Choose Confidential Private Counselling For Love Addiction In Sydney & Online
WHAT IS LOVE ADDICTION COUNSELLING
Love addiction counselling at ASAA (also called affective dependence, emotional dependence, or affective addiction) encompasses permanently breaking the addictive cycle of obsessive/pervasive love, and developing healthy relationship dynamics. These include setting appropriate boundaries to personal needs, romantic partner, love and relationship expectations, responsible sexual behaviour, and sexual health. In a counselling session, your counsellor and sex therapist will explore the root causes of your addiction, provide support, education, discussion, relapse prevention and coping skills, self management strategies, assign home work tasks, and listen to you with the upmost respect. A sex therapist is a specifically trained professional counsellor who is qualified to treat and manage your sexual behaviours and concerns.
WHAT IS LOVE ADDICTION
- Love addiction is characterised by inability to control pervasive love yearnings, and is marked by intensity, euphoria, withdrawal, and dependency on romantic love to (unconsciously) filling a void of purpose and meaning, but lacking ability to receive love from romantic partners.
Love addiction is not a clinical diagnosis. The criteria for assessing love addiction depends on the degree to which this problem is impacting on a person’s quality of their (daily) life.
Love addiction can manifest as a spectrum of symptoms. While some love addicts may depend on their partners love to point of tolerating unrequited love, even abuse, others may manipulate scenarios and play out power and control in their relationships.
THE HEALTHY EXPERIENCE OF FALLING IN LOVE
Falling in love is a natural state. It is called honeymoon, or scientifically, limerence. It is a very powerful, blissful, but temporary biological state of increased neurotransmitter and hormonal activity in our brain and body systems, enabling extreme attraction (‘chemistry’) between two people in love. Emotionally healthy couples are able to contain their attraction and maintain their boundaries throughout the entire course of their limerence, and may form longterm harmonious relationships.
WHAT IS LOVE ADDICTION IN CONTRAST
Love addiction, in contrast, is a problematic form of attachment. Love addicts depend emotionally on their partners to a point of forming obsessional attachment bonds of adoration, passion, romance, and blind love without boundaries, and losing sight of their individuality and their own needs. Some love addicts depend on their partners love to a point of tolerating relationship abuse. Women and men can addict to love, however, love addiction presents as a predominantly female problem. Check your love addiction symptoms with our FREE love addiction self screening test.
BEHAVIOURS OF LOVE ADDICTION
Love addiction may result from childhood neglect and love deprivation, which can develop into a ‘love hunger’ of seeking unrealistic closeness and intense romantic love in relationships.
Love addiction presents in cycles of highs and withdrawal. Withdrawal symptoms occur upon real, or perceived, loss of love. Symptoms can be mild to severe and may present as feelings of suffering, rejection and/or intense fear of abandonment. Love addicts may show symptoms of clinginess, manipulation, loss of identity, anxiety/panic attacks, extreme anger, intense love cravings, grief, sadness, depression, shame, and in the extreme, homicidal or suicidal thoughts, or acts.
VULNERABILITIES AND DANGERS OF LOVE ADDICTION
As love addicts are exposed to considerable risks of filling an almost bottomless need for love, their ability to accurately assess their partners motivation for relationship is compromised. Love addicts may blur their own romantic expectations with their partners reality, and may react excessively to emotional triggers of perceived, or actual rejection.
Once feeling rejected, a love addict’s suffering may turn into sudden rage outbursts of dismissing, blaming, devaluing, threatening, and punishing their partner, or dismissing all love as ‘unsafe’, only to hastily filling their love gap by pursuing new love, in fantasy or reality and thus continuing the cycle of love addiction.
Love addicts are not primarily concerned with sex, but tend to give sex to please their partners ever sexual demands as means to securing love. Love addicts are at risk of lacking good judgement of how much sex they should give, and may become victims of sexual exploitation.
DEVELOPMENT OF LOVE ADDICTION
Love addiction precursors may develop in early childhood when safe attachment bonds of love and nurture, descending from parent or primary caregiver to child, are dysfunctional. Secure love attachment in early life is essential for a healthy psycho-emotional development. Love addiction in adults may be understood as substitution for deprived and unfulfilled love needs in childhood, thus leading to unrealistic love expectations in later life.
LOVE & RELATIONSHIP ADDICTION TREATMENT
If you find yourself repeating a cycle of consuming love and painful rejection, you may be a love addict. Confidential private love addiction treatment, offered by Sex Addiction Australia in Sydney and Online, can help you breaking the cycle of love addiction, and creating healthy relationships.
MAKE AN ENQUIRY OR BOOK YOUR APPOINTMENT
For obligation free information regarding our love addiction counselling, or booking a confidential consultation, please use our Book Or Enquire Online option, or call Heide during office hours (+61) 02 9380 4486 or email info@sexaddictionaustralia.com.au