[Aquagirl7]

Hi everyone,

I am new to this forum, but looking for lots of feedback and tips for my issues, as they seem to be running my life. I’ll add that I am a 22 year old, bisexual female (comfortable with status), who was diagnosed with depression in 2011, anxiety in 2012, and ADD three months ago. The main problem I am facing at the moment is that I get overwhelmingly obsessed and addicted to certain people, not necessarily sexual, as I will explain.


With this obsession, I want to do anything in my power to make the other person happy, and I see them with different eyes, eyes that view the other as perfect, almost “God-like”. My relationships are like being addicted to a drug, I get the highs, lows, and withdraws, which happen daily. I’ll become attached to friends, teachers, doctors, and anyone who I respect and look up to. It is taking a big toll on my relationships, how people view me, and my sanity.
The first time I noticed this “addiction” was in my first year of university (2011), where I lived with a female roommate. We got along together from the start, and I thought of it as a normal friendship for a long time, until I started to feel more.


I have never been in a proper relationship before, but I know I was not feeling love, or lust, it was uncontrollable infatuation. I would think about her all the time, not be able to focus on school, and my life revolved around being with her and pleasing her. Anything she would say would affect me to such a high degree, such as if she said, “You’re looking pretty today!” I would feel an extreme rush of happiness that would set the tone for the rest of the day until something may set it off, such as her not wanting to go out for a drink with me. In that case I would feel extremely sad, worthless, expect that she’s mad at me, and not want to be my friend. In that case I would go through all the scenarios in my head on repeat, trying to figure out where I went wrong. I was always on edge because every action, or conversation was so planned out and over analyzed.


We continued our more-than-friends, close relationship throughout the school year. In the summer she moved back with her parents and I move back with mine, about 1.5 hours away from her. I was always willing to see her, in fact I even wanted to change jobs so that I could move closer to her, or live with her, but she didn’t seem interested. Each time we would meet I would get a little drunk and touchy and she began to show less interest, so I refrained from making any physical contact. It came to a point where I didn’t see her for two weeks at a time and it devastated me. I would think about how perfect we were and that I will never find someone to make me that happy again.


The less we talked, the more depressed I became, I was tired all the time, could not feel any sort of happiness, drive, or determination in life; I was a zombie. I couldn’t stop making lists of reasons she likes me, reasons she doesn’t, and examples for each. Then I would repeat these lists over and over in my head, sometimes changing parts around, to make a negative example more in my favor. I couldn’t handle it anymore, one day we met up with a group of friends and I got really drunk and started crying and confessing my love; not to her, but her new boyfriend, who she met that summer.


I couldn’t handle the pain anymore, so I decided to get away from everything and go traveling by myself. The first month was hard, as I was still feeling my withdrawal from her. Until……I found another girl. Long story short, almost the EXACT same thing happened, she showed interest in me, then seemed to back off when things became too much.


It took me over a year to get over both relationships, where I felt like a sack of flesh walking around with no joy, no substance, or care if anything were to happen to me. I decided to travel again and realized that the constant change and active lifestyle, along with lots of alcohol, distracted me enough to some-what get over the relationships.


I returned to university where now I am OBSESSED with my school PSYCHOLOGIST and one of my TEACHERS! As these people are older, my obsession doesn’t involve any sexual aspects, but instead I have a constant desire for their compassion, attention, and support. It’s kind of like a motherly figure that I seem to be looking for now (I do have an amazing mother, 3 hours away, but I don’t particularly miss her). I feel a strong need for somebody to hug me and listen to me. Since the psychologist’s job is to show support and compassion for people, I was immediately drawn into the relationship.
I am unable to control my feelings for these people, I want to be with my psychologist all day, and I want to MAKE HER HAPPY, show my appreciation to her, but nothing is enough. I have only been seeing her for about three weeks now and I already feel so strongly.


I KNOW none of these relationships are possible, or appropriate, but I can’t stop my unwanted, ruminating thoughts telling me that this relationship is the “best and only choice”, when I know it isn’t. I have driven some of my friends away, and weird-ed some out. I do not want this issue to take over my thoughts and have to battle with my mind constantly over what’s right and what’s wrong, while experiencing a constant roller coaster of emotions.

Has anyone experienced this before? Is it OCD, or borderline Personality Disorder?
All information, or tips will be helpful!

Thank you!

[coyotee]

I'm sorry to say, that I really don't know what to say about your actual situation.

But I did want to comment that when I first came to this site, not too long ago, I was actually conflicted with whether or not I might be Borderline or maybe OCD. I admit I had a pretty misguided view of both until recently. And I'm still learning a lot of new things every day.

I'm just now about to go to my first therapy session, but after a lot of research online, on this site in particular, and in the forums here, I do find that OCD fits me very well. Like a glove.

There's a lot of great resources and material here to get a good perspective about the ins and outs and struggles and treatments for various conditions and disorders.

[healingme4me]

Hard to say for sure. One thought is on attachment disorder as a disorder to look into, obsessive thoughts can seem ocd. Highs and lows with a mood disorder, manic depression/bipolar? Are you under treatment by a psychiatrist? Of course, to do that, alcohol consumption would need to seriously be reduced or stopped altogether. Which it could be that alone...

[AncientMelody]

I can relate quite a lot to this in my past; I'll catch up with you on it in a bit.

[MusicMike]

It's possible that OCD is involved. I also think it's possible that patterns in your first years of life (such as attachment issues) are at play. Hopefully your school psychologist will be able to skillfully help you with the patterns revolving around early childhood, while you can think about trying medication to see if it calms things down.

Mike

[TheDeepGreenSea]

The fact that you have other diagnoses makes me wonder if there's something else going on. It sounds a bit like Limerence (Limerence - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia), but there are aspects of what you've described that make me uncertain. It seems like you have a desire for physical connection, especially as you get drunk which isn't always present with Limerence... but it can be.

I can't tell if you primarily want the other person to be happy or if you want to make them happy. There's a pretty big difference between those two things and the latter is gratitude-seeking behavior that is unfortunately, not good for either of you. You'll have to be really honest with yourself here, it can be tough to separate those. If you additionally have pervasive worries about them not being right for you or you not being right for them in the context of preserving their overall happiness then you may not be Limerant.

If you feel like Limerence is what's going on here, there are ways to combat it:
Limerence, love addiction, infatuation & affair recovery support - What treatment is there?

...

I've personally gone through something I guess semi-related but not quite the same which I'll add too in case it rings of truth. I very rarely feel a *spark* with people, but when I do I pretty quickly develop a crush or if it's with a male friend - a sort of bromance feeling where I just want to hang out and talk with them all the time. I'll become receptive to someone and then it's like I feed off of that person's energy and it amplifies in me. If it's a crush, that crush ends up causing such intense feelings in me that I don't know how to parse them. My brain tries to make rational sense of them by framing them in concepts of love, infatuation, etc. The more I think of them in that context the more my brain dumps neurotransmitters all over like it's spiking the punch bowl of my life haha. It compounds itself until it reaches a fever pitch where that's all I'm thinking about and I start emotionally breaking down until I attempt to act on it or find some strong sign that the other person is not interested. If I spend time with this person, I just get so overstimulated that on the drive home I'll often be shaking and wound-up. Then, the next day I feel like I've run out of happiness, it's almost like a hangover or like my brain's dumped out everything it had to give and needs to make more serotonin, dopamine, etc.

In my scenario for a long time I didn't make the connection that this extends to other parts of my life. I get a similar physical reaction and strong feeling of overstimulation from parties, groups, or conversations where I have a great time. I get it from life or environment change which leads to overwhelming anxiety. I get it from work stress sometimes. If you find yourself feeling like this matches with some of your experience you may be this:

Highly sensitive person - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

There's a lot more information out there about it.


There definitely could be something totally different than those two things going on, but I wanted to share them in case they help since I totally understand the intensity of emotion that comes with infatuation like that. It has happened to me a half-dozen times or so in my life and ruined potential relationships or made it very difficult to live a pleasant life while it's occurring. Best of luck...