Erotomania in Unattainable Love.
Erotomania is a type of delusional disorder where the affected person believes that another person is in love with him or her. This belief is usually applied to someone with higher status or a famous person, but can also be applied to a complete stranger.
Erotomanic delusions often occur in patients with psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia, when the patient believes that a secret admirer is declaring his or her affection for the patient. During an erotomanic delusion, the patient feels that they are receiving special glances, signals, telepathy, or messages through the media. Such illusions can also occur during a manic episode in the context of bipolar disorder.
Even though these advances are unexpected and often unwanted, any denial of affection by the object of this delusional unattainable love is dismissed by the patient as a ploy to conceal the forbidden unattainable love from the rest of the world. Usually the patient returns the perceived affection by means of letters, phone calls, gifts, and visits to the unwitting recipient.
The term erotomania is often mistakenly confused with obsessive love, obsession with unrequited love, unattainable love or hypersexuality. The core symptom of erotomania is that the person suffering from the disorder refuses to believe that the object of their love is not in love with them. They have an unshakable delusional belief that their beloved is secretly in love with them. In extreme cases, some patients believe that there is a group of individuals in love with him. Unattainable love has been classified as an addiction that feeds on fantasies and illusions. This is similar to the experience of a person exposed to drugs. As I have written in my post Unrequited Love and Cocaine, despite the fact that unrequited love is connected with tension and anxiety, this state, mixed with hope of reciprocity leads the unrequited lover to feel extreme happiness to the level of euphoria. This reaction is similar to the effect of cocaine.
Like cocaine, love increases the levels of serotonin, norepinephrine, and dopamine in the body. Because dopamine is associated with pleasure and causes the brain to think about pleasurable moments, narcotic drugs like cocaine increase the brain’s levels of dopamine and cause addiction. This scientifically explains why unattainable lovers and even erotomanics are addicted to the object of love. Erotomanic delusions are typically found as the primary symptom of a delusional disorder or in the context of schizophrenia and may be treated with atypical antipsychotics. It may be accompanied by other types of concurrent delusions such as delusions of reference, wherein the perceived admirer secretly communicates his or her love by subtle methods such as arrangement of household objects, body posture, and other seemingly innocuous acts. For example, if the person is a public figure, an erotomanic will find the clues of the celebrity’s message to them in the media.
Increase in levels of serotonin, norepinephrine and dopamine in the body makes the brain go into an over-excited state and have seizure-like effects. A large increase in “feel good” chemicals turns off sanity. The object of love, then signals the brain that everything is alright. Their presence boosts serotonin levels, which turn off rational sense and increase feeling of satisfaction so much that the new behaviour skips being scrutinized by the brain and initial (sane) beliefs are completely forgotten. If not stopped or controlled, obsessive unrequited love can lead to hallucinations, identity disintegration and illusions of time and distance. Thoughts can become illusionary and old memories may blend with new experiences.
It has been noticed that when treated, erotomania initially leads to depression in the suffering individual. They are pitilessly barraged by the stark acknowledgment that their belief was actually an illusion. That the remarkably sweet sentiments that have been so warmly holding them aren’t shared, aren’t common. Their blissful dreams of the dearest exist in a vacuum. In a word, they see themselves as a betrayed unrequited lover. In such moments, they find that their enthusiasm, their simply envisioned bliss, has taken leave. That it’s now just a faint memory of what (perhaps only a second back) was so considerable, so unwaveringly genuine that it was binding each cell in their body. As concrete and gigantic as a mountain, its measurements had been enormous to the point that they could scarcely make out its peak.
I am going to discuss more on this subject in my posts this week. Please share your comments and experiences in the message section. They are my inspiration.