Break the Desperation Cycle and Attract Real Love!

Are you exhausted from chasing connection, overthinking texts, vying for little hits of approval, and shrinking your needs just to get or keep someone in your life?

Many people don’t realize they’re not actually pursuing love, they’re pursuing relief from a deep internal need for self-worth validation and emotional safety. What feels like “chemistry” is really the nervous system trying to soothe an old fear of not being enough, not mattering or being left behind. This creates an energetic signature of "desperation" which actually repels real love rather than pull it in.

If you are chasing rather than attracting, obsessing over someone you hardly know, constantly looking for "signs" they like you, or making scraps of attention a big deal, chances are high you have hidden desperation running the show behind the scenes of your struggling love life.

In this talk you'll learn:
📍11 signs of desperate energy and behavior
📍How self-worth and self-respect attract
📍The root cause of desperation
📍What limerence is
📍The ultimate cure to heal desperation for good!

It's time to shift from chasing love, approval and attention to standing in genuine self-value! 

It's time to dissolve from fear-based connections with hidden agendas to attracting reciprocal and balanced relationships!

Click play to get the full scoop and begin your healing journey today!

For FREE Resources, 📖 KB's Book Link, 📝 Quizzes, 👚 Self-Love Merch Shop, 🗣️1:1 Mentoring and more: https://www.linktr.ee/kristenbrownauthor

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Your soul sibling,

KB

Transcript

Kristen 0:00

Hello, hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of Empower Hour with KB, where we talk about all things regarding self-healing, personal development, relationship health, and energy and manifesting. Today we're going to talk about how to cure relationship desperation. If any of you have had that feeling of desperation, then this talk is for you. Although some of you might not realize that you have been coming from an energy of desperation. So I want to start off this talk with jumping into the signs of what relationship desperation looks like. Again, as all conversations that I have here on Noom Vibe, this is not about shame. This is about awareness. This is not about looking at yourself and cringing and saying, oh my God, that's me. I'm a terrible person. Oh, I'm so embarrassed that I'm acting this way. When I was writing this list of relationship desperation signs, I was like, yep, done that. Yep, done that. Yep, done that. I never teach things that I haven't experienced myself, but I'm on the other side of those now. And there's some things that I put into place that really helped this. I actually cured it. It actually took that away completely for me. At the time, I would tell you when I was acting these ways, I really didn't know that it was desperation. I could kind of feel it. I could feel that urging, that pushing, that sort of panicky feeling or rushing feeling or agitation feeling or something when it was regarding relationships, but I couldn't quite pinpoint it. And I want you to understand that if you haven't pinpointed this in your past, that's okay. Sometimes we're not adept at identifying what it is we're feeling for number one. Number two, it's become so normal and natural to us that it may not stand out. It may not be like, oh yeah, I can totally see that this is what I'm doing because we don't know. We've been doing it for so long. It's just that it feels like a natural and normal part of us. Yet if we go within and we feel how it feels even physically, bodily, when we're in that state of desperation, it doesn't feel great, does it? I'm seeing a lot of claps come up on the screen right now. So I know a lot of you are understanding this. And I'm really happy to hear that because I was thinking, well, this is a very niche conversation because not all people are running around feeling desperate in their relationships. But I will tell you that the majority of us have experiences at some point. And I want to clarify that there are scales of this, right? There's a continuum of this. It could be mild feelings of this, or it could be major feelings of this. So whatever it is for you, this is not to judge. These conversations are only for information. Take the best, leave the rest, grab whatever feels right for you. But hopefully, my hope is that it inspires you, that you're like, okay, here's an answer. This makes sense. Now I can apply something, or now I've got light shining on something that I was completely unconscious about, that I didn't even know was going on. I've seen this a lot in people that I coach. There's this underlying desperation that is running the show of their relationships. And shockingly, desperation is a charged word. It's a word that when you call someone or say, you know, this is desperate behavior, or you point it out, or whatever it might be, the first response typically is a complete rebuttal of it. It's, and I'm not saying they're harsh or mean about it, but it's like, oh no, I'm not desperate, because desperate has a charge to it. It's a word that people were using a lot back in the day. This person's desperate, that person's desperate, oh my God, she's so desperate. I remember this in the 80s when people were calling people desperate. And it was such a put down. It was, you did not want to be called desperate. Okay. If someone called you desperate, it was it was a put down. But let's erase all of that from the past and just understand relationship desperation is just a sign of something that is going on within. And millions upon millions upon billions of people experience this, have experienced it, or still experiencing it. So we're going to go into first of signs of relationship desperation. And even if you're in a relationship already, you might notice some of these signs. You might be like, wow, you know, I'm I'm in this long-term relationship, but I relate to some of these things. Good for you. Again, this is about awareness. This is about the more that we know about ourselves, about our behaviors, about our programming, about our conditioning, the more that we're able going to be able to heal it because now it's on the forefront. Now we're like, oh, that makes sense. I had to notice these things within myself too. I didn't have a mentor. I didn't have a coach. YouTube wasn't what it is today. I had no idea what was going on. But I went within and I started to recognize how I didn't like the way these things felt, these behaviors that were showing up. And oftentimes for me personally, they were feelings that I didn't always act on, so to speak. It was just running the show behind the scenes. So here's some signs of relationship desperation. Number one, most many of us can relate to this, is chasing someone who isn't meeting you halfway or isn't showing up or has said they don't want a relationship. I have seen people, again, no judgment. I'm just sharing stories to make this conversation more relatable to people. I have seen somebody where situations where somebody broke up with somebody. Person A broke up with person B and they're done and they're over, and it could be years. But person B cannot wrap their head around it. They're still thinking about and vying for and hoping for. And if I just change a little aspect of myself and how can I get them back and all these things, believe it or not, that's chasing. It may not be outwardly chasing, like calling them and blowing up their phone, but it's still chasing behavior. The energy is still there. I can relate to this one. I'm raising my hand on this one. Another one is overtexting or reaching out too much to get reassurance. So just the idea that somebody responds or replies to us can be a hit. We're like, oh, look, I got this attention. Oh my gosh, I relate to this so much, you guys. I remember that. Just that little, little response, no matter when it came. Who can relate? Yes, people are relating, where you, you know, you're waiting for that response. You might get busy doing other things, but the minute it comes in, or you hear your phone chime, you fly to the phone and you look at it, and there's a part of you that just for a moment feels satisfied because somebody gave you attention. This one particular person gave you attention. And then maybe the text was flat, or maybe it wasn't saying the thing that we hoped it would say, and then all of a sudden we're like back to that feeling of desperation again, and it doesn't feel good. All right, that's a sign. Ignoring red flags because you want it to work. Okay. How many of us have done that? I want this relationship so much that I'm gonna ignore these things that I'm saying. Even I I like to talk about pink flags too, and to me, what pink flags are is they're not quite a red flag. They are like, hmm, this is weird. Like, let me investigate this further, which is what somebody who um knows their true worth and their true value would do. They'd be like, Yeah, I don't really like how they did that or this behavior that they're exhibiting, or how they're acting or showing up, or what they're saying or not saying, or whatever. You see a little pink flag, it might be an indicator of something else, and you don't speak up. And the red flags you don't speak up for. So this could be a sign of desperation because you don't want to look at potential reasons why this won't work, because again, I'm gonna get into the reasons why that you want so desperately for this to happen. Next one is accepting crumbs of attention. Raising my hand, I've accepted crumbs. I can't say I've done this like all throughout my life, but there was one particular relationship when I was in a very much of a desperate stance where those crumbs of attention were like my lifeline. They really were, again, this was before my healing journey. This is before I cleaned up all that inner world that was contributing to this. But man, those little crumbs, uh they were like water to a person who had walked 10 miles across the hot desert. It was like, oh, it was just one little crumb, one little thing. All right, another one could be rushing intimacy. You might be wanting to rush the relationship. You might be wanting to push the relationship, you might be pushing yourself on somebody, you might be not allowing for natural progression of the relationship, or you could push for sex soon too, because you want that connection so desperately. Panicking when they pull away. Um, yeah, in one relationship in particular, I can remember that the panicking when they pulled away for sure. But it's not just a, hey, where are they going? What are they doing? It's like sheer panic. Like you're really starting to panic inside. It doesn't mean you go into a full-blown meltdown, but your nervous system gets off kilter, you might start to drop things, you can't remember what you walked into a room for or what you were supposed to do today, or you're making a recipe you've made 10,000 times and you're forgetting ingredients at the store. These are all just indicators that your nervous system gets rocked because somebody pulls away. Abandoning your routines to be available. This is a sign of desperation, you guys. Again, none of this, none of this is for shame. None of this is for you to cringe or anything. So raise your hand high and say, Yep, this is me. I'm recognizing it. Good for you. I would be applauding you. I would be high-fiving, high tening you fist bump, belly bump. Do the hustle. Anytime somebody recognizes something inside themselves, I am thrilled because I know what's going to come next. If they're willing, if they're if they are willing to show up to the next parts of the journey. Awareness is key. Awareness is key. All right. The next one is pretending you're okay with behavior when you're not. Done this too. Pretending that it was okay when they were doing something or acting in some kind of a way, and and and just sort of like, ha ha ha, just sort of brushing it off and acting like it's no big deal. Here's another one is staying in relationships or environments where you feel more anxious than peaceful. This is a big one. Like this particular person environment is creating a lot of anxiety for me. I don't feel peaceful, I don't feel at rest here, I don't feel safe here, but yet I'm staying. And shockingly, and I'm going to be getting into this, it's even though we feel unsafe, having the person or being in the environment creates a sense of quote unquote connection that in this very weird, swirly-twirly line can make us feel quote unquote safe. I know, I understand. Needing constant validation to feel safe or accepted in your relationships. And that is looking for somebody to fill all those voids inside and wanting them to say, you know, I love you, and calling you at a certain time and acting a certain way and showing up like this, and compliments and all these things just to feel safe. Now, there is something to be said for someone being consistent in a relationship and someone expressing and being open and vulnerable with their feelings, such as I love you, and us receiving compliments. Those type of things are really part of a natural, healthy relationship. But when it goes sideways is when we're desperate for it and we know we are. We're like we're waiting and we're hoping and we're pushing for, and we might be even fishing for those type of things. And the last one is you fear being alone more than you fear being unhappy. This is a big one. You fear being alone, you want somebody no matter what. You don't care if it doesn't look bad, you don't care if it's unhappy, but the idea of not having a person is very threatening. It feels worse to you than actually being unhappy or being single. So relationship desperation is essentially an emotional state of needing connection so urgently, so right now, that you stop choosing relationships, right? Being in your power position, and you start clinging to them instead. It's when the fear of being alone becomes louder than your standards, your intuition, and sometimes even your self-respect. So, first of all, all of you who've been sending up the emojis, I want everybody to join hands here in unity and send up all your claps again one last time. Let's all see that we all relate to this. We've all been there. Maybe we're there right now. So go ahead, you guys. Let's light up the screen with a bunch of balloons. I am, I am for sure over here. There we go. Yes, I'm doing the same, you guys. I have been in these positions as well. And I don't feel any shame for any of this. None of it. Because I know now what I know, and I know what was contributing to it. And that's what's so important here, you guys, is to understand there's a biological reason. There's something that's happening behind the scenes here that you might be unaware of. And again, let's put us all on an equal playing field. Desperation is rampant. It is epidemic. It is epidemic. Same thing as shame and unworthiness. It is an epidemic proportion. So to single yourself out and to say, I'm an idiot, I'm a jerk, I'm embarrassed, now I'm even more unlovable than I thought I was in the first place, is only going to set you back. No, you got to look at this like, oh, I just got diagnosed with strep throat. I need an antibiotic to clear it. This is it. Do you judge yourself when you get a cold? You know, oh, I got a cold. Are you like, oh, I'm the worst person on the planet? Shame on me. Everybody gets colds, right? For the most part. To judge ourselves in this way is only going to set us back. So if you have noticed these things in yourself and you're in a safe position to do so, I want you to, and I'm really inviting you to do this, wrap your arms around yourself. What? Your right arm up over your left shoulder, your left arm across your belly. And I would love for you to hold yourself right now and just say, I see you. It's okay. You're normal. You're human. There's nothing wrong with you. It's all good. I got you, boo. And I'm learning some stuff about us right now so that I can heal from this. Give yourself a big squeeze. Close your eyes while you're doing it. I really hope that you guys are doing that. Okay. Desperation often whispers to us. It is the driving force behind us that says, any connection or attention is better than no connection and attention. Like I said, I'm going to say it 8,000 times during this conversation. I totally, totally get this. And I remember a time when I did this when I was 21 years old, when I was like on, I call it the mad hunt. I was on the mad hunt for a boyfriend. I was just, I had to find a boyfriend. And I was doing things that were out of alignment with self-respect. I'm not going to say I was throwing myself at people sexually because that's I didn't I had to find someone first. That might have came later. But the point is, is that I was looking and looking, I was looking high and low. It was on the forefront of my brain all the time. And looking back, I remember it was just, I just needed attention. I needed connection. I needed somebody to love me. I needed somebody to tell me I was okay. Where self-respect on the opposing side of this says only real connection is connection. Only true, honest to goodness, real connection that comes through two people showing up because they want to be there on an equal playing field and they enjoy us and love us. That's only the real connection that there is. Like I mentioned, desperation shows up as chasing instead of allowing. It shows up as accepting behavior that you know is harmful or trying to earn love through overgiving, fixing, or shrinking yourself. What does that sound like? Dun dun dun. People pleasing, right? That's what it is. So the relationship, if you're in one, it stops being about mutual connection and starts being about avoiding rejection, abandonment, or emptiness that potentially could come. If you're not in one, it's about wanting to secure someone, something somehow, and accepting all these unacceptable factors just to feel like we're connection. So I'm going to go into the core. There's a core reason here, and it's not a big, long, complicated reason. And that's what's really important for you guys to understand. It's not super hard to wrap your head around, but I also need you to know it does not need to be complicated. I say this all the time: the healing journey is not complicated. Recognizing things is not complicated. The causes behind certain behaviors is not complicated. The cures are not complicated. It's just we need consistency. We need to be able to work at a consistent pace toward one thing with the tools and techniques that I'm going to share with you today that will cure this. It's the antibiotic. And I'm telling you this because I lived it. I saw it, a miracles came from it. My knee-jerk auto-response conditioned patterns flipped on their ear. I was watching myself turn into a different person in a positive, centered, grounded, and more healthy way. And that's what made me stop in my tracks one day and say, What on earth am I doing to myself in a good way? What is happening here? And I realized what was happening. I'll tell you that. So at its core, relationship desperation is a painful belief that you are incomplete, unsafe, or unworthy. That's what's at its core. It's a painful belief that you are incomplete, unsafe, unacceptable, unworthy, not valuable, dispensable, disposable. All of those feelings and all those wrapped up in one is basically unworthiness. Okay? That is what's at its core. People become desperate for relationships when they're trying to fill a void. A void of loneliness, the self-worth I was talking about, a fear of being alone, or even just this undying need for validation, which to me is unworthiness linked. So relationships become, drumroll Pete, please, more about survival instead of true, genuine connection. Who can relate? Send them up, you guys. Relationships feel more about survival. And some of you might be listening to this right now and thinking to yourself, dang, I didn't know this, or this is making sense, but I need to ponder this more because this might be the first time that you're hearing it. That's okay. You might be not automatically jumping on board with this because you're like, is that what's going on? I'm not really sure. I need to think about this. For those of you who are in that position, I've done this myself with many, many a talk that I've listened to for myself on my own healing journey, growth journey. Listen to this conversation again. Hit that arrow button at the bottom and send it to you. Send it to yourself. When I am learning something new, I will listen to a conversation, two, three, four, five. I've listened to one upwards of 10 times. Not like all in a row. I'd listen to it and I'd refer back to it the next day. Or, you know, a couple days later, I'd do the same thing and I would just keep listening to it. And then the next time I'd listen to it, I'd get something different. And then the next time something different. And the pieces and parts started coming together. And I've said this before you all, and this is pretty cool, is that sometimes healing can happen just through awareness. Isn't that wild? Just through awareness. We we become, it depends where we're at in our journey and how how deep this runs for us, where you know how great it is on the on the continuum. Is it a mild or is it an extreme? But sometimes just having the awareness will stop the behavior from happening again, which I think is really, really super cool. The problem is with desperation is that unknowingly, unconsciously, we will assign another individual or a group of individuals, depending on your situation, the job of filling this empty void inside of you. As Maya, I don't get her name right, Maya. She's got a great podcast, by the way. On YouTube now. She's an actor. She was in Beaches. She was a child actor in Beaches. And she was the for five years she was Blossom on the show Blossom. I happened upon her podcast one day. And oh, it's just so many great things that they talk about on there. She also, I think she has a PhD in neuroscience now, which is pretty freaking cool. But anyway, I forgot what I was going to tell you about her. Oh, God, Chris. Some typical Kristen. Anyway, oh, she calls it a God-size hole. She calls it the God-sized hole inside of ourselves. That's why I mentioned that. But I call it the void, the worthiness cup. It's empty. So we're looking for somebody to fill this void. And unlowingly, we assign it to somebody. Okay, you gave me a little bit of attention. Now it's your job. Now I'm going to chase after you, follow you, want you to fill me, want your attention, want your love, want your thing. And if I can get any tiny remote scrap of that, then I'm going to feel okay. But here's the problem, everybody. I'm going to feel okay momentarily. The problem is that that little scrap of love, approval, acceptance, attention goes in through the top of our worthiness cup and flies right out the bottom. That's why it's not sustainable. That's why we don't feel better long term. Because once again, drum roll, they're not the cure. That means we are looking for something outside of us, external of us, to become our source. It's never the cure. And although the outside world might have made us feel this inadequacy because we come here whole and perfect. We know nothing other than our divinity and our true worth when we come here. When we pop, our little soul pops into a body. But over time, experiences, traumas, dramas, abuse, comparisons, whatever it might be, our worthiness cup starts to empty. And then we think, oh my God, I need to go find someone, something external to me to fill this worthiness cup. So we make other people our source. Who can relate to making somebody else your source? Yes, awesome. I love your honesty here today, you guys. Excellent job. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. I will say that at this stage in the game, I can feel if somebody's trying to make me their source. I can feel it. I'm a very, very loving human being. I'm very complimentary. I'm touchy. This is just how I am normally. Can I give people like a smile big when I see people? You know, I love people. But for some people, they can now, they're like, oh, I love the way it feels to be around her. I love the way Kristen feels. So I'm going to push into her world because I need this from her. I can feel when that happens. I didn't used to. I used to think that was somebody that really liked and loved me. But later, what happened was at some point when I stopped filling their void, I became the bad guy. When I started having a boundary, or when I had other things to do, or when I called them out on some crappy behavior that they were doing, all of a sudden I'm the bad guy. So as long as I was filling their worthiness cup, they were in. But the second that I had boundaries or needed to talk to them about their behavior, whatever, next thing you know, I'm the worst thing on the planet. I know that now. So now I'm very careful with people who are trying to suck off of me or to make me their source. I won't let people make me their source. This doesn't mean I unfriend them. It means I'm just mindful about it now. So consider that if you're someone who's listening to this and you have somebody who has made you their source. And they are, they're hyper-vigilant, they're watching everything you say or do. This is mostly in a romantic relationship. It can really get this can be in friendships as well. But it depends like the level of closeness in how often you see them and also in proximity. There's a lot that goes into this. So use your intelligence. I know you're smart. So we're going to talk about how the nervous system is taught. If a caregiver was unpredictable, let's say they were loving one day, they were distant the next, they approved of us some days, other days they didn't. Or it could be that they were just straight out and out, never approving, okay? A child's nervous system will constantly stay on alert. And it's going to be scanning all the time. Am I okay? Am I okay right now? Are they going to leave? Do they love me? Do they not love me? Did I do something wrong? So that's what the nervous system starts to scan. To survive, the system adapts. Because the brain doesn't know, like, oh my gosh, daddy is having a bad day, or daddy's stressed out, or daddy has a drinking problem, or mommy, I'm just this is not gender specific. The child's brain can't do all that. It just notices I feel safe today, I don't feel safe. Connection equals safety, disconnection equals danger to them. Over time, the system is going to adapt and it turns into things like people pleasing, overexplaining, hyper-attuning to other people's moods, abandoning ourselves, disrespecting ourselves, not caring about ourselves, putting ourselves last, all of these things. Each time that connection was restored after the body got the message that something was wrong, the body's going to feel a little bit of relief. So, you know, instead of having this constant, safe environment where connection is continual, you know, moods don't rock anybody's worlds, you know, that nice, lovely environment, there's this up and down, pointy, spiky kind of environment that happens. And so the times when it's the downshift and that connection is restored to the person, even if it's just momentarily, it could be hours, it could be just a couple days. That is where the body had a moment of relief. So guess what it's looking for? It continues to look for it. Again, this is not weakness, this is biology. This is the way we were trained, the way the brain was trained back in the day. This is why I say continually do not fault yourself if you've had desperate behaviors. Do not. There's something that happened in your past that contributed to it. The low sense of self-worth, which by the way, can come from this hot and cold parenting or abuse. I mean, like I said, unworthiness is always the core of everything. It really is. But this can be one of the pathways to lead to that because if we're not getting that consistent nurturing, now we're like, I must not be worthy. Or we're getting yelled at or uh punished for things that were teeny tiny. Oh, I'm not good. I'm not a good boy, I'm not a good girl. But then there were moments of those hits, and so we're like, okay, I better adjust all of who I am because I want to feel that relief. So I'm going to chase somebody in some capacity so that I can feel those momentary feelings of relief. And that's exactly the problem. They're momentary. They're momentary. Okie dokie, we are bringing up Julie. Julie Beck channeled me, and she is going to be talking about limerence and what that means. I think that's a really important part of this. Hey Julie, welcome.

Julie 29:44

Uh, for years, I think, you know, because I'd had such a kind of traumatic time, you know, lots of things going on, lots of drama and stuff in my life. I uh was on the lookout for what I thought was the other half of me. Now I kind of knew what that would mean to me. I'd be happy if I had somebody who was understanding, I'd have some, I'd be happy if I had somebody who was loving and kind and deep. I'd be happy. And so what I did, what Liberist does, is it is me projecting those things into people, you know, into people that I'd see in the street. I would create um this persona for them that wasn't them, it was a story that I wanted to believe myself. So what happened with it was um obviously they're not going to be this image that I've created in my mind, but I would be desperate, desperate for contact, desperate to be around, and desperate for some kind of um interaction. Uh whether it be a conversation, a look, a hello. I mean, a simple hello for me while I was suffering like this meant everything in the world. It meant that I was special because they said hello to me, they acknowledged my existence. So, you know, I started to fill up on that. That was great. But on the other hand of the scale, when they didn't talk to me, I would wonder what I'd done wrong. Or you and it the blame always came back to me doing something wrong, and that they were still this person I created in my mind. They weren't just being an ordinary person that they are false and all. You know, I created in my mind the idea, and when the idea didn't come to fruition, I suffered terribly, and I mean, I suffered, uh, i.e., not eating, it was such a physical grieving, if you will, you know, for me. Then when I did get into a relationship, and with this bubble being popped, I would say, well, I can handle this. This, you know, this kind of behavior that might not have actually been acceptable if I'd have felt full myself, if I'd have felt value in myself at the time, because this is where it all comes from. It comes from not valuing yourself as an individual in the way that you are, as a human being, as somebody who does uh have successes and also has learning experiences, which I call failures. But it's it's it's not valuing yourself and looking for those things in another person to be valued. So if this person can show me value, I'm interested because I've got none in myself. So when people treated me badly, I would say, Well, I can handle this. This is this is gonna bring out the strength in me, this is gonna bring out the resilience in me. This is this is how I'm gonna show the world that I can keep this relationship together. No, still again battering myself again in a completely different form, not giving myself that beautiful, home seated, peaceful value. That's what it's about. And I think uh my kind of learning curve of it was when I did eventually say to myself, had a conversation and I said, I don't need to put up with this, I don't have to handle this, I don't have to paint people, I want to see people how they actually are, and to stop telling myself this story and looking for something outside of myself that is actually there anyway. It's inbuilt to every single human being, this this space of peacefulness, this wholeness, you know, yeah, and that is the thing that I kind of worked my way around to. The experiences I had from that point going forward reflected exactly that. I respected myself and I love myself, and others started to do because I yes, right there, Julie.

Kristen 34:26

Excellent, thank you so much for that. Absolutely. For those of you who might be wondering what limerence is, and that's it, this is a term that is fairly new to me in the last couple of years. I'd never heard of it before. But what it is is an intense involuntary emotional state of infatuation with another person, marked by obsessive thoughts, longing for reciprocation, and emotional highs and lows based on how that person responds to you. It's more than a crush and different from healthy love. Here's some key features of limerence constantly thinking about the other person. I call it obsessing, idealizing them, and overlooking red flags, emotional spikes from small interactions, like I mentioned this earlier. A text can make your whole day. Anxiety about whether they feel the same, fantasizing about future scenarios, craving reassurance and signs of interest, fear of rejection, feeling almost unbearable. Limerinth is largely driven by the nervous system and the brain chemistry, like I've touched on already. The dopamine, the novelty, the intermittent reinforcements. It's not by true intimacy or knowing the person deeply. Healthy love grows from mutual safety, consistency, and reality. Think about that. Healthy love grows from mutual safety, consistency, and reality, where limerence grows from uncertainty, fantasy, and emotional intensity. Here's the most important part, and this is to fill the void yourself. This is the cure. It's not a super sexy cure, it's not a complicated cure, it's not like some amazing formula that we've never heard of before cure. And that's why people can often dismiss it and say, no, no, no, it's gotta be a little bit more complicated or more sexy, or it's gotta be a little bit more complicated than what you're saying, KB. No, it's not. When I tell you that these are the things I put into place and I watched myself morph into a more grounded, more solid, more worthy, more knowing of my value, this is what I did. And I'm not the only person that talks about this. I'm giving you the cure, you guys. I'm handing it to you on a silver platter, and you haven't paid me a penny for it. Because I love you and I care and I know how powerful it is. The first thing is grace and forgiveness of self. This heals shame. Shame contributes to the void. Shame is part of the void. Shame is the feeling that there's something wrong with us. When we start to give ourselves forgiveness for all the things that we've done in the past, we give ourselves grace for being human. We're gentle with ourselves on this pattern, or I'm sorry, on this journey. We start to fill, it's like someone takes a shovel and starts filling in the shame void. It just, and then they start packing it. You know how you pack it with a flat, flathead edge shovel and you pack the back of it, the hole you're filling in. This is what happens. It's fascinating. When that shame void is filled, that heals our desperation. Because when we're feeling like there's something wrong with us, boom, we want somebody to tell us that we're not. And we don't want them to tell us just once. We want them to tell us over and over and over and over and over again with their actions and their words. That's a lot of weight to put on another person. The next one is compassion and acceptance of self. Compassion. That's about being kind, gentle, and understanding with yourself. It goes hand in hand with grace. Grace, I think, could be maybe under the compassion umbrella. Grace to me is saying, I'm allowing myself to be flawed, I'm allowing myself to make mistakes, hence why I coupled it with forgiveness, where compassion is, I'm going to be gentle to me, I'm going to be kind to me, I'm going to be consistent to me. I'm going to be to me what I needed from those elders and authority figures and caregivers. I'm going to give this to me. And the acceptance part is accepting and loving all parts of yourself. All the parts of yourself. All those parts that you think are flawed, all those parts that you think that are not okay, that are not acceptable, that someone said is wrong with you. Your eyes are too far apart, they're too close together, your ears are big, your ears are small, you're you're too loud, your voice, you're this, you're that, your weight, ba-pa-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba. There's always somebody that's gonna have an opinion. What your void is looking for, the cure, the antidote, is for you to love and accept all parts of your beautiful, beautiful being, personality, and body. When you love all of you, guess what? Boom. The desperation is cured. I'm telling you guys, this works like magic. And the last one, these are three of my self-love tenants, by the way, is supportive and loving self-talk. This is understanding that you're talking to the single most precious being in your life. The most precious being in your life is you, and you are being heinous to them. No. When you start talking to and about yourself as if you love you more than anything in the world, you are the most precious, precious being. You're going to fill the void. Grace and forgiveness of self, compassion of acceptance of self, supportive and loving self-talk. And the other two self-love tenets, they're important too. But in this, in this, these particular, these first three, these are really about filling the worthiness cup. They're filling that void that's contributing to disperation. The other two, just for giggles, is respect and protection of self. And that means we self-respect and we self-protect. This doesn't mean armored and guarding uh armoring or guarding ourselves. This is means we have a protective barrier around us, and we're very, very careful about who or what we allow into our space and what people are allowed to say and do to us or around us. And the last one is self-care. And I'm just throwing these in because they are part of the five self-love tenets. And self-care is really tending to your needs. What do I need right now? Mind, body, spirit. This might feel like a full-time job. Everything I'm telling you guys, it's not. I didn't spend all day, every single day in some type of um pose working on this stuff, or hours and hours and hours and hours of struggling over a pad of paper and pen. I did it as things came up. I did it, I did it in my car, I did it in the shower, I did it on walks. Was I in my car in the shower of walks and walks all day long every day? Nope. I had kids, I had parents, I had a lot of things coming and going. I was building a business again, I was doing hair, you name it. The most amazing thing ever is this is so powerful. This is the most powerful cure that when you start to implement this, you're gonna start to feel different immediately. Your whole world may not have changed. You might not know your complete worth yet. You might still stumble a little bit and do a little texting or act a little desperate or chase a little bit here or whatever. But you guys know that I was obsessed. I was hung up on a guy for years after our breakup. We dated for what, I don't know, a couple months, six months. I don't even know. This is in my book, The Recovering People Pleaser, this story. I called him Jacob in my book. It was when I really started to apply this stuff to myself. And I understood why I was feeling still like so connected to him. And in my particular case, for some reason, my brain attached to him as um security, which is safety, but in kind of in a different way, it wasn't really in a worthiness way, so to speak. It was more in a secure way because my whole world had been rocked. But when I started to give to myself what I thought I wanted from him or what I was trying to get from him unconsciously, the obsession stopped, the overthinking stopped, the wishing, the praying, the desiring, the wanting, everything became clear because I started giving it to myself. I really want you all to understand that you can cure this feeling. You can cure this behavior. It is absolutely doable. It's going to take consistency, it's going to take dedication, and oftentimes that doesn't come until we're sick and tired of being sick and tired. We think we can float through life. Well, you know, it's not. That's bad yet. What if you can cut this off at the past? You know, you have a little tiny infection on your on your finger, a little cut on your finger, and starting to get infected, but you're like, Yeah, it's not that bad yet. I'm not gonna clean it. Then it starts to move up a little bit on your finger. It's not that bad yet. It's only my pinky. I'm still functional in life. So I'm not gonna clean it. Or get an antibiotic. Then it moves up your hand. Then it moves up your arm. Next thing you know, you got sepsis. Are you gonna wait for that? Are you gonna start to apply some simple practices and tools to yourself right now that will help you heal yourself in the most foundational, grounded, self-worth, self-respect, sovereign, return to self kind of a way. Thank you so much for joining me today. As always, it is my ultimate pleasure and joy that I get to spend Monday through Friday with you for an hour. I love your contributions. I love your honesty. I love your self-awareness. I love your contributions here as a community. It warms my spirit, it warms my soul, and I am so incredibly grateful, and I mean this, that I get to commune with you guys because you guys are amazing, beautiful, loving human beings. You deserve the world and you deserve everything that this life has to offer. But just like me, we gotta get out of our own way first. We gotta heal those pieces and those parts, those voids inside of us. We gotta heal that. We have everything it takes to do so. And I 1000% believe in you. I absolutely know that you have what it takes. You just have to be willing to put the effort forth to do so. So until next time, everybody, remember, you matter. You always have. You are loved more than you can possibly imagine. There's nothing wrong with you. You're not fatally flawed, you're not undeserving of love. You just need to learn to love yourself. All right, see you guys tomorrow.