With the prevalence of our celebrity culture just about everyone can name a celebrity that they have a crush on. However, sometimes those celebrity crushes can go too far to the point where the admirer has lost their sense of pragmatism and reality. While the person may not be dangerous, an obsession with their celebrity crush can be detrimental to their social development and finding a healthy relationship.
Here are some things to watch for to see if you or a friend’s celebrity crush has gone too far:
First off when it comes to celebrity crushes, people will tend to fantasize about somehow meeting the celebrity, falling in love with them, and marrying them. (Alternatively sometimes the obsession takes the form of the person believing they’re going to become the celebrity’s best friend.) As long as it remains a fantasy there’s nothing wrong with it but if you find yourself making plans to somehow meet the celebrity and get them to fall in love with you, that’s the point where it’s crossed over into an unhealthy obsession.
The odds of this ever happening are almost non-existent. If you or someone you know feels that way you may want to arrange sessions with a counselor, psychologist, or psychiatrist. Otherwise, you or the person you know will waste an enormous amount of time, emotion, and years chasing after someone who likely doesn’t know you or your friend exist.
A constructive exercise you can do to help move past such an obsession is to simply list the qualities that make the particular celebrity attractive. Next, see if those are qualities are ones you or your friend would find attractive in a prospective mate. (Though please try to avoid simply focusing on someone who just looks like the celebrity as that will just be a continuation of the obsession only you’ll be now focusing on a lookalike.) If you’re able to reach that stage you can then move on to seeing if there is someone that you or your friend might find through a dating service whom would have a lot of these qualities that you find attractive.
If you find yourself reviewing what your celebrity crush said or wrote before making a decision, you may have crossed over into an unhealthy obsession. It’s one thing to look up to someone who has achieved success as a role model and to learn about their beliefs and philosophies, but it is quite another to consistently check first ‘what the celebrity would do’ before you make a decision.
It is vital for everyone to be able to trust their own instincts in making everyday decisions without feeling the need to constantly see what someone else would do. Your celebrity crush is just as human as you; they just happen to have a job that places them in the public eye. That doesn’t make them better or worse than you and it doesn’t make their decision making abilities any greater. Celebrities are just as fallible as everyone else, so trust in your own decision making skills.
If you find yourself feeling anger towards a celebrity that is persistent this may be another sign. A celebrity lives their life like anyone else making decisions they feel are best for them and their lives. To try and account what all those who admire them think is likely impossible; so odds are your celebrity crush will probably make a choice or a decision that you don’t approve of at some point. It’s okay to talk with your friends and say you feel it was a mistake what the celebrity did, but to actively express anger towards the celebrity almost implies that the decision they made was somehow personally against you. That is just not rational and if it continues it is recommended you seek out a counsellor, psychologist, or psychiatrist to speak to.
Another case where an obsession on a celebrity crush may have become a bit unhealthy is if you have patterned your entire life after the celebrity. Your house is a virtual shrine to the celebrity, the only clothes you wear are ones that are virtual copies of what the celebrity wears, you cut your hair like the celebrity, you have plastic surgery to look like the celebrity, and you change how you speak so you sound like the celebrity.
Everyone takes little bits that they think are cool that a celebrity uses or does and applies them to their own lives. That’s okay because in the process they make the thing their own. That’s part of being a fan of a particular celebrity. However, when it reaches the point where you or your friend’s identity is subsumed by trying to transform into a virtual copy of the celebrity,that is the point where it’s gone too far. It’s healthy for kids and teenagers to have posters on their walls of celebrities that they have crushes on. That’s very common. However, if as they reach the age of adulthood it grows to what has been described earlier in this paragraph than it means the person may not develop their own identity and be able to socially interact in a healthy way.
If that happens it would a real shame because everyone is unique and special in some way and who they are as people should have a chance to blossom.
