Feeling a bit under the weather lately? Having trouble concentrating during the day, and sleeping at night? Experiencing bouts of anxiety and irritability... followed perhaps by obsessive and slightly creepy behavior? You may very well be suffering from a nasty case of lovesickness. Tonya Hurley --- author of the bestselling ghostgirl series, including its newly released third installment, LOVESICK --- joins us today to help identify this often misdiagnosed affliction of the heart, and to offer sound advice on the proper course of treatment.
Since the title of the new ghostgirl book is ghostgirl: LOVESICK, I thought I would write an entry for Web MD to address this often overlooked, but widespread, pandemic. Hopefully, someday, it will be an official diagnosis with proper research and treatment options and earn the respect it deserves. Not to mention a legitimate excused absence!
Lovesickness
Lovesickness: Introduction
Lovesickness, also known as ‘heartsickness,’ is a debilitating emotional and psychological malady associated with the after-effects of unrequited love. Lovesickness can manifest as a wide variety of symptoms, including intense and unrelieved feelings of sadness, guilt, despair, mania, hopelessness, insomnia, attention deficit, obsessiveness, jealousy, worthlessness, paranoia, self-hatred and general anxiety and/or depression. Lovesickness can negatively affect a person’s ability to function effectively in the activities of daily living, such as going to work and school, caring for family or oneself, or a even the basic desire to go on living. It has been known to activate a ‘stalking’ mechanism in the person afflicted, occasionally bringing them into conflict with boyfriend-stealing skanks and shallow jocks or two-timing ex-boyfriends at school lockers, on social networking sites such as facebook, and in mall parking lots.
Symptoms Of Lovesickness
The severity and types of Lovesickness vary from person to person. Things to watch out for include: loss of interest in things you once enjoyed, chronic fatigue, irritability, migraine, phantom limb pain, waking nightmares, boring friends with teary late night phone calls about how many days you would have been going out if he hadn’t ruined everything, hiding in bushes across the street from an ex’s house, calling and hanging up when his Mom answers, irrational yet persistent desire to castrate every guy you see, repeatedly listening to anything by The Cure or James Blunt.
Causes Of Lovesickness
Lovesickness typically occurs when some idiot boyfriend that you didn’t care about that much in the first place anyway begins to drop subtle hints about your faults, then ignores you for weeks then breaks up with you without explanation and starts to date someone else, probably your best friend or someone that he views as superior to you, triggering every insecurity you’ve harbored about your hair, your skin, your teeth, your weight, your clothes and your traitorous clique for your entire life.
Misdiagnosis
Lovesickness is often misdiagnosed as it shares symptoms clusters with many other emotional states and mental illnesses including:
Immaturity
Infatuation
Grief
Obsession
Manic Depression
Burnout
Foolishness
Treatment
Lovesickness is treatable. There all kinds of simple but effective treatments to consider including: keeping busy, going shopping, getting a new haircut, finding a hobby, not turning on the radio, or the TV or going to the movies, avoiding mirrors and any activity at all that reminds you of him, including eating and sleeping. In general, the most successful therapy is time. Short-term therapy may include a makeover causing him to “eat his heart out” or plotting revenge.
Prognosis
The prognosis for lovesickness is excellent as virtually everyone that has ever been infected recovers eventually. All you need to do is move on. That’s right. Just move on and accept the fact that he chose someone else over you. Someone prettier, smarter, thinner, better dressed, more athletic and ambitious then you will ever be. And, know that eventually it will end horribly for him and he will come running back to you. To avoid reoccurrence, do not take him back despite anything and everything he says.
Prevention
Unfortunately, there is no known preventative for Lovesickness.
-- Tonya Hurley
If you haven't already, watch the ghostgirl: LOVESICK book trailer, and read a previous guest post from Tonya, here.
