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To love and feel love is a beautiful feeling that everyone wants to experience. However, there is another side to love that some of us have experienced without realizing it. If you have heard people ask questions like what is lovesickness, you will learn what it means in this guide.
Like love has a profound positive effect on our health when everything is okay, it can negatively affect us. This piece will explore the concept of lovesickness and everything it entails.
What does lovesickness mean?
Lovesickness is a hopeless and helpless biological feeling connected with a love experience. It can stem from various situations, either positive or negative ones.
For instance, someone can experience symptoms of lovesickness when they lose their partner to death. On the other hand, you can be lovesick if you miss your partner because they are far away.
When the love you have for someone causes anxiety, depression, or other disturbing mental or physical issues, you are lovesick.
Many people have experienced lovesickness in different ways, and not everyone bounces back.
You will experience different feelings like jealousy, attachment anxiety, etc.
Also Try: Am I Lovesick QuizWhat are the causes of lovesickness?
Lovesickness is the unpleasant feeling associated with loving someone, and it can stem from different situations.
For instance, if you love someone and are unable to connect with you emotionally, it can cause
lovesickness because you will feel rejected and not good enough.
This lovesick feeling can occur for a long time until you get over them. Also, if you want to experience love generally, and you don’t feel it yet, you can become a lovesick.
Related Reading: How Important Is An Emotional Connection In A Relationship?15 obvious signs of lovesickness
It is important to know the signs of lovesickness to figure out if you are experiencing this condition or not. So here are some love sick symptoms to watch out for.
1. Mood swings
Experiencing mood swings is one of the symptoms of lovesickness. At some point, you will be unable to tell why you are feeling sad and depressed.
Also, you might feel happy and full of life without understanding the reason for your joy. Therefore, if you have mood swings regularly, you might be lovesick.
Related Reading: How to Deal With Mood Swings in a Relationship2. Isolation
Sometimes, lovesick people prefer to be isolated instead of being around people. Nothing around interests them anymore; this is why they shut out people around.
Also, if you are beginning to feel that people around you don’t understand you, you might be lovesick.
3. Constant tiredness
When we experience mental stress, it affects us physically. For example, someone who is lovesick will feel tired most times, to do anything physically. Even the activities you enjoy will feel like a chore because your physical strength is low.
4. Loss of appetite
If you noticed that your appetite has not been stable for a while, you might be lovesick. Usually, the reason is, your mind is fixated on the love situation you are going through, and you barely have time to eat. Even if you eat, you will prefer to feed on junk instead of well-cooked meals.
5. Eating too much
Not everyone loses their appetite when they are lovesick; some overeat. You will discover that you eat more than you are supposed to. This would make you heavy and filled up, not allowing you to do other things.
6. You get easily distracted
Someone who is lovesick will find it hard to concentrate on anything. Their attention span is deficient because they are focused on something else. In addition, this would prevent you from being productive because you cannot concentrate on the tasks or activities in front of you.
7. You stalk your love interest
Stalking is one of the standard features of lovesick people. You will find yourself monitoring their lifestyle both online and offline. Also, you become obsessed with whatever they are doing, and you begin to wish that you were carried along.
Even though they are not in touch, you keep checking your inbox to see if they have messaged you. So you will spend several hours keeping up with their activities, so that you have a life to live.
Also Try: Are You Stalking Your Crush Quiz8. You treasure their belongings
If you suspect that some guy has not gotten over you, one of the signs he is lovesick is that he still keeps your belongings. A lovesick person will hold on to your personal effects so that they can keep in touch with you.
If they don’t keep your belongings, they will store your online items like pictures, video clips, audio recordings, etc. They will not ditch these belongings because it means so much to them.
9. You always overanalyze
When someone is lovesick, they cannot read surface meaning to anything. They spend long hours trying to encrypt the hidden meanings behind words, actions, and even body language.
Also, when their love interest does anything to them, they spend time trying to analyze the meaning. Lovesick people try to see things from various perspectives. And usually, they end up with no definite and precise answer.
10. You don’t sleep well
People who are lovesick struggle with insomnia, which might be chronic sometimes. You will find it difficult to sleep because you constantly think about and monitor them. While you close your eyes, the only images you see belong to your love interest.
Here’s a publication on how lovesickness affects the quality of sleep. This study by Angelika A. Schlarb and other brilliant authors provides an in-depth understanding of how lovesickness and sleep quality are connected.
11. You get confused
Confusion is a phase where things become unclear and unsure. For example, if you have asked what lovesickness is, it comes with confusion.
You will lose orientation about many things, and the ability to mentally connect or interpret anything will be temporarily absent. In addition, you will discover that your consciousness is disordered, and recalling some past events would be difficult.
12. Feeling of dizziness
Another sign of lovesickness is feeling dizzy, which can come in different forms. For example, you might feel like fainting or your head spinning. Sometimes, it might look like your environment is spinning around you.
Even though there are many possible causes of lovesickness, experiencing this feeling alongside other signs in this piece is a symptom of being lovesick.
13. Feeling of Nausea
Another sign of lovesickness is the feeling of discomfort and uneasiness that nudges you to vomit. Nausea is a painless symptom associated with lovesickness. Sometimes, it is associated with other physical or mental health issues from lovesickness.
14. Restlessness
When you are lovesick, you might find it hard to keep your cool. You will discover that you are restless about little or nothing. Also, you will find yourself jumping from one activity to the other without completing them. You will realize that it would be hard to remain productive.
Related Reading: 6 Key Tips to Stop Being Insecure in a Relationship15. Insecurity
Another common sign of lovesickness is insecurity. You will begin to think of people who are possible competitors for your love interest.
When you stalk them on social media and notice someone appearing too often on their feed, you begin to suspect that your crush is slipping out of your hands.
Since lovesickness has physical health implications, here is a study that provides a robust exploration into the presence of lovesickness.
Here’s an enlightening video that explains the entire concept of lovesickness:
How to deal with lovesickness
Feeling lovesick is not a pleasant feeling, and sometimes it might be hard to avoid it altogether. However, if you have diagnosed yourself with the signs of lovesickness above, and you have asked how to cure lovesickness, here are some steps to take.
1. Focus on their shortcomings
Since you are lovesick and you can’t stop thinking about that person, you will be unable to spot their flaws. But, on the other hand, if you notice their faults, it would not matter, because you are interested in receiving their love.
Therefore, try to think about who they are, their behaviors, mannerism, speech, etc.
No one was made perfect, so there will be some weak spots that you need to observe. When you find these lapses, capitalize on them to create another opinion of them in your mind.
Eventually, you will discover that that person is not as unique as you thought, and it would be easy to move on.
2. Try to be sociable
As earlier mentioned in the signs of lovesickness, this condition isolates you from people. Hence, your social skills will drop drastically. Since you have been avoiding people for a long time, you need to reconnect with them.
You are isolated because you don’t believe you will have a great life without your love interest. This is not true because you can enjoy your life with friends, family, acquaintances and other people.
3. Talk to them
One of the ways to cure yourself of lovesickness is to talk to your love interest. If you are interested in someone, and you are not sure it is mutual, discuss it with them. This will help you know if you are wasting your time thinking about them or not.
Similarly, if you are in love with someone and want a relationship, you can communicate your feelings and ask them out. Again, this would ease the burden and lovesickness you are feeling.
Also, if you crave love from people generally, find a way to know what they think about you. You can conduct a survey that collates people’s thoughts and ideas about you.
Related Reading: How to Build Ultimate Communication Skills Between Couples4. Keep yourself occupied
Lovesick individuals find it hard to focus on other activities aside from their love interest. This is why many of them are unproductive at school, work, etc.
Therefore, you need to figure out how to be busy even in your free time. If your free time is unoccupied, you will end up thinking about the person. Therefore, include a routine in your free time to prevent you from being lovesick.
Even though it looks inconvenient for you, it is important to keep your mind and body occupied so that you will think less about them.
5. Delete all memories
To break free of your lovesickness, you need to keep all memories of that person or people out of your life. You need to know that lovesickness makes your mental and physical health deteriorate, so you need to ditch everything that reminds you of that person.
If you have their media files on your phone or computer, delete everything permanently and restore them. Also, if you still have their personal physical effects, you can return or throw them away.
Related Reading: How to Forget Someone You Love: 25 Ways6. Think about them, don’t obsess
Sometimes, it is acceptable to spend a few minutes thinking about them. But, it is important not to let those thoughts drift into fantasies. It would be hard to cure your lovesickness if you keep fantasizing about them.
7. Give yourself time
You need to understand that healing from lovesickness is a process that should not be rushed. Those wounds you are nursing and those painful memories you are experiencing will not vanish in one night.
You have to accept the reality that you need time to heal and that your feelings for this person will fade off gradually. It would be easy to start focusing on yourself and other necessary activities when you recognize this fact.
Related Reading: 5 Steps to Help You With Learning to Love Yourself8. Seek help from a therapist
If you are tired of experiencing lovesickness signs, you need to talk to a professional. By seeing a therapist, they help you uncover the root cause of your lovesickness. Just like addiction, when you discover the root cause of a problem, it becomes easy to tackle it.
Therefore, getting help from a therapist gives you the privilege of having a skilled professional analyze your condition and proffer solutions. When you see a therapist cure yourself of lovesickness, you will get better with time.
Is lovesickness real?
When questions like what is lovesickness are asked, people don’t know that they exist.
Sometimes, when you experience lovesickness, it might look like you have flu.
You will feel sick, but you are not sick. The hormone connected to lovesickness is cortisol, the same hormone related to heartbreak. When cortisol is released, it can affect your physical and mental health.
In this study by Janice Kiecolt Glasier and Stephanie J. Wilson, you will learn how a couple’s relationship affects health, with the inclusion of lovesickness.
Conclusion
After reading this article, you are fully informed about the signs of lovesickness, and you will be able to tell if you are experiencing this condition or not. However, it might be challenging to get through lovesickness without a support system.
Therefore, ensure you have trusted people you open up to. In addition, consider seeing a therapist for professional counseling and help.