How long do obsessions last

This can increase their risk of becoming obsessed with their relationship. For example, a person with depression may believe that they are unworthy and alone, or that the only worthwhile aspect of their life is their relationship. This can cause obsessive feelings or behavior. Learn more about the different types of personality disorder here.

Some social and cultural norms demand more of one partner than the other. This could mean that some parents and caregivers expose their children to these unhealthful relationship styles during their upbringing. The symptoms of obsessive love vary depending on the reason for the obsession.

For instance, a person with a delusional disorder may experience altered reality or demonstrate unusual behavior, while a person with depression may have low self-esteem or experience suicidal thoughts. There are no specific diagnostic criteria for obsessive love. They may also recommend psychological or medical testing to rule out other causes, especially if the person demonstrates delusional behavior.

Treatment for obsessive love focuses on identifying the cause of the obsessive thoughts and feelings, then treating that cause. For example, a person with schizophrenia may need medication to control delusions and negative thoughts. Treatments for delusional disorders tend to involve medication as well as psychosocial psychiatric interventions, such as family therapy or helping the individual replace negative delusions with positive thinking patterns.

For most people, therapy is key in managing obsessive feelings and developing healthier relationships. A therapist can often help with untangling a history of trauma, managing underlying conditions, and establishing more healthful relationship norms.

In the early stages of treatment, individual therapy is best, especially if the relationship is abusive. If each person in the relationship is able to establish better boundaries individually, couples counseling may then help them work together and move past the obsessive love. Some people wonder how long it takes to overcome obsessive love. However, there is no set time. It is a psychological and very individual experience that depends on many things, from the level of the obsessive love to the underlying condition that could be causing it.

If the above strategies do not work, there may be a more serious underlying issue, and seeing a mental health professional may be a good idea. Also, people with obsessive love may not see their behavior as problematic. They might instead view the object of their affection as insufficiently loving or loyal, believing them to be the problem.

This can mean that the person experiencing feelings of obsessive love may find it difficult to seek treatment. People who struggle to let go of relationships or who feel very insecure in a relationship should consider the possibility that their love is obsessive and try to seek treatment.

Obsessive love may be a sign of a serious mental health condition, and if it goes untreated, it can destroy friendships and relationships.

It could also lead to other serious mental health concerns. If obsessive love causes someone to pursue a relationship with someone who is not interested, it could even lead to legal difficulties or violence. It is possible to treat the mental health conditions and other causes that can lead to obsessive love, especially with adequate support.

However, this is only possible if the person with feelings of obsessive love feels able to seek help and support. Some signs of emotional abuse include controlling, shaming, blaming, and purposely humiliating another person. Emotional abuse can occur in many…. Paranoid personality disorder is a common but underdiagnosed mental health disorder.

Read on to learn about the causes and symptoms of paranoid…. Bipolar disorder causes alterations in mood, leading to depressive and manic or hypomanic episodes. The concepts of change and acceptance go hand-in-hand and define each other. There are some things you will be able to change, and some you will have to accept. It is important to discriminate between the two, so as to not end up misdirecting your efforts. This means it is like having asthma or diabetes. You can get it under control and become recovered but, at the present time, there is no cure.

It is a potential that will always be there in the background, even if it is no longer affecting your life. The current thinking is that it is probably genetic in origin, and not within our current reach to treat at that level. While it is not understood why this is so, these are considered hallmarks of the disorder.

Unless you understand these, you cannot understand OCD. I have seen patients doubt their sexuality, their sanity, their perceptions, whether or not they are responsible for the safety of total strangers, the likelihood that they will become murderers, etc. I have even seen patients have doubts about whether they were actually alive or not.

Doubt is one of the more maddening qualities of OCD. It can override even the keenest intelligence. It is a doubt that cannot be quenched. It is doubt raised to the highest power. It is what causes sufferers to check things hundreds of times, or to ask endless questions of themselves or others. Even when an answer is found, it may only stick for several minutes, only to slip away as if it was never there.

Only when sufferers recognize the futility of trying to resolve this doubt, can they begin to make progress. The guilt is another excruciating part of the disorder. It is rather easy to make people with OCD feel guilty about most anything, as many of them already have a surplus of it.

They often feel responsible for things that no one would ever take upon themselves. As biochemical events, they cannot simply be shut off at will. Studies in thought suppression have shown that the more you try to not think about something, the more you will end up thinking about it paradoxically.

Fear, too, originates in the mind, and in order to recover, it is important to accept that there is no escape. Fears must be confronted. People with OCD do not stay with the things they fear long enough to learn the truth—that is, that their fears are unjustified and that the anxiety would have gone away anyway on its own, without a compulsion or neutralizing activity.

OCD is believed to be a genetically-based problem with behavioral components, and not psychological in origin. Ordinary talk therapy will, therefore, not be of much help. Reviewing past events in your life, or trying to figure out where your parents went wrong in raising you have never been shown to relieve the symptoms of OCD. The goal is to stay with whatever makes you anxious so that you will develop a tolerance for the thought or the situation, and learn that, if you take no protective measures, nothing at all will happen.

People with OCD do not stay long enough in feared situations to learn the truth. I try to get my patients to stay with fearful things to the point where a kind of fatigue with the subject sets in. Our goal is to wear the thought out. Compulsions, too, are part of the system and must be eliminated for the recovery process to occur.

There are two things that tend to sustain compulsions. One is that by doing them, the sufferer is only further convinced of the reality of their obsessions, and is then driven to do more compulsions. The other is that habit also keeps some people doing compulsions, sometimes long after the point of doing them is forgotten.

The cognitive component of CBT teaches you to question the probability of your fears actually coming true always very low or practically nil , and to challenge their underlying logic always irrational and sometimes even bizarre. While everyone with OCD would like there to be a magical medicinal bullet to take away their symptoms, there really is no such thing at this time. Join now to personalize. How long does your particular obsession usually last?

I've been battling one particular obsession for a little over a year and I keep wondering when I'll let it go. I was first diagnosed when I was 12 so I'm very familiar with OCD, but I can't remember how long my particular obsessions will last. Some only seem to last months and I move on, but this one is sticking?!?! Original poster's comments 3.

I would rather not go into detail I've always had the same obsessions but it seems it comes in other forms. I'll get over one thing but another will pop up circling the same theme but a diff form kinda. Make sense?

I just think that's OCD.