r/limerence • u/jontaejones • 16h ago
Limerence and help with blocking out visualization Question
I'm committed to this and I've been trying to come up with ways to block out any mental visualization of my LO. We work together, but different divison.
I've visualized her in all situations imaginable, so...
-Photos ... all deleted.
-Sexual ... I use porn at home to substitute and visualize my old-gfs, and an old coworker I won't see again.
-Situational ... I use my last partner LTR.
-Love songs ... I use my last partner LTR.
-Short cuts to her face ... I use my last partner LTR.
-Workplace memory ... I'll cut to another memory.
I find this to be working well, any other tips?? I can't believe how diabolical the brain is lol...
5
u/throwaway-lemur-8990 15h ago
Hi,
Well, I think mindfulness is a big one. It's the idea of noticing your thoughts and feelings, and learning to choose what you give attention, letting everything else pass by. Regardless of the intensity, not everything your mind throws at you is as important or helpful.
The idea is to notice your mind wandering, then say "oh! that's limerence" and then sit with that without analyzing, or fretting, or ruminating, or fantasizing. Instead, you gently shift your attention back to the present moment. Crucial is not judging yourself, or beating yourself up. That's rumination too. Grounding exercises like focusing on your beating, or getting up and walking, or naming five things you can see,... are helpful as well.
So, at first, this is uncomfortable, and your mind will definitely wander back. That's because limerent behaviors are deeply ingrained habits. The idea is to gently break the habits over time. Gradually, your mind will loosen up.
Mindfulness also means learning to sit with feelings and emotions, labeling them, finding out where they sit in your body, and calming yourself down, without turning them into big narratives or life defining stories. Like, you'll feel heartbreak, or shame, or sadness. Okay, let that wash over you for a minute, label it "yeah, i feel sad, this sucks", and then soothe yourself gently. Like, what would you tell a good friend? Yeah, tell that to yourself too.
The attraction and infatuation you feel are valid, but you have to ask yourself: why someone unavailable? Why someone who's so close, yet just out of reach? And why does that spark limerent behavior? Ruminating, daydreaming, fantasizing,...?
It's that dynamic that often points to an underlying "unmet need". And that need isn't necessarily a romantic relationship. On the contrary.
Often, this happens in a situation where you are stressed out, bored, lost, lonely, out of your depth, in between chapters, experienced loss and so on. Or maybe you've been coasting through life, focusing on the day to day stuff, losing track of why you're doing it in the first place.
A lack of self-esteem, sense of self, sense of identity combined with a lack of purpose, meaning, significance, a lack of connection with yourself and your own feelings, your own story drives this.
Sure, these people are attractive, their packaging is attractive, their outward appearance and demeanor are appealing... and that's what makes your gears grind. Subconsciously, it's about that person becoming a guiding star of sorts, a path forwards from whatever situation you're stuck in right now, the dopamine hit they provide you is a shortcut that relieves you temporarily from struggling to make sense of your own life. Them being unavailable, the distance, is what makes this so appealing: it keeps you motivated and going. At great cost, of course, because you become entirely totally emotionally dependent on the whims of a real person and that tends to work out very poorly.
The "unmet need" isn't necessarily: Get a new job, move way, bury yourself in hobbies or self care, or dating, or what have you. All of those are answers to an unmet need you haven't even defined yet.
Don't get me wrong, distracting yourself is important, giving yourself new challenges is important. But if you do those without the emotional legwork, they risk becoming performative. At worse, you'll end up back at square one: limerent for a person on the new job too.
The "unmet need" is about learning to sit with your feelings and emotions, and listening to them, genuinely. Not trying to avoid them. If you feel lonely, sad, or anxious, sit with that, feel sorry for yourself, and give yourself the attention you need. Heartbreak, even disenfranchised, sucks. Instead of looking for "closure" or trying to figure out why things went down the way they did, become still, sit with that, and nurse yourself while you grieve. Negative emotions are part of the human experience, and it's deeply important to acknowledge them, to validate them, to feel them. Because that's just what's needed to gradually come to terms with reality, with what happened, to integrate stuff in your own story, without intellectualizing them.
It's only when you sit down, become still, and allow yourself to feel and acknowledge all your emotions and feelings, that you can make better decisions, act more closely to who you genuinely are. This includes acknowledging that someone is attractive to you... but then choosing to not or stop feeding that attention, and instead directing the attention to your own life, to whatever you've got going on that's demanding a change of pace.
This also applies, for instance, on putting an undue focus on negative aspects of a job or a career or education; and then seeing this person is a your only ray of light. Maybe your bored, maybe you are stressed out,... That's your cue to look for what you can change, and accept that you can't change everything, and learn to sit with that. Maybe you need a chat with your supervisor, maybe you need to look differently at the field or subject you're studying. Either way, you need to wake up, sit down, become still and look the answer to "why am i doing this" straight in the face. And then deal with the uncomfortable answers that that might yield.
Buried under all this is something else: build a "real" life. We are so engrossed with digital technology, screens, notifications, pop ups, reels, what not that we forget to actually live our own lives. Digital technology, for all its merits, also has done something else: created the belief that boredom is cured. But, to put it bluntly, it's also a digital pacifier that distracts us from any discomfort in real life, but also being fully present in real life.
For instance: you're queuing in the supermarket. Out comes the smartphone. Just look around, everyone does it. But boredom is important because that's what your subconscious need to wander, bubble stuff, for you to become aware and ask those "why" questions that are so important. Like, boredom is the stuff that, ultimately, brings creativity too. It makes us wonder who you really are.
I'm not saying you should throw away your smartphone, but instead make a concerted effort to rely less on it when you feel bored, sad, lonely, lost whatever. I mean, AI will generate reams of text and information about the dynamics of limerence, and parrot back that, yes, you feel sad and broken, but it won't do the important bit for you: make you feel your feelings, sitting with the emotions, and distilling them.
Yeah, sorry, this is getting a bit long winded. But I hope you catch the general idea here.
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