Our 12 favorite techniques to get peace of mind
You want something bad. It feels like you can’t be happy if you don’t get it. In fact, without it, you can hardly breathe. The longing is so strong that it takes over whatever you are doing at that moment. Desperation makes you half-crazy, desperation makes you act from the point of fear. You wonder how to stop being desperate and become your normal self again.
Follow these 12 steps, and you will succeed. You will achieve that blissful state of inner peace
- Step away from whatever fuels your desperation.
- Don’t put yourself down. Don’t allow negative self-talk.
- Control your actions.
- Don’t trust your desperate thoughts.
- Shift your focus away from your wants.
- Find out more about who you are.
- Accomplice something new and unexpected.
- Stay focused on the present.
- Focus on the small things.
- Understand your desperation.
- Talk with someone.
- Try therapy as a way to become less desperate.
You don’t want to be desperate, that’s for sure
Logically you know that by squeezing someone too tight, you will push them away. No one wants to be responsible for another human’s emotional well-being. You certainly don’t want to be desperate. In this article, I will give you all the best tips on how to stop being desperate.
What is being desperate?
Desperation comes in many forms and makes you take many different actions. There are many situations when you can experience being desperate.
You might be desperate to find someone to love, or you act desperate when dating someone.
If you are too desperate in your relationship
You can be in a relationship and still be desperate. If this is the case, you have a much bigger need for your partner than they have for you. You always want more from them, and this big black need makes you desperate.
Check out our articles When you are the one who love the most and How to stop being jealous in a relationship.
Letting your emotions run wild
Being desperate is (as you probably already have concluded) about lack of self-love and lack of self-confidence. Being desperate is also about giving too much attention to whatever emotion you feel at that particular moment.
Hello crazy-town
Logically you probably know what’s the best way to act and that acting desperate will only destroy your inter-human relations. But being desperate is about being out of control; you just can’t help yourself.
Your intense emotions override your logic, and you end up acting like a crazy person.
How to stop being desperate when you are single
We all want love. We are all, in our own way, desperate for love. There is nothing strange with that since love is one of the most important parts of life. But to stop being desperate, you cannot regard love as the most important thing in life. Check out our text Accepting you will never find love, for a different view of love.
Put your focus back on yourself
If you repeatedly feel yourself focusing all your energy on the person you are dating, it’s time to take a break from dating.
Instead of dating and doing the romance roller coaster, put your focus on improving your own life. Ask yourself about your dreams and aspirations and the small steps you can take every day to achieve the unique life that you want to have for yourself.
1. Step away from the fire
If someone has an addictive personality regarding something, it’s better to step away from their poison of choice. Take a long break if you get too sucked into the whole dating circus. Don’t fall in love.
Finding love is not the only way to give your life meaning.
You can try dating again when you have gotten a breather and discovered how to exist without dating. If you fall back into your old behavior, take another dating hiatus. Keep repeating until you are happy with your life regardless of your romantic situation.
2. Don’t put yourself down
Dating is nerve-wracking. You are constantly torn between hope and desperation. You are falling in love only to be cruelly rejected. I know, trying to find someone is exhausting and bound to bring out the most desperate version of yourself.
So, don’t be too hard on yourself when you act desperate. If you send a desperate message, don’t beat yourself up. Be as kind to yourself as you would be to your best friend.
Don’t call yourself desperate
Don’t indulge in negative self-talk, such as thinking that you are needy and clingy. Refrain from calling yourself desperate. Don’t be upset with yourself when you act in a less-than-ideal way.
Practice being kind to yourself
Instead, tell yourself that life is a learning process, and right now you are working towards being happier with yourself exactly as you are.
You are not desperate; you are someone who does the best with the conditions they were given.
If you are in a relationship, don’t be upset with yourself when you act in a desperate way. Negative self-talk will only make you more desperate and needy. Instead, accept this side of you as something you are actively working on.
3. Control your actions
Your emotions are probably all over the place, and most often, they are in a bad place. You feel the urge to do half-crazy things to try and get another person to where you want them to be.
You can’t control your mind; whatever emotions you feel, you just have to accept them. Feel the emotion, but don’t allow the emotion to lead to physical actions.
Because what you can control is your actions.
You are in control
When you realize that your action is something that is fully within your control, you will increasingly get better at controlling the action. Separate the emotion and the action. The emotion is fine, the action might not be.
Decide which actions are ok
Control your actions by not indulging in negative desperate behavior. Step away from social media stalking. Don’t text or call when you are in a bad place. Whenever you feel the need to use your phone as an outlet for your desperation, force yourself to put the phone away.
You control the action.
Connect with nature
Go for a walk or do some other form of physical activity. Hitting the gym or going for a long run is actually the best way to stop being desperate. When your mind is speeding out of control, you can ground yourself by connecting with your body.
4. Don’t trust your desperate thoughts
The bottom line of being desperate is that your mind plays a trick on you. When you are acting desperate, you are not acting from reality as it is.
Instead, you are acting from your skewed negative perception of reality. If you have a relationship, you might think your partner is moving away from you. When you are dating someone, you might think they are your only chance at happiness. Those thoughts are simply not true.
Your thoughts are not a true reflection of reality
Don’t trust your view of reality and your conclusions. Don’t accept your desperate thoughts as facts. Question yourself and your desperation.
The more proof you can come up with that your thoughts are not the truth, the more you will take away the power those thoughts have over you.
5. Shift your focus away from your wants
Being desperate is about wanting things from another person and wanting things from life itself. But neither another person nor life owes you anything.
If you have a partner, he has the right to stop loving you and leave you. If you are single, you are not entitled to a partner, you might spend the rest of your life alone.
Deal with your fears
Accept this outcome and make peace with it. Ask yourself what you would need from your life if you knew you would never meet anyone. When we face our greatest fears, when we deal with them, we become stronger and we become less desperate.
Fulfill your own needs
Will you need a house or a dog, or even a baby? Try giving yourself what you actually need and don’t wait around for someone else to give it to you.
You probably had a romantic view of how you hoped your life would turn out. We all do. But most people don’t get everything they want for themselves. When you are dependent on someone else for a specific outcome, you will always be desperate.
So, every time you feel a strong want for something, try and satisfy that want yourself.
Life doesn’t owe you a specific outcome
For example, you want to spend time with your partner, or you want your latest crush to reach out to you, acknowledge the want and step away from it.
What do you need?
Ask yourself instead what you can do to make your life emotionally fulfilling without needing anything from another specific person.
It’s OK to need love from your friends, family, or partner, but when a specific person is the only one who can satisfy that need, the situation becomes toxic.
6. Instead, find out more about who you are
Desperation often stems from a lack of self-knowledge. You don’t know what you want with your life. You don’t have a strong sense of direction.
Finding out those things takes time and effort. Oftentimes we go through life without having a clear answer to what is the meaning of our life.
Give meaning to your own life
But you have to give meaning to your life, day by day. You have to decide what is important to you and what you want to achieve. Both on a specific day and in the long term.
This way, you become less dependent on other people to give you validation and thus, less desperate.
Stop fueling your desperate thoughts and wants and look deep within you to discover the reason you have for your existence.
Set the intention of finding out something about yourself you didn’t previously know.
7. Accomplice something new and unexpected
Now that you know a bit more about yourself, it is time to take that knowledge and put it into practice. The best way to find out what you are capable of is to accomplice something.
For example, train to run a marathon, save up money for a journey you have always wanted to take. Or learn how to climb, or how to dance. Follow your secret desire.
Achievements lead to self-confident
Basically, pick one activity that allows you to put effort and time into it and then come out on the other side with a tangible result. This way, you will re-shift your focus to achieving something.
To be able to achieve a goal is also the best way to increase your self-confidence.
When you achieve something, you learn to trust yourself, and self-confidence is about the trust you have in yourself. So this step is really a double win and something you shouldn’t skip.
8. Stay focused on the present
All of our worries are about the future or the past. If you are desperate, you are too much in the future, or you are overanalyzing the past. You are trying to figure out what the future will hold for you by studying the past.
Every time you feel desperate, examine what you are really thinking about. Examples of this can be;
“Will he call or not?”
“Will he fall in love with me or not?”
“Will he leave me or not?”
All of those thoughts and other similar thoughts have in common that they are all about your concern for the future. To think about the future is a survival mechanism, but when it comes to making us happy, this mechanism does us no favors.
To stop being desperate, let go of your future. Don’t allow yourself to speculate about what will happen in the future.
Describe something in front of you
Every time you have an anxious thought about the future, bring your mind back to the present.
Observe something in front of you and describe it to yourself. Use all your senses. Breathe deeply and shift your focus to the things you can hear and see right now. Stay present.
9. Focus on the small things
Small habits make up our life.
Thus, when you ask how to stop being desperate, instead of trying to curb your emotions, put your focus on small daily things you can control. Those things are the simple basic things in life, but they also take up the majority of our existence.
Try to put more effort into them and do your best with them.
Examples of those things are:
- Go for a long walk.
- Put away your phone for a couple of hours.
- Exercise and eat healthy.
- Grow a small garden.
- Sleeping for as long as you need to feel rested.
- Read a couple of pages in a book that gives you joy.
- Start a meditation practice that suits you.
- Listen to the people around you and focus on them rather than always being focused on yourself and your problems.
Every one of those suggestions is something you can control. If you can’t manage to do them every day, try to do them once a week. To stop being desperate, focus on the small thing you can control and improve your life in the smallest way possible.
10. Understand your desperation
Desperation is not only a feeling that should be killed; it’s also a clue about who you are and what’s going on in your life.
That itchy unsettling feeling when you miss someone is a feeling that is trying to tell you something about yourself. Harvest your desperation. Listen to your desperation.
Make a plan to curb your desperation
Desperation tells you that everything in your life is not like you wish them to be. Find out more about those things and make a plan for how you should improve those things.
Are you in the right relationship?
If you have a partner and still feel desperate, you have to figure out if your partner’s behavior triggers your desperation. You can be desperate, but there can also be something wrong with your relationship.
Check out our article How do you know if you are dating the right person, for more advice on the subject.
11. Talk with someone
If you are in a relationship and feel desperate, you should bring up the subject with your partner. Don’t feel ashamed. Most people know what it is like to feel desperate.
Tell your partner about your feelings. Talking will set you free.
This is especially true if your partner is kind and understanding. Desperation is like a troll under your bed. When you bring him out into the daylight, he will not look as scary anymore.
Talk with a friend
If you are single, reaching out to a trusted friend is often the best way to stop feeling desperate. Ask for her (or his) input.
A friend will see things more clearly and will be able to help you point out faults in your reasoning. She will be empathic and understanding, and you will feel better and less desperate.
You are responsible for your feelings
One little caveat; be aware that talking about your desperation is walking a fine line.
Be careful around this step, because if you give your desperation too much space, it will grow, just like any addiction.
If you have a relationship and are already talking a lot about how you feel, stop talking.
Deal with your issues by using the other ten techniques. Take responsibility for your feelings, and don’t make your partner the hostage of your desperation.
Dont always feed the desperation
When you are with friends, don’t spend all your time talking about your latest crush or you’re dating dilemmas. If you give your desperation too much air, you allow it to define who you are, and as a result, you become your desperation.
12. Try therapy as a way to become less desperate
Desperation in relationships comes from your previous experiences.
You are acting, not from reality as it is right now, but from things that have happened to you in the past.
Working through your memories and earlier experiences is best done with the help of therapy. This way, you will become better at separating what’s really going on from your skewed desperate perception of what’s going on.
You will become calmer and more self-confident.
Work through the past
If you are not in a position to have therapy, you can still work through earlier experiences by thinking about them. Examine what kind of life lessons you learned from them and question if your conclusions were the right ones.
A Final word
Desperation is an ugly beast. The good news is that you can definitely learn how to become less desperate.
How to stop being desperate is all about self-knowledge and the small step towards improving yourself as a human. This is nothing you should regard as a big ugly fight because self-improvement is actually a lot of fun.
By becoming a better version of yourself, you will get more enjoyment out of your life, and you will be able to be a more positive presence in other people’s life. Your experience with desperation will make you more emphatic toward other people’s flaws.
Fight your desperation with kindness.
Moa Ailert is the founder and editor-in-chief of Her Brilliant Friend.
She has a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and plenty of insight into human psychology from traveling and living in different places around the world.
Moa is currently based in Portugal where she has a guesthouse; Villa dos Irmaos.
She has various websites, among others Ericeira Insider, but Her brilliant friend is her true passion project.
