Help! I get too emotionally attached to other people.

Post Reply New Topic

It seems that everytime I feel a really close connection with someone, I get overly attached to them. For example, if they reject me for any reason at all, I feel crushed and I either feel depressed and suicidal or I get really angry at them. Another example would be that I get jealous when they hang out with other people instead of me. I get so obsessed with other people and I don't know why. My mother said she noticed this since I was a little girl. Please help. I don't want to feel like this anymore because I know it's not healthy. Could this be something that's related to my autism? I need answers!

A majority of the relationships that I have had over the years are very similar to what you describe. Either I didn't totally understand it or it didn't bother me as a child, but as I have gotten older I have been disquieted and felt uncomfortable sometimes with my actions toward my friends. It is quite a long story since it has defined most of my relationships since elementary school. For some reason, I either get obsessed with a person because I wanted to be friends with them, or I get obsessed with a person after I become friends with them. When the other person rebuffs me (usually very nastily), I still have problems with obsessing over the person (sometimes many years after).

In one particular relationship, I have a 20 year on again, off again obsession (and obsessive relationship) with this person. The only reason that I was not obesessed with him, is that I was obsessed with other people. The friendship was as such, that I was called different monkiers for homosexual, or teased about being a homosexual (which I don't think that I am). Basically my family took this friend in due to his bad life at home. He became such a part of our family during those couple of years, that it was hard to think that I was anything but close when he moved away. In another relationship, I became obsessed with a childhood friend who became a political leader in his community. Everything went well for a while, but he also got nasty with me regarding the friendship. His response to me though, may of killed his political asperations of moving up the food chain like he wanted to do. Both of these friendships are long stories, I could write a whole book on them.

I am at a stage in my life as to where I don't know how to respond to these people anymore. The friend that my family took in recently added me as a friend on Facebook. We have said very little to one another. I have also come to learn that the best thing to counter these obsessions are to get involved in an activity that keeps you busy and draws your mind away from these people. The last time the friend that I had a 20 year on again, off again relationship got upset with me, I opened up about my obsessions with people with my family and my mental health professionals. Since I did these two things, I have made many (if not necessary close) normal relationships with folks.

Feel free to let me know if this answers your question or mirrors your experience.

I am exactly the same. I have an autistic friend who is the same as well.

yes i must also agree with this i am very much this way too with people

It's stuff like this that makes people wonder if autism is something a person develops rather than something a person is born with. It's almost like there is a space inside and whoever has the ability to nudge the door, ends up filling the space to the brim, like you yourself have no saying whether you want to be obsessed with this person or not.

I used to have this problem A LOT until I came across http://www.jovianarchive.com/

What would be fascinating is to try and run an experiment to see how many people who experience this type of obsessive attachment also have the specific design.

I am like this. I don't know if it is autism related or not. I know a lot of survivors of childhood abuse have this pattern. I am autistic and I am a survivor of childhood abuse, so I don't know which thing caused it. I do know that it is a stable part of my personality. I make a conscious effort not to fall back into obsessing over someone.

Ironically, the way of interacting and having relationships that most people are comfortable with (not these super-intense obsessions), feels like nothing to me. I get no enjoyment out of it. I have no bond with 99.9% of people I interact with on a regular basis. It feels like they are just a part of the scenery around me. I only feel connected when I am in an addictive relationship. I feel guilty because I feel like I am supposed to love or feel close to friends and family but I don't. I interact out of obligation, because I know they enjoy interacting with me.

I have found a solution but I don't know how applicable it would be to your situation if you aren't a survivor of childhood abuse. Send me a PM if interested.

I've thought long and hard about this over the last couple of months and came to the following conclusion;

Every friendship/"person you consider not to be a stranger" creates a "bucket" in your head. It gets filled as you spend time with someone, and it slowly drains itself when you're not spending time together. Then when it's empty enough, it gives a sign to the brain to refill it again by spending some more time with that person. Of course every relationship is a different sized bucket with a different sized "drain hole" and both sizes can change as time passes on.

From what I gather it looks as if people with autism tend to have smaller or bigger buckets with smaller or bigger holes than "the standard", and in any combination. It creates very different social requirements, but it's all "autism". I know from myself that I have only a few big buckets with big holes, causing me to desire a lot of attention from those people and wanting it a lot. I suspect that people consider the "small buckets, little holes" type in this explanation as the stereotype autistic person by the way.

Using this idea as a guideline, I've been able to make a lot of progress with especially my best friend, and I'm able to use compliments and "you're my best friend"'s as ways to plug the holes rather than filling the bucket. Today we told each other we loved each other for the first time face to face while also not one of us was emotionally broken down and "needing to hear someone cares" and it makes me feel very "full" and happy right now and I know I'll see her again tomorrow rather than it causing me to feel even more empty because the words filled my bucket to the top but it all being drained away in a couple of hours leaving me very empty.

I find that I'm also like this too. So this many people agreeing with you I'm guessing it is part of autism.

I think I find I get like this as I have no friends so it's a kind of excitement that someone actually wants to talk to me and I get carried away. Also I think it's because I don't know the person so I can make them how I want them to be in my head but as I get to know someone they're not the sort of person I thought they would be so feel let down. It's all my fault I understand but I can't sadly give you any advice about how not to get too attached.

In my experience that gape in the chest can be filled only by a very compatible partner. Then that sucking need reduces considerably.

So it might be the way to deal with it, find a good partner, someone very close to you who fills the void. Spent years and previous disappointments look unimportant in retrospect after you meet the right person.

I haven't dealt with this often, but I hate it. It's not reasonable, beneficial, or even rational, but I haven't found a way to excise it.

On the other hand, it surprises me the wealth of insecurities that emerge. Maybe I'll find a way to put those to rest, but you'd think there'd be a better way.

I actually love it, but I feel ashamed and alien because of it. In my mind most every person is just that interesting and worthy of obsession and emotional attachment, and it's a beautiful thing to be able to do without reservation. I don't want to have to be ashamed of it or for people to feel that it is invasive. What I wish is that people would understand my side of it, that it's really quite intoxicating to emotionally attach to someone without attaching all of these conditionals that people do, like "how well do we know each other", "what does/can this person do for me", "what are this person's character qualities". They don't seem to understand how one can appreciate a person wholly aside from conditional considerations like that, unless it's a relationship with a family member or significant other. But I don't think it's delusional or irrational of a feeling to pursue with people outside of those conditional boundaries. I think it just takes a fundamentally different view on people in general and what makes them "good" or "interesting". It's not something like an irrational schoolyard infatuation in my case, it's like I'm appreciating someone the way I think I ought to and the way I think everyone ought to.

IMO, we wouldn't have a lot of the problems that we do if we could more readily recognize, not just intellectually but emotionally, the extent of how novel and unique other people are. The only thing that doesn't feel good about it for me is the response that I get and this longing that I have for someone to appreciate these sentiments I have about them which I think are genuine and beautiful, and to return these sentiments. As a Christian I think this is what is being talked about when it comes to loving everyone. Not just being benevolent or even very altruistic, but full on loving other people big time and not restricting yourself from doing so. To the point where it hurts, where it hurts bad if something happens to someone you barely even know. I wish more people could appreciate this viewpoint and unashamedly invest themselves in each other, without hesitation.

What I've had to learn so that I can practice at least some self preservation and not be a complete teddy bear to lots of people, is that I have to deal with those feelings and restrain myself, definitely try not to express them to that person. People for the most part don't understand how I could have feelings for them without being unhealthy in the head, or desperate. To most people it's as if I have a childlike infatuation or am creating a delusional version of them, or even as if I think there is any rational reason under their dichotomy to get this emotional over someone I don't even know well. I'm guessing it would throw them off even more if I tried to explain how I think, that my reasons for feeling like I do are entirely different, and in spite of being pretty much unconditional, they are rational but built on a whole different idea of what it is that makes people valuable. Like what makes people "valuable" in a personal sense as opposed to an abstract sense.

^^^ That's a very comforting outlook.

I wish I could feel the same, but I just end up feeling vulnerable, gullible, and raw. I don't like losing my objectivity, and I get afraid of being taken advantage of.

I have a hard time letting people get close, then suddenly I find my a$$ is hanging out to the breeze. I don't know if I can find some benevolent way to reframe that.

The truth is that if you are looking for a benevolent way to re-frame it, then you really are fundamentally a benevolent person and you merely don't understand why yet. It's a good thing and you should be proud of it. Having these kinds of emotions doesn't make you not an objective person or incapable of assessing others objectively. What it ultimately reflects is that there is this wonderful thing stored up in you, but the flip side of it is that you're going to need learn how to restrain yourself to the point that you don't have to feel taken advantage of, don't have to feel like you are vulnerable or gullible.

People who have this tendency actually have a gift that they don't know how to use in a healthy way, and it's a gift that startles other people. All warm emotional attachments in and of themselves are good and to be desired, never something to suppress or feel ashamed of. It is the unhealthy behavior and thinking that these emotions can lead to that is hurtful. I think if we were perfectly honest with ourselves we would admit that the feeling in and of itself is striking, undoubtedly good, and really more pure than other types of positive feelings we develop towards others. The only reason that it becomes a problem is that both the one being loved and the person loving build up intellectual barriers to it, and unreasonable expectations often come out of it. They use conditions to regulate their infatuations and so do we in response because we think we have to, it's a way to cope with fearing others, having difficulty trusting them.

The only effective outlet for this is to find someone or hopefully even more than one person if you are lucky, that you can trust enough to participate in this mutually. While most people think of that in terms of a significant other, a life partner, there are other opportunities to do this too. But you will get hurt again if you do this and it's a reality that people have to mature beyond. The pain involved is worth it if you continue pursuing this because the rewards are just too good to pass up. This is the essence of platonic love and it is in my opinion the highest aim for anyone to have (conceiving a child being the ultimate in this realm). When you have a child you get to sit on the front row of the stage as all of the things that are ultimately more important and interesting than these conditionals, begins and continues to develop. And then it just clicks as you realize that this inexplicable emotional attachment, this seemingly undefinable but bewildering good thing, is because that is another human being. The abstract has gone completely out the window and you've pulled the veil back and seen what being a person actually means.

I would say that this is ASD related, but perhaps indirectly as a result of not having a lot of successful close friendships. I've noticed that when friends are wanted but a person has trouble getting them or keeping them, I find that the person places a lot more focus on them and thus values them more and attaches more emotion to situations involving them,

I think this is why some people with ASD tend to "cling" to others and pay too much attention to them: because it is hard for them to find people who accept them, they will go overboard with their affections and emotions if someone does accept them. They may invest all their interpersonal time and emotional energy onto them and not realize that the other person has other friends and other priorities.

I can definitely relate to this from earlier times in my life, and even still today. When I am rejected by someone, I know that it hurts me much more than most people since I try my hardest not to be rejected, and I take it much more personally, obsessing over what I could have done differently. And though I have a number of successful friendships, I tend to get jealous easily when I see people I'd like to be better friends with become close with other people. However, this only happens with the people in my life that I wish were closer to me rather than those who are already close.

I'm the same way. I crave deeper more intimate relationships. I get bored and frustrated when people seem distant or trivial, like part of the scenery. I notice most people don't even have what I would consider "close" relationships beyond their SO.

I'm the same.

Try crushing the obsessive thought with another thought as soon as you feel them developing. Can't say if it works, I'm trying it out, myself.