“Fake it til you make it”

You’ve definitely heard of the above some time in your life. And does it work? Yes it does.

When you cannot do something, you act like you can. And it’s interesting but whenever you do so, you will notice things in your reality will shift to match your attitude. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. When more things match your attitude, it’s positive reinforcement to continue acting the same way.

When you pretend to behave a certain way, you are training your mind to act as if this were the truth in reality. This is how Olympic athletes, orchestra musicians and people who have to perform at a high level in their jobs tend to do – they visualise and put themselves in a space where they are already winning/performing really well.

It’s really powerful stuff. And is the reason why from Psychology circles to New Age circles, people tend to be in agreement that pretending to be something or someone you are not initially can eventually lead you to making it a reality.

The problem when it comes to acting as if in limerence is that gradually, your mind starts to treat your fantasies as real

This is one of the biggest reasons why it can feel physically painful when something comes in between you and your limerent object (LO) – like a spouse/partner, physical distance, you cannot be with them etc. By virtue of you acting as if your fantasies are reality, your mind treats it as such and sees those emotions that you feel as real, and your day-to-day experiences as rooted in reality.

What to do instead?

Besides working on breaking the habit cycle, the most important thing to do would also be to get aware of when you are falling into that cycle of ruminating and fantasising. When you are aware of what triggers, states of being and emotions put you down the fantasy path, you are better able to snap out of that reverie.

You would want to stop that fantasy cycle from becoming a recurring loop in your mind, as the repeated thoughts are what forms the basis for your mind to start to treat it as reality.

Whenever I find myself starting to fall into that nice fuzzy habit of fantasising, I immediately tell myself to snap out of it and to redirect my thoughts to other things. But to get to this place, you first need to be self-aware and you would also want to break the cycle.

Struggling with limerence?

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