there is somebody who's not into you something a feeling that you have had before in relationships with your father of rejection of being left out so there's a recognition there and it feels like a soul recognition now i know you're going to go on to say that you have this other destiny going on but if it were your destiny and it were good for you it wouldn't feel like soul death because that's what you're describing you're going through his soul death okay you said we also recognized very quickly our shared passion of creating an off-grid community okay and received the message that we were supposed to work together on that mission and so again receive the message that you were supposed to work together this is the kind of thing that limerent people often seize onto now you did end up creating a community together so you know you got the idea you both wanted to do it and you felt like that i'm just going to put stuff in plain english i'm just going to take the sort of spiritualization of this off of it and just say you met you decided this was a goal of both of yours and you decided that you would go for it and you would try to do this then you say it started slow we didn't share any intimacy until a few weeks in okay just want to say lisa that's not slow that's fast three weeks is very fast and in those first three weeks you're going from soul recognition on day one until three weeks and you know i just want to help you see like you're trying to convince yourself that this was very responsible that you waited three weeks but really you were just like diving off a cliff you've just attached your whole plan for life to this guy and something that i teach people to do all the time and hopefully you've seen it in these videos and that's why you're writing to me is that if you have these traumas you may want to consider waiting for much longer i would say never less than three months what you want to do is get clarity about the other person's character their life situation their feelings about you their intentions for a relationship so you found out after sex with him or you know what you may have found out before but you're just not mentioning it here and this is so hard because we've all lived in a culture and grown up in a culture that believes and acts like oh it's totally fine you know you can just sleep with people and it's just part of your destiny and then however it turns out you'll just sort of go your separate ways well i don't know how true that is even for people who weren't traumatized but i know for people who have these terrible attachment wounds and have been rejected by their parents it can be absolutely devastating it can just hijack your whole life your brain your life your heart and then because you have these abandonment fears you become hostage to your own need to stay with somebody that you slept with and so it's very clear from the outside that you didn't have adequate information to know if this guy was really that into you or wanted to be your boyfriend or husband and that you're using ideas like karma and soul recognition and receiving messages to justify rushing in and you know this is just me here it's anna it's the fairy like i like i know you know like i'm not going to fall for that i don't think it's magic i think it's sexual attraction and a person with cptsd just kind of like putting them their whole selves into a relationship without stopping first to get verification that this is what is going to work for them i'm not hearing that you have any clarity at all about what does work for you and what you need and so you're very i there's just like 100 points here where you're kind of crap fitting you're fitting yourself to whatever you got and then putting like magical dust all over it to go but see it's so meaningful and i'm just gonna sort of take that off i'm gonna take it off and just keep trying to show you what is what is not what's magical about things i do agree life is magical sometimes but if you're just sitting there feeling this miserable that wasn't magic that was ptsd okay you say then we had sex and all my emotions wounds attachments fears hit me like a train that's right you sound like just about everybody with an attachment wound so that's why i recommend people be so careful with crossing that line into sex because it will your wounds are going to come up and hit you like a train and if you are in a relationship that's really established someone's already said i love you i'm with you i want to be with you i'm going to stick around and those wounds come up and they can kind of hang in there with you and help you with it great so what i heard you say instead is you say the first few times this happened like your wounds came up around sex a few times like i'm just saying you know it's it's not supposed to be like that all right that's such a that's that's your soul screaming and saying you've thrown me into this situation that is not sustainable and i'm not supported emotionally for being out on this ledge that you've walked me out onto that's why you're crying that's what i keep hearing like you're invalidating yourself you're invalidating your own experience of what's happening the reason you're having pain isn't because you're not spiritual enough the reason you're having pain is because you're a real person you're real woman who wants to be loved you know who doesn't want to be just like used in some casual sex way and then is supposed to go off and pretend like it never happened like who is designed for that people who do that well it's usually not because they're healthy okay just saying and people will argue out there and you can argue but this video is not for those people this is for the people who get hurt who get hurt by casual sex okay so then you say the first few times it happened he held a really good space for me like almost too good okay what do you even mean by holding a good space for you i guess i think what you mean is like he didn't run away he kind of helped you like process your feelings but i just want to point out like that's not good because what he wasn't was the man who loved you and wants to be with you so holding a space for you as some kind of euphemism for you know was a buddy for you and didn't run away at first eventually you say his walls went up you know he just didn't want to deal with this at all he didn't want you being dependent on him he wanted casual sex he wanted casual sex and that's you know pretty common people out there that's what they do that's fine for them but that's not what you wanted that's what you felt like you had to go along with and i think that you couldn't cope with that and so you were putting all this like karma belief on it this here's where you say something this is this is like a for me like when i hear this that's like a red light flashing from from right out of your mind you say it felt so good i wanted to cling to feeling like i had the support i'd been yearning for you wanted to cling to it but you didn't actually have it that wasn't the support you were yearning for it was somebody who just you know had sex with you and stayed friendly for a few times you know that's not the support you're looking for you're looking for somebody who's like really with you like believe me that pain of abandonment is a lot less when what's built into the relationship is that there isn't abandonment there's commitment so if you can wait until after some kind of commitment and be clear about the level of i mean clear about the level don't crap fit be very ambitious about how much commitment you want before this is going to feel okay because if you ever want to get out of this trap you got to stop hurting yourself because every time you hurt yourself it's not only that you don't you don't get what you want but you get set back you get set back you get worn down ground down a little bit your whole energy gets kind of damaged by it so you don't want this to happen you got to be very careful with your precious self here and you'd be surprised how much better it can go when you treating yourself with that self-respect is there for somebody to fall in love with they're a lot more likely to fall in love with somebody who doesn't just like move their boundaries wherever required to make the thing go all right that's it's hard to love and respect somebody like that and that's a hard thing to face but i that is almost always in play when this kind of dynamic is happening okay so then you say it helped me heal some of my father wounds so beautifully and i'm just gonna say i'm not hearing that at all it sounds like it helped bring up your father wounds and make them hurt you all over again that's not healing you know you never say here that this is what he's telling you if he told you this and you believed him i'm just going to tell you he's manipulative and selfish but you're not telling me he's saying that like i think he's just like hey let's have casual sex you know no expectations okay like that would be really common out there and it's you who's telling yourself this is actually a healing i'm getting destroyed but it's actually a healing and this is the thing you're telling yourself all right i know this is going to be hard to hear elisa but from the outside it's just like this doesn't sound healing at all it sounds damaging you say this scared him because he doesn't want me to be dependent on him in any way he doesn't want you it's not that it scares him i don't think scared is the word that's a little bit like somebody is scared when they want intimacy but it's hard to go that fast he doesn't want it so he's he's put off he's he's repelled by you having this all this like emotional thing on him as if he's your dad as if he's your husband or boyfriend you know and he's not so that started getting weird for him the cat his plan for casual sex wasn't working out so what did he do his walls went up quickly he pulled back and then you say which only triggered my anxious attachment to reveal itself any even more so now you're kind of like pathologizing natural reactions that you of course have because for you it was love for you it was wanting to be with somebody and you jumped the gun and you just had sex with somebody who didn't feel that way about you so it's not that you're just having a ptsd reaction you're just having a natural reaction to the fact that you're you're just kind of walked into this situation that was totally hurtful to you you say we were able to work through it enough to maintain connection and we parted ways deciding we would stay in a long distance relationship until we reunited in the place that we would start community together while apart i was the only one that initiated any contact okay telltale sign you know there's a book called he's just not that into you and it hurts but this is when somebody doesn't contact you and you're doing it all he's just not that into you and probably if he's like most men being chased by you you contacting him all the time trying to imbue this with all this meaning it probably made him pull away even harder it's uncomfortable you know and when you talked if he would cut it short like he wasn't fully present or interested not like he wasn't present or interested i think he was uncomfortable and like he always had something better to be doing he said he just wasn't great at long distance and that sounds like he was trying to spare your feelings and that's what people do sometimes instead of saying look i just don't feel this way about you you know i'm not into it they'll just say look i'm just not great at this they'll see if they can sort of kick the can down the road and then you said when i would express my concerns it would only push him further away yep i broke up with him a few times because it was too difficult for me to bear although breaking up with him didn't actually ease my longing and heartache it made it worse so something in you knew you needed to go but by then you were sort of hooked and i we all know what that's like it's such a horrible place to be and i'm so sorry so fast forward a year later and we're reunited him and i and a few other friends were given land and this whole experience was so divinely guided dreams coming true i get to live in a beautiful fairy jungle jungle with my soul family the only problem i'm still infatuated with him and he only wants to be friends because in his words he's not ready for a relationship so i'm not ready for a relationship it's almost never what you know that's like a um it's almost like a meme or a cliche that's what somebody says when they don't want to hurt your feelings but they don't want a relationship with you but you already knew that he doesn't he just doesn't feel that way about you and some people they can have sex quite happily with somebody they don't want to be with and some of us cannot do that i'm like that you're like that we're not compatible with people like him just not compatible okay seems like it and that traumatic childhood can make us think like i should be able to fit myself to this but the sign that you can't actually fit yourself to this is the way you have to keep putting magic fairy dust on everything to make it seem like it's actually meaningful and actually spiritual and actually destined and that is the classic sign of limerence all right the only problem i'm still infatuated with him and he only wants to be friends because he's not ready for a relationship we're living together sleeping in the same room basically together 24 7 but with no intimacy verbal reassurance validation or deep connection and there you are like everything in your being is like trying to suck that out of him so i don't call that a soul family i call that a soul prison your pre your soul is in prison your soul is dying you're not getting what you need and you've already like you kind of like fixed your your attachment is on this thing that's like a stone it's not giving it to you so then you say i started experiencing cptsd flashbacks and that's what's going to happen you know when we're acting out of that rejected crap fit thing and having intense emotional pain that's right because that's very painful what's happening my expression of that pushed him away energetically thicker walls and you spiraled into your toxic avoidant and anxious dynamic so i think you're a little bit magicalizing that that sounds harsh but you're not in a relationship with him so when it's like this avoidant dynamic he's not avoidant he just doesn't want to be in a relationship with you so that i just want to help you like just get real about that the cure for limerence is actually to like just come out into the light of day and go oh i'm totally feeling this way about somebody who really doesn't want me to do that it's making him uncomfortable it's making everybody else uncomfortable and then you said he doesn't feel inclined to do the work to meet me in the middle because we're not in a romantic partnership i hear in your language here and i i notice this a lot and people who are limerent there's like this extra effort around the language to soften it and make it sound beautiful and special he doesn't want to do the work he just wants you to stop it sounds like he just doesn't want to deal with it so you you put that very nicely he's not inclined to do the work and but i want you to just look at what it is he just doesn't want to do it this is getting weird for him okay the rest of the farm family started to see my big emotional outbursts and i became draining for them draining in quotes so everyone is setting boundaries yeah so i know i know that feeling when you become that girl my hurt inner child receives this personally as exclusion and rejection all right i'm going to ask you i know inner child is meaningful to some people but i'm going to ask you to not punt your feelings off onto an imaginary being called an inner child and just say i am feeling like this is i'm taking this personally just say i i am taking this personally i can't help it. and you know what i know what it means when we say don't take it personally it's just how somebody else feels but you know what it is personal it is you who feels this way and he doesn't feel the same way and really in a way there's nothing more personal and what's important to face is that doesn't mean that's who you are that doesn't define who you are but that defines this painful experience for you that you're stuck in and it's one you've been in before so feeling so similar to being excluded by my siblings growing up uh-huh i continue to be triggered explode feel guilt shame apologize and plead for understanding i just want to say that part of you that explodes that's like the one honest expression that comes out of this i think you've been exploding the whole time but you're suppressing it with all this like you know language and belief system it's like but it's really karma but he's healing me but blah blah blah you know we we received a message about this all of that that's like that's a layer put on to make it feel like it's okay but actually this makes you angry you're innocent you're in a terrible situation that's painful that you gave yourself to this guy and he doesn't want the gift you gave it feels terrible it's okay it's totally survivable you can get out of this many people have done it practically everybody i continue to be triggered explode feel guilt shame apologize plead for understanding they don't seem to really understand they just feel exhausted and so do i yeah because with that layer of trauma underneath it when we do this we're being irrational we're being irrational it just doesn't make sense like what a person who doesn't have trauma does is they they sort of go through a period of sadness and then they adjust they either leave the farm or they forget about the guy they just get over it because they're like you know that wasn't real okay some people i think can get over having slept with somebody a few times you know and and have a friendship but i think it's actually pretty rare if there's actual romantic feelings there i tell everybody like don't hang out with exes if anybody has romantic feelings it's always a recipe for pain and if it's it's going to hurt you and when he gets together with somebody he wants to be with it's going to hurt that woman and so i decided to take space and here we are i've been gone for about a week now i'm still experiencing anxious attachment i think you're experiencing abandonment melange too so we can give that to ourselves by stepping out of a situation where we were attached but it's okay this feeling will pass it's feeling toward the whole family and you feel left out and you really want to be you want to live there and reach harmony because it feels so much like home your tribe and where you're supposed to be and this is sad because this is very jeopardized right now if i had to put money on it i would say there's a 10 chance you're gonna be able to find harmony there and be at peace with this guy there it's not a very good chance i don't think there's a lot of peace for you there i think it might be worth a try because it just it's something you always wanted but i would encourage you to take at least a few months take some time to absorb the reality of what has happened of what really is have an honest conversation with the firemen with him about what's really going on and just say i'm sorry i'm romantically obsessed i need a few months to go cool out i want to come back i really want this to work and i'm going to go get this out of my mind it might be worth a try for this incredible thing that you wanted but if if there wasn't this incredible thing with land and i sounds like something you would totally lose if you walked away i would just say cut all contact now no good comes from sticking around in a limerent relationship it is soul draining and soul killing and it will block you from ever finding real love and it will keep that wound agitated all the time like you need a certain amount of peace sometimes you need to get all left up about something that happens to be prompted into healing but then you need a peaceful place to do it you need to not constantly have the thing agitated so what's cool you know some some some people who write in they're dealing with somebody who wants to keep stirring up the flames and keep it going i'm not hearing that you're not describing that he's just trying to go on with his life after a casual relationship so yeah so he does the best he can he offers support he feels what he can provide and it doesn't seem to be good enough for me because i always want more yeah and that's frustrating for him yes i don't know if you've ever been in that position where somebody's always sad and anxious because how you feel about them isn't what they hoped but it's really hard to be around and if you've been in that situation you know it's not because the person's a bad person it just happens sometimes and traumatize people just it's really hard for for us to write the ship sometimes to sort of bring bring ourselves back from that limerent state okay i know i need to release attachment and expectations of him you say that in a little bit like a buddhist way like it's a like it's a high act or something like you would do for anything but i think what you need is to get over the man you need to wash him out of your hair this isn't really a spiritual thing it's a practical matter like not be around his things his face his voice his smell his stuff to have no hope you want to like like abandon all hope ye who live here there can't be any hope and um get into acceptance but i'm and i'm not sure how not to take this personally and stop feeling so sensitive around him yeah it's just got you know you know when limerence gets in when we don't have something meaningful in our lives when we don't have love and connection and meaning in what we're doing and so when you take a sabbatical if you follow my suggestion it's time for you to cultivate your life your meaning your friendships the things you love the beauty the animals the the friends the experiences that make you happy because you fulfilled it's a lot harder to knock you out of that space into limerence which is where we totally leave ourselves and it's just like everything is about this other person and whether they gave us a sign or some energy or something it's a false god it just can't do it for you it just can't so any words of wisdom would be appreciated that's what i have for you lisa now if anybody here feels like they get stuck in limerence you might want to take my dating course there's a link to that down below if you're not sure there's a quiz in the free tools section on whether you can check whether the common symptoms that that childhood trauma has affected your dating life you can check and see if you have those symptoms and then of course there's coaching for people who want to heal from trauma-driven dating patterns if you want to hear more about how we sometimes fall into kind of magical thinking about relationships so that we can continue to tolerate something that's unbearably painful i've got this video lined up right here and i will see you very soon [Music] 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Channel: Crappy Childhood Fairy

Views: 302,403

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Id: EeL8NfOGbKM

Length: 33min 32sec (2012 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 08 2022