In the last post, I argued for the importance of self-awareness for living a purposeful life.
Two of the major barriers to self-awareness are ego-protecting rationalisation, and ego-depleting insecurity.
These are big topics, with deep psychological roots, but I’m on holiday this week, and so instead of trying to tackle them directly myself, I’m going to defer to the good folks of TEDx!
Here are a couple of presentations that deal with the barriers of too much or too little self-esteem:
Too much ego
A talk by Williams Sparks on how a compassionate, but unsentimental, mentor helped him overcome his ego and face his shadow.
Too much negative thought
A video by Kip Hollister on how meditation helped her overcome negative thoughts and a crisis of self-belief.
Interesting, I thought I was going to get more from the positive over negative thinking talk, which I listened to first. I nearly didn’t bother with the power of self awareness one, but it was a much more powerful story. It is ultimately liberating to admit and face your faults rather than trying to cover them up. Its hard to start that journey when you already feel bad about yourself in other ways. But it is a part of the journey towards a more balanced and ‘lit up’ self.
I’m going to parrot a lot of what I wrote in the last blog on self awareness but for me this is the biggest benefit of managing my LE. I’ve had a lot of one on one conversations with myself over the last year about my current emotions, my past traumas, my dark desires, my good desires, my purposeful desires, my behaviors, etc. All this in an effort to better understand myself and why this LE is happening and how to get through it as a functioning adult.
First thing I had to come to terms with is that my LE is not wrong, it’s not something to feel guilty over, and I try hard not to lament it all the time. The desires and intrusive thoughts in my head happen and I understand that to a certain extent it is completely out of my control. Instead I try to understand it, which LwL is a huge benefit. But I also had to come to terms that obsessive person addiction is also not a normal majorative human experience and should be treated as a mental health affliction that needs management…daily management.
For me, I like to rationally categorize things so I came up with a 1 thru 10 mood scale. Moods 1 thru 5 are negative…1 being suicidal and 5 being just kind of dull or numb. 6-10 being positive moods with 10 being completely at peace and fulfilled. For me, during this LE, I try to stay within mood 5 and every now and again I slip to mood 4 which is feeling more depression. If I slip I try to figure out why and correct my action. For the most part, I stay in mood 5 which is good. It’s a functional mood. How do I get to mood 6 or above? Well I have come to terms that either that will take time, maybe a lot of time, or being able to experience NC, which I can’t right now with LO, or maybe some other unexpected turn of events with LO that puts me more at ease. I don’t know. I am a religious person so I do put some hope that God will act in this.
Last, the biggest lie of limerence for mr is the feeling of the numinous in all this. That LO must be a soul mate, a twin flame, that she must feel the same because I feel it, but is too afraid to say so. If only I do this or do that she will see. Being self aware is understanding that is pure and utter limerent BS and it’s just bad brain chemicals doing the talking. Once I understand this, it keeps me from doing really stupid things.
Yes, self awareness, and keeping a positive outlook, even though my emotions feel less than positive has been a life saver for me. Otherwise I would just have the tendency to wallow in my own limerent self misery.
This is me…YMMV
Just like you, I have spent the last year analyzing what this LE was about and who I am.
Prior to falling limerent, I thought I had a good concept of myself, who I was, where I fit in. Then, last summer, overnight, I became limerent . I had not had these strong intense feelings since adolescence, and it completely derailed me. When I was around LO, I felt terribly insecure and very shy! I did not recognize myself. I acted like a teenage girl, emotionally that is, but I am a middle aged professional. I was utterly confused, all I could do is try to figure out, what deep subconscious part of my ego LO touched and brought out.
It is a long journey, I have read alot ( could probably earn my psychology degree LOL) but the journey is ongoing. It has good moments and can have very bad moments.
My SO, bless his heart, no doubt noticed the emotional turmoil, the numerous psychology books, a diary but he is a quiet stable soul, so he rides the waves with me. He does not know about LO.
Self awareness and analysis are key to limerence. Study yourself, you may be surprised what you discover.
Wow Rachel… Very similar to how I am feeling. I became limerant over a year ago when I also thought I knew myself.. boy was I wrong. I had so much to learn and have a ways to go. Along with praying every day I can forget LO. I don’t know why this happened to me It is so hard. Also similar to you is my SO doesn’t know about LO either but knows I’ve been suffering with extreme anxiety, highs and lows and thinks it’s the adjustment to my new job (left my old one 6 months ago now due to the Lo). I feel horrible but I am giving my all in to changing myself and getting more positive in front of SO as much as possible. He deserves the world for being a real man. He just comforts me and loves me so much and I love him too and wish I never experienced limerance. I can’t wait until this goes away. I suffer often because it’s a lonely battle as I have been no contact with LO since I left my job. I miss him and he won’t contact me because he knows I’m trying to heal. We are not alone. What y’all need to do is go no contact and we will get through this healing together you guys!!
“Then, last summer, overnight, I became limerent . I had not had these strong intense feelings since adolescence, and it completely derailed me. When I was around LO, I felt terribly insecure and very shy! I did not recognize myself. I acted like a teenage girl, emotionally that is, but I am a middle aged professional. I was utterly confused, all I could do is try to figure out, what deep subconscious part of my ego LO touched and brought out.”
@Rachel.
What’s great about your experience is that you’re aware of limerence and you’re aware of the fact you’re feeling terribly insecure and very shy around LO.
E.g. I imagine a lot of teenaged girls/boy experience limerence for classmates, and yet they don’t have the life experience or the self-awareness yet to grasp how deeply they’ve fallen into infatuation. 😉
Speedwagon and Rachel, it is good to know there are others out there reflecting really deeply about what this LE means in terms of what it says about us and our psyches, and also our relationships. The inner work is excellent; the emotional rollercoaster less so. Haha, maybe we should have a study group sharing all the resources we have uncovered on how to deal with the inner issues. I too have read copious psychology resources and journaled extensively.
I like the idea of your scale, Speedwagon. I sit around a 5 to 6 myself, occasionally slip to 4. There is so much more upside!
I also like the idea of the mood scale and I often visualize something similar for myself. I’ve been thinking about it as a two dimension scale with an x and y axis. The x axis runs from -10 to +10 and measures energy, while the y axis runs from -10 to +10 and measures positivity/negativity of emotions. So then my emotions can be plotted onto a four quadrant grid:
Left upper: positive mood, lower energy state = “content” or “peaceful”
Right upper: positive mood, high energy state = “euphoric” or “high”
Left lower: negative mood, low energy = depressed
Right lower: negative mood, high energy state = “anxious”
I like being in the “content” state most of the time, and I love/crave experiencing the “euphoric” state pretty often, and obviously dislike the depressed and anxious states.
Applying the laws of entropy and nuclear decay, moods will inevitably lose energy and positivity in the absence of ongoing inputs into the system. Without any inputs into the system, my moods will eventually decay into “depressed”. For example, I may feel content laying around the house with my family on a Saturday morning, but if I spend the whole weekend in the house doing nothing, I’ll be depressed by Sunday evening. Likewise, if I’m feeling anxious because of my relationship with LO and we don’t have any contact for a week, the anxiety loses its energy and decays into depression.
A euphoric state can initially decay into either contentment or anxiety, depending on what caused the euphoria. If I feel euphoric during a close interaction with LO, that feeling will naturally take a pathway into anxiety and eventually (in the absence of any other inputs) into depression. Conversely, the euphoria I get from a kick-ass day at work or a high energy punk concert or a martial arts sparring session will lose energy but not positivity and will settle into contentment with feelings of a job well done or happy memories from a fun experience.
And I’ve been thinking a lot about how to move myself between states. Different inputs reliably move me between states in predictable ways – it’s a matter of identifying which inputs move me in which directions and then convincing myself to choose the activities that move me where I want to go. For example, if I’m feeling depressed during my work day, I can text with SO a bit and it’ll move me up the y axis toward contentment. Or I can choose to text LO, which will move me along the x axis into anxiety until she responds, and then maybe briefly into euphoria depending on the warmth of her response, but always eventually back to anxiety and then depression. There is usually no direct pathway from depression to contentment that involves my LO.
I’ve also been working on a project involving mapping all the major people and things in my life onto a similar 4 quadrant map of my emotional states. For this exercise I designated the quadrants as animated, grounded/content, distracted and unsettled. I’ve been assigning everything in my life a primary location on the map, with arrows extending into other quadrants. For example, my SO is seated in the grounded/content quadrant, with arrows leading to animated (ie when her passion and excitement about something rubs off on me, or when we’re working together on a shared goal) and also into unsettled (ie when I let her depression become my depression, or when I find myself ruminating on what I wish was different about her instead of focusing on what I love about her). My LO sits in the unsettled quadrant with arrows leading to animated and distracted.
Anyway, this was long and I don’t know if I was able to describe the concepts well enough to visualize them without actually being able to show the visual representations, but for me these serve as a good framework for reflecting on how I can choose activities that move my mood in the directions I want it to go, and how to focus most of my time and energy on the people and activities in my life that make me feel animated and/or grounded, and less on the people and things that make me feel unsettled or keep me distracted. I still don’t actually make the right choices every time, but I’m gradually improving in terms of at least being able to reflect on the reasons and outcomes of my choices before acting on them.
Lol LIS…that’s some next level introspection. But I might like to try your mood graph.
This is excellent self analysis Speedwagon. This almost feels something like my prayer regimen, when I sit and reflect where I am in the current LE and have I made any progress??
I am about to go on one full year (in about 2 weeks) of being limerent.
In the beginning, I think I would have put myself in the 7 or 8 category. Never really going past 8 and if it did, it was because I was actively trying to communicate with LO, but because she never reciprocated like I thought she would, my mood stayed at about a 7. About a month into LE, I began seeing less and less progress, but hanging on to hope through all the so-called signs, and of course all the eye contact. This kept me probably at about a 5 most of the time. Yet I also began to experience slipping into the lows. Which would take me down to about a 3. Especially if I could visually see LO going out of her way to ignore me.
Christmas time was probably when things got progressively worse, because I was alone during the holidays. Dads sickness was really starting to worsen and the situation with my Daughter took a dive. It may have been the only Christmas in my history, that I couldn’t have cared any less about. I stayed about a 3 probably at this time.
When I thought things with LO might improve with the new year, I tried to keep a positive approach with that idea and kept telling myself I will make something of this LE. I have to.
For a few weeks, I rode the wave and think I got myself back up to a 5 or 6.
However, that all came crashing down when LO switched her location to go work next door. I think I was about a 1 for almost the entire months of February and March. With April and May being a 2, to most recently June and July being a 3.
I don’t know if it’s progress for the better or worse. I know that I think I’m a little more self aware of my moods and LO is still the Captain of my mood-swing shift. Overall I get in all of this limerence, I waste one hell of a lot of time. Because most of me knows that there is a 95% chance nothing will ever come of LO and myself, so why do I act so depraved?
I think it is because LO is so pretty and cute and unbelievably beautiful, that my mind will inevitably not let go of what it wants, which is her. All of her. As a lover, fling, wife, girlfriend, one-night stand, however I can attain her. At this point, I’ll even settle for us laying in a field and watching grass grow together. She IS an addiction. There is nothing I won’t do with LO. But since this LE is and seemingly has always been 1-sided, I don’t really see me ever getting it back up to even a 5 again.
It’s just a pathetic, miserable sick existence every day for me. I hate these vile Cats that puke and shit all over my house. I hate that I can’t make Dad better. I hate that I’m lazy, the Therapist is dawdling at getting back to me, my faith life is in the gutter, my Daughter forgets about me, the cute girl at the bar seems to really like me, but she rubs in the fact her and her boyfriend have been together for 10 years. Wtf? Just stop talking to me and giving me hope if you don’t want this to go anywhere, you sick freak. I’m in limerence, with the most awesome-ist looking Woman on the planet.. You’ll never be better than her anyway. Leave me alone.
Speedwagon, I’m glad you have learned how to navigate through your LE. Positivity breeds progress.
Unfortunately, I must love being in the doldrums. I am wallowing in self pity. This is my life. But if I take LO out of the equation, and left with all that other crap up there, that’s ALL that’s left.
Speedwagon, your assessment on self awareness and how it helps you managing your LE has me agreeing with you a hundred percent. Like you I have a lot of one on one conversations with myself to sort out this madness, and I await in the Lord to intervene and set me free of this bondage of Limerence. I had ten months of total mind taken hostage and it was very frightening, there was nothing I can do to avoid the intrusive thoughts. Now, I have some control over my mind, but not as dreary as the first ten months.
I like your mood scale! I don’t know where my moods fit because they go up and down, but mainly I’m stuck in deep sorrow, but I’m not depressed. I don’t get to see or talk to LO, for we are more than 5000 miles apart (another continent) both married and old; thus N/C, distance, age and barriers makes no difference, he is very alive in my mind and memories. I do pray that you can somehow find a stable solution to your difficult situation and get some peace of mind that surpasses all understanding. Courage!
I made a lot of progress by completing a Dark Night of The Soul workbook from Lonerwolf a couple of years ago. They sell them online and you print it yourself. It took me more than a year to be able to get started and then another few months to find momentum but once I started to feel cleared, I looked forward to doing it. I still do the mirror work sometimes. I was surprised how powerful it was, but generally after six minutes of staring myself in the eyes I started bawling. Always at the 6-7-minute mark. It essentially teaches you to embrace your whole self – shadow and all. I’m a bit of a Jung fan so it all resonated with me. It’s quite spiritual which I’ve never been, but I did find it oddly comforting to surrender to a higher power of sorts . Whatever that may be!
I have to say, though, while I have only ever been limerent for 1 person and we haven’t communicated for three years, I still held hope that I’d see or hear from him again one day until I found this site. Learning about limerence flipped a switch in my brain and it just turned it all off. I still love him. We have a 20-year history. But I don’t feel any need to see or hear from him again. I’m done.
Interesting talks! Finding that sweet spot that accounts for both is not easy to find or maintain. The first talk in particular captured something I always understood but could not articulate…
I come at this from the opposite end. I am, and have always been, naturally highly self-aware and self-analytical – starting from a young age. My psche never lets me get away with anything (darn it!), every thought, emotion and attempt at rationalisation is noted, challenged I had a very overworked conscience.
During my youth, my shadow loomed large in the foreground of my mind and overshadowed my view of who I was – it was hard to truly like myself. I went through a several year long phase of self-improvement in my early twenties to try and free myself from my shadow by changing certain aspects of myself. I think I had literally dozens of psychology and self-help books. CBT became my favourite hobby! I worked so hard on this “project” but in the end I just felt worse and worse about myself, as ultimately, I always failed – I was still “me”. The light bulb moment came when I realised I was just fine EXACTLY as I was. Very much imperfect for sure, but with a compassionate heart, good intentions and the strong desire to enrich life. A life changing moment. I now understand that almost everyone is like this deep down (i.e. good & compassionate), regardless of what we see on the surface.
So I find deep self-awareness certainly has its benefits but should be prescribed only with a healthy dose of self-compassion and self-acceptance.
I must say though that I do very much envy people that do not suffer this painful version of self-awareness. They may not be as deep or grow as much but those I know like this find it so much easier to be consistently happy in life – and their happiness can be quite infectious when you hang around with them a little, and their lack of awareness can feel like a balm to my excess of it.
“So I find deep self-awareness certainly has its benefits but should be prescribed only with a healthy dose of self-compassion and self-acceptance.”
I love this! 100% yes! Thank you for sharing, Allie.
“I come at this from the opposite end. I am, and have always been, naturally highly self-aware and self-analytical – starting from a young age. My psche never lets me get away with anything (darn it!), every thought, emotion and attempt at rationalisation is noted, challenged I had a very overworked conscience.”
@Allie 1.
Good for you, Allie, having always been self-aware. I probably could have used a little more self-awareness when I was young. I think I was coming from the narcissistic assumption that “I am perfect and I just can’t understand why no one else can see it!” 😆
Apparently, my personality type is naturally inclined to envy, which is a form of desire. Also, I am shocked to learn how much I desire in general. I mean, “desire” has never been part of my self-concept. I don’t see myself as a “desirous person”. Where does all this desire come from? And then there’s the … wanting to be desired, which is even more potent than being the one doing the desiring. 😉
“The light bulb moment came when I realised I was just fine EXACTLY as I was. Very much imperfect for sure, but with a compassionate heart, good intentions and the strong desire to enrich life. A life changing moment. I now understand that almost everyone is like this deep down (i.e. good & compassionate), regardless of what we see on the surface.”
I agree self-acceptance is a really important lesson for limerents to learn. However, self-acceptance doesn’t necessarily take away the physiological arousal triggered by limerence. That’s what I always wanted to go away – the seemingly never-ending physiological arousal. Perpetual puberty, I call it. The physiological arousal part of limerence was just too embarrassing. Especially since males can’t really camouflage this arousal as successfully as females can! 😉
Furthermore, I have this huge ego thing about “wanting to be respected”, similar to most men I suppose. And I was/am convinced that nobody’s ever going to respect me as long as I remain in the altered state of limerence, because at times it’s an almost infantile state of wanting, wanting, wanting. How can one be respected (or respectable even) if one’s still a needy infant emotionally? 🤔
“I must say though that I do very much envy people that do not suffer this painful version of self-awareness. They may not be as deep or grow as much but those I know like this find it so much easier to be consistently happy in life – and their happiness can be quite infectious when you hang around with them a little, and their lack of awareness can feel like a balm to my excess of it.”
I too envy people who sail through life quite happily without engaging into too much introspection. I have had at least one past lover who was exactly like that, and the fact that nothing could spoil his good moods drove me up the wall!! 😁
On the other hand, I do feel that limerence, for some people, can be like an invitation to explore the depths of one’s own subconscious mind. And who am I to say no to such an invitation? I’ve spent the last seventeen years exploring the “dark continent” of my own soul. And, as much as I enjoy poking fun at “feelers” for their, um, stupendous powers of feeling, I seem to be a creature bedevilled with pesky and inconvenient emotions…
For example, my own personal limerence narrative is littered with enough lust, jealousy, betrayal, revenge, and forgiveness to rival the Bible (both Old and New Testaments). I don’t know who I’m trying to forgive half the time – myself or LO.
For me, if self awareness is one side of the LE management triangle the other 2 sides are other positive relationships and positive activity.
I find the leaning in to other relationships, starting with SO, but also with friends, has been a boost for me. Including people here at LwL. There are a lot of positive emotions to be gained by investing in other people who also reciprocate investment in myself.
Also, engaging in activity, whether it be physical, intellectual, or spiritual is a boost as well. Throughout this LE I have tried to keep myself active and interested in various things from exercise and weight lifting, cooking, hobbies such as music, and outings with SO.
All three together, self awareness, other relationships, and activity make a powerful truss to guard against LE lament and dysfunction. You might call it “purposeful”.
Self awareness and self-analysis help tremendously in understanding, but it can reveal some painful truths about yourself. For me, writing it all down was therapy. It made me see things clearer, although there was still a lot of mud. But for most of the time, I was trying to gain an insight into the mind of the LO rather than myself.
In my case, nostalgia and projection seem to be a key. I have never seen any of my three LOs as they really were—only as I imagined them to be.
My last LO was sixty at the time…the height of when this all happened 10 years ago. His iron-grey hair was of a length that cried out for the severe attention of scissors. Complete with a battered trilby hat and an equally battered guitar, he was still flying the hippy freak flag and wrote poetry. I knew he was an alcoholic—albeit a functioning alcoholic—but his malignant narcissism only emerged much later
In the early 1970s, I had been madly in lust with a Scottish hippy. If he had survived those drug-hazed days, he would have been around the same age as the LO. I wondered what had become of him, wondered if he still wore his hair long, wondered if he too still wrote poetry and played the guitar. Too much wondering…
Addictions make for nice distractions from what you don’t want to face. Whatever addiction it is. And LO’s make for great addictions. And as a functioning alcoholic I know about using addiction for distractions and escape. That buzz in your head around LO isn’t any different than that first drink when you get home. And you seek her out like you do that bottle. But just to be self aware to know what you are doing with your addictions isn’t the road to overcoming them for everyone.
I didn’t want to face what I was doing with LO even though there was a tiny voice of reason telling me “you gonna be living alone if you take this too far”. And then to stay relevant inside my head my limerence (just like my alcoholism) tells me that it’s all I have. You’re not strong enough to stop drinking and face the world sober. Limerence; “LO is an innocent distraction. You’re just trying to be a friend to her when she has no one else.”
What is the escape from? My marriage? My doubts in life? Was I married too soon? Do I still appeal to women in my old age? Wtf was I running from to run to her? Will it happen again?
Now the self analysis isn’t so easy to do. Because that requires action and decisiveness when it comes to your distractions. Get out of your comfort zone and get help for your drinking. Distance yourself from LO. Pull your head out of your a$$ before she leaves you. LO is all in your head. She is just a co-worker like anyone else.
But who would want to do that? Sober the rest of my life? That sounds awful. Don’t keep courting the line you know not to cross and not get those wonderful highs that LO gives you? Ugh, why would I do that?
Well lucky for me, my marriage, my wife and our boys LO made that choice for me a year ago whether she consciously knew it or not. But why her? Why have I made it 23 years only to let this happen? That’s the self analysis I have to do. I don’t want another L.E. or LO. Plus I don’t think my wife will be around for another one. It’s enough she puts up with my drinking, only wanting me to get help but also realizing I have to want to get sober.
My self awareness is coming here to try my best to help anyone I can. As others have helped me. I am self aware enough that I can talk about LO here. And I have been able to do so without intrusive thoughts resurfacing. Because unlike mutual limerents without complications, most limerents’ LE’s aren’t pleasant. At least inevitably. Learn from my pain. Because a LO with complications is just as much of a victim of limerence as the limerent. If not more so.
I finally scheduled therapy, only to be terrified at the insane amount of self-reflection I need to do to make if effective at all.
That said, Adam, I thought of a song that seems to be pertinent to you and your story: “The Trouble with Wanting” by Joy Williams.
Penny
“If you never come back
If you never call
I’ll say I understand
When I don’t at all”
That is the last hurtle of my limerence. The uncertainty of why she left and why she remains silent. I overthink and ruminate about that still after a year. As the song goes …
“How can you leave without regret
Am I that easy to forget?”
Am I That Easy To Forget — Engelbert Humperdink
https://youtu.be/oNjzEceCoDc
“I am self aware enough that I can talk about LO here. And I have been able to do so without intrusive thoughts resurfacing.”
Well, Adam, I reckon that’s an achievement, if you ask me.
I’ve read your comment several times but I can’t really seem to think of anything very helpful to say. I do envy you your relationship and your children. Alcohol can be destructive – I know that.
There are so many extraordinary comments posted these days that I think many contributions become lost rather quickly.
If you get a chance to look, I’d be happy if you looked at my post on “Help! Someone is limerent for me” on July 1st. It was just a slightly desperate and embarrassing rehash of things I have said before but I am stuck in a horrible limbo…..
Anyway, I’ll press “post comment” and see how long it takes for my name to go from 1 to 12 on the list.
Take care.
You didn’t ask me to Frederico, but I just went and replied over there too. Just trying to help with my 2 cents.
So incredibly helpful of you, MJ
Thank you.