According to a study conducted at Stony Brook University, our brain is addicted to the feeling of love. Although the term 'love addiction' has not yet found a place in the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders), it has been determined that the area of our brain responsible for addiction is activated when we feel strong emotions such as love. Have you ever felt like you could smell the person you love, even though he wasn't with you at that moment? Or did you miss his voice from time to time? Strong emotional feelings have physical effects, causing us to sense smells that are not in our brains or to attach special meaning to an ordinary sound. The emotional pain we feel when we are rejected also causes the areas of our brain responsible for physical pain to be activated. This situation largely eliminates the distinction between emotional and physical, and actually shows the importance of considering human psychology as a whole in both directions.
So how do we distinguish between love and love addiction?
We can think of the individual with love addiction as a drug addict; these people cease to be logical and cannot manage their human functions in a healthy way. Isolation is one of the most important indicators of love addiction. We can define isolation as isolation, when a person's social life such as family, work, and friends decreases to the point of almost non-existent and becomes only about the person they love, and the collapse of the individual decision-making-implementation mechanism. A person in love does not fit this definition, they continue their social life in a healthy way and continue to achieve their goals in life.
Another way to understand love addiction is that these people overreact to any rejection, that is, they experience 'withdraw'. Withdraw syndrome is the effect that occurs as a result of sudden withdrawal of the addictive substance (e.g. insomnia, eating disorder, extreme anxiety, extreme anger..) While a healthy person maintains control over the situation in case of any rejection or problem, a love addict may give extreme reactions.
Love addiction is similar to substance addiction in many ways, and of course, it is unhealthy like substance addiction. It is undeniable that the feeling of love is a very strong emotional feeling, but it is a feeling that gets in the way of our self and goes beyond the framework of logic. Emotions that have become harmful to the person cannot be described as love and are harmful to both parties.
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