HealthyGamerGG - Limerance & Why You Can't Get Them Out Of Your Head

Episode Date: September 29, 2025

Dr. K unpacks the intense, destabilizing experience of limerance—the obsessive, all consuming “crush” that can hijack your thoughts, emotions, and even your sense of self. He explains how limerance isn’t just infatuation, but a powerful mental state fueled by unmet needs, anxious attachment, fantasy coping, and even traits that overlap with OCD and ADHD. Drawing on Dorothy Tennov’s classic work and his own clinical insights, Dr. K explores how limerance forms, why it can last for years, and how it alters your motivational hierarchy pushing careers, relationships, and identity into the background. He also walks through the neuroscience, attachment roots, and even the spiritual lens that frames limerance as a karmic echo. Most importantly, he offers practical strategies to ground yourself, recognize mental distortions, and re-calibrate your nervous system. Topics include: What limerance really is and how it differs from normal attraction The “limer beast” that hijacks thought patterns and emotions How childhood attachment injuries create fertile ground for limerance Links to OCD, ADHD, and maladaptive daydreaming\ Why limerance thrives on uncertainty and fantasy, not reality The role of the sympathetic nervous system in fueling obsession Practical steps: reality-based thinking, therapy, nervous system regulation, and acceptance This episode blends psychology, neuroscience, and philosophy to help you understand why limerance happens—and how to take back control from it. HG Coaching : https://bit.ly/46bIkdo Dr. K's Guide to Mental Health: https://bit.ly/44z3Szt HG Memberships : https://bit.ly/3TNoMVf Products & Services : https://bit.ly/44kz7x0 HealthyGamer.GG: https://bit.ly/3ZOopgQ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Head to CarMax.com for details and get pre-qualified today. Want to drive? CarMax. Hey, y'all. Just a reminder that in addition to these awesome videos, we have a ton of tools and resources to help you grow and overcome the challenges that you face. We've got things like Dr. Kay's Guide to Mental Health, personalized coaching programs, and things like free community events and other sorts of tools to help you no matter where you are on your mental health journey. So check out the link in the description below and back to the video. Hey, chat. Welcome to the Healthy Gamer Gigi podcast. I'm Dr. Alokinogia, but you can call me Dr. K. I'm a psychiatrist gamer and co-founder of Healthy Gamer.

On this podcast, we explore mental health and life in the digital age, breaking down big ideas to help you better understand yourself and the world around you. So let's dive right in. So when we're a child, we learn about the world. We start to form expectations about the world. And so if I'm living in an environment where my parents are intermittently available to love me, and then this magical person shows up, I have a brief interaction, so I don't get to know them long enough to where the idealization can wear off.

I have this perfect interaction. What does my brain learn? My brain gravitates towards the things that fulfill my needs. So in this moment, my brain learns, holy crap, there are perfect people who exist out there. And this person can swoop in and this person can make everything perfect for me and they can exist. So limerance is the feeling of being in love, but in a way that is so overwhelming, debilitating, and unexpected, that it usually leaves you pretty messed up. You can kind of think about it as like crushing so hard that it kind of messes up your life, messes up your sense of identity. If y'all don't know what limerance is, congratulations, you really dodged a bullet.

And for those of you that have been struggling with limerence, hopefully today's video will help you all understand what it is, where it can. comes from, what the course of it is, so what to expect over time, as well as potentially how to resolve it. So this has been a hard video for me to make. So I'm a psychiatrist by training, and I trained at Harvard Medical School. And one of the key things that they taught us there is that, you know, you shouldn't like open your mouth unless you have data to back it up. And this is one of the biggest challenges with limerence, because first of all, it's not like a diagnosable condition. Most people don't even know what it is, but the experience of it is definitely on the rise. That's why we're kind of making this video.

And there isn't a whole lot of data about it, right? So people won't do studies on limerence. There aren't RCTs. So it's really hard to sort of synthesize information and be able to confidently say, this is what limerence is, this is what causes it. So I've been working on this video for about two years and I finally feel confident enough to share something with you.

So what we're going to start with, I think this is the best place to start, is in 1975, there was a woman named Dorothy Tenov who wrote a book about, Limerance and I think the opening lines of the book are so phenomenal it's like poetry all that I think the best way to describe what Limerance is is by just reading this off to y'all so you think I want you I want you forever now yesterday and always above all I want you to want me no matter where I am or what I am

doing I'm not safe from your spell at any moment in the image of your face smiling at me of your voice telling me you care of your hand in my mind may suddenly fill my consciousness, rudely pushing out all else. The expression, thinking of you, fails to convey either the quality or quantity of this unwilled mental activity. Obsessed comes closer, but leaves out the aching. A child is obsessed on Christmas Eve, but it's a happy prepossession full of excitement, curiosity, and expectation. This pre-possession is an emotional roller coaster that carries me from the peak of ecstasy to the depths of despair and back again. So this is what limerence is.

It is this sudden onset invasion of your mind by something. So there's another great paper that sort of describes this as a limber beast. So it's sort of like limerence is something that invades you. I almost think about it like a weird wolf where like you know, you're a normal human most of the time except when the limerence becomes active. And once you get invaded by the limer beast, you kind of transform into this weirwolf, where in your mind you have all of these obsessional thoughts. You're thinking about this person constantly. It's not even necessarily sexual in nature, which is a feature of limerence.

But you're you're fantasizing about this person, fantasizing about this person sort of being kind to you, this person reciprocating these feelings that you have. It's such an intense and overwhelming sense of like an obsessional love. And limerence is something that is incredibly destabilizing for people. So the weird thing about limerence is that it can strike people who are in the healthy romantic relationship. So there are people who are married who will like suddenly wake up one day, usually has a small interaction with someone else. And then like they'll their mind will just be invaded by thoughts of these people. You know, thinking about them all the time, thinking about like, you know, Does this person notice me? Do they like me? Will they give me? There's this weird ache that you have that you believe that only this other person can fulfill.

Hey, all, if you want more info on limerence, check out our limerence specific page. This is a new thing that we're doing that has a ton of information on limerence, links to additional videos and some info on our coaching program, if that's interesting to you. The link is in the description below, and now back to the video. So what are the features of this limer beast? I think once again, what we need to do is go straight back to Tenov's book, because I think she does the best. job of describing this. Limerance has certain basic components. Intrusive thinking about the object of your desire, the limerent object or L.O., who is a possible sexual partner, but not always sexual. Acute longing for reciprocation, this is huge. So you want the person to like, you have all these feelings and when you want more than anything else is their approval and their reciprocation. A dependency of mood on the L.O's actions, or more accurately, your interpretation of the

Ello's actions with respect to the probability of reciprocation. This is something we have to explain in a little bit more detail. So people who are limerent usually have, like their mood depends on the limerent object, the person that you're obsessive about. Your mood depends entirely on how they react to you. So you'll make maybe small overtures for their attention. And if they respond in a positive way, first of all, you read so much into it. So this person touched you lightly on the shoulder and then you're like, oh my God, this means that they notice me.

You feel amazing. There's this feeling of ecstasy, this feeling of walking on air. It's been described in Tenov's book as buoyancy. When the limerent object responds to you in some positive way, you feel buoyant. You feel amazing. And when they don't respond in a positive way or they respond in a neutral way, you're left with this incredible sense of achiness, like aching, deep and you. So your life becomes kind of tethered to your perception of their responses, and it feels like an incredible roller coaster. So another big feature of this is some fleeting and transient relief

from unrequited, limerent passion through vivid imagination of action by the LO that means reciprocation. The other thing that happens is not only you hypersensitive to what they do and what they say and overinterpret their actions, but when you are aching inside, there is oftentimes a fantasy life that you will construct. You will fantasize about this person touching your arm or this person doing this or texting you back or finally noticing the way that you feel about them, reciprocating your love saying, oh, I've been longing for you as well. So there's a big component of limerence is actually like the amount of time you spend in your head

fantasizing usually about small things. Sometimes they can be things like sexual fantasies. and what that means to you. So another big feature of limerence is that there are small actions that have big implications in your head. Another feature is a fear of rejection and sometimes incapacitating but always unsettling shyness in the LO's presence, especially in the beginning and whenever uncertainty strikes. There's also an intensification of the feeling through adversity, so this can be them not responding

to you. or when challenges arise in your life that are not related to the limerent object, oftentimes the limerence can intensify. There is an acute sensitivity to any act or thought or condition that can be interpreted favorably and an extraordinary ability to devise or invent reasonable explanations for why the neutrality that the disinterested observer might see is in fact a sign of a hidden passion in the limerent object. So the first is that there is a hypersensitivity to small signals from the limerent object. So that touch on the arm we kind of talked about. The other thing that tends to happen is that in your mind,

you will notice a lot of mental gymnastics to interpret all kinds of things. So if they don't respond to you, and the weird thing about limerent objects is that oftentimes you don't like necessarily know them well. It can kind of strike, like you can meet someone on the street and they can say, hey, how are you? And then suddenly you get invaded by the limerbeast. So it is very rare that limerent objects are, or I don't know if I should say very rare, but, you know, it's unusually common, I should say, that limerent objects are not people that you have very close relationships with. Sometimes you can develop limerance for someone like a coworker, someone that you do interact with. But the

whole point is that your, like, your experience of interactions with them carries a lot more meaning than what is externally observable. So even if they don't text you back or they say, hi, how are you? Or they don't say hi to you one morning. Your mind will be super focused on these small signals in interpreting those small signals. An aching of the heart. Like literally, this is like a physical sensation that people will have, especially when uncertainty is strong. Okay. A feeling of buoyancy, a feeling of walking on air when reciprocation seems evident. Another key feature of limerence is the roller coaster nature of it. The primary emotional experience of the people that I've kind of worked with who are limerent

is uncertainty. They're obsessing over, does this person notice me? Does this person not notice me? Have they stopped noticing me? Are they going to notice me more tomorrow? They're very, very uncertain and anxious in relation to that person. And like we said, they're kind of hyper-focused, maybe all, or hyper-focused on small things that this person does or doesn't do, which creates a lot of anxiety. And then also, when there is some form of reciprocation, you read a lot into it, and then you feel absolutely amazing.

So it's this kind of ping-ponging between intense uncertainty. Does this person notice you? Is it possible that they reciprocate? And small gestures that usually have, you know, tectonic effects on your inner. internal being. And when you feel uncertain, things become very, very painful. There's that achiness in your heart, et cetera. So the other thing that's really important about limerence is that there is a general intensity of feeling that leaves other concerns in the background. And so this we got to talk about, too, so there are other studies that kind of talk about this in a different way. So limerance also does something

called alter the motivational hierarchy of your life. And this is why I think that the limerbeast is such a good description of it. So if we think about like a normal human life, right? We have like all kinds of things that were motivated towards. Like so I want to do well in my job. I want to do well in my romantic relationship. I want to take care of my body. I want to have fun.

And so we have this like motivational hierarchy. And the whole problem with limerence is that you have like a life that you are living, which is even like a somewhat arguably normal and complete life. And the limber beast comes in. and alters your motivational hierarchy. You stop caring about the things that you used to care about, including romantic relationships, spouses, et cetera, like it's wild. You stop caring about your career as much.

And when we talk about stop caring, you know, if I stop and ask you when the liver beast is not active, you start caring about those things again. But there's just something about the amount of time that your mind spends, thinking about this person, craving this person's reciprocation, craving this person's attention, fantasizing about it, internal, the amount of copium that you're huffing when they don't give it to you. So it really disrupts your motivational hierarchy.

And then a lot of your thoughts and actions become related to the limerent object. And then the last feature that Tenov describes is a remarkable ability to emphasize what is truly admirable in the limerent object, and to avoid dwelling on the negative, even to respond with a compassion for the negative and render it emotionally, if not perceptually, into another positive attribute. So this is why I love Tenov's work. So when you have a limerent object, you idealize them a lot, and you take the parts of them that could be demonized, and you manage to idealize them too.

You turn their flaws into perfections in your mind. So this is some weird, once again, kind of mental gymnastics, and we'll get into why your mind does this in a little bit. But this is another feature that is very common with limerence, which is that you kind of see like all these amazing, oh, this person's great, they're compassionate, they're caring, they're so wonderful. And, oh, yeah, the reason they're such an asshole to the people at work

is because they're just so intensely brilliant. Their mind can't hold the space. for normal human interactions, which is why they don't say hi to me every morning, even though I say hi to them. In those few moments that they do say hi, feel so amazing for me. So Limerance has this deep,

obsessional quality where your mind, I don't know how else to say this, but I'm hoping y'all are understanding that it's really mental, right? So it's not entirely based in reality, but there's an obsessional, intrusive quality to it that dominates your thinking, performs mental gymnastics,

causes you to really be longing for them, and then how you feel on a particular day depends on how they respond to you. As one person put it, their limerent object is their hobby, their passion, and their obsession. And oftentimes, limerence leads to a disintegration of your identity. And if we sort of understand, like, if we kind of integrate what we know about the features of limerence with sort of like thinking how it really affects their lives, this will make a lot of sense. So here you are living your normal life, right? You're going about your day.

You have to test to study for. And then there's a substitute professor who's filling in one day for your professor. And something in you clicks. And this person is so amazing. There's so much better than your professor. They looked at you and then they nodded at you when you came in and you sat down in the class. And now you're thinking about them all the time. An episode of limerence can last.

There are studies that show that it lasts somewhere between one. one in seven years, okay? So once you start thinking about this person, they are dominating your thoughts potentially for years at a time. And now I want you all to really appreciate this, that it's hard to build a life around them, right? So these aren't necessarily real interactions. There are interactions that are real, but then your mind amplifies them. So you have your normal life over here where you're a student, maybe married, maybe have kids, like super wild. And then for maybe minutes or hours of the day, there's this intrusive limerbeast that comes in and dominates your thinking. So now this becomes really, really confusing to live through because you have all of this

stuff over here. You have a normal life, but then you transform into this other thing for periods of time. And then when you're like one person over here who's building a normal life and then like another person over here who's obsessively thinking about the limerent object, it's really hard to get a sense of like an integrated life. So a very common feature is that people feel really, really like a sense of disintegration. Like I'm over here and I'm doing one thing and I'm over here and I'm doing another thing. So these are the core features and it kind of begs the question like how the hell does this happen to people, right? What is going on in them that they sort of end up with these up to seven-year-long obsessions over small interactions and where they're very, very

paranoid about reciprocation and they long for reciprocation to be noticed, et cetera, right? So why does this happen? So this is why it's actually taken me a couple of years because the majority of the, you know, stuff out there I've seen tends to focus heavily on attachment theory. So people will say basically limerence is a consequence of a particular attachment style. that never really sat right with me for a couple reasons. So, you know, people will say, okay, the reason you develop limerence is because you have an anxious attachment or something like that. So that may be true that limerence has been associated with an anxious attachment, but let's understand the statistics, okay? So 50% of people have secure attachment, 25% of people have anxious attachment, which means the way that they relate to other people, we have a whole section on attachment theory and stuff, so you can check that out if you all want. But basically, they're very, very concerned about, uh, abandonment. They're concerned about that this person doesn't care for them. They feel very, very paranoid. They don't feel secure in the relationship. So they engage in a lot of behaviors to pull this

person in. So people with an anxious attachment style will utilize sexual activity as a form, as a way to create intimacy. So they'll do things that sort of, I'm afraid that you're not going to notice me or that you'll replace me with someone else or that I'm not worthy of your love. So I'll do everything from cry to be passive aggressive to seduce you just so I know that you're not going to leave like please don't leave so people with an anxious attachment style oftentimes did not have attentive enough caregivers or their caregiving was highly intermittent so I'm not I can't count on you to always be there but if I express myself in the right way if I start to cry a lot then I can evoke caring behavior from you so this is a child who can

I can't feel confident that their parents will notice them, love them, unless the child does a lot of stuff to sort of get their attention. And that's how I sort of feel secure. I have to do something to feel loved. That's sort of the key feature of an anxious attachment. Now, 25% of people on the planet are anxiously attached. But 25% of people are not limerent. So even though anxious attachment is a component of it, it is not sufficient to explain out of the, out of the one out of every four people that are anxiously attached,

this one to five percent of people who are very, very unlucky to experience limerence, there's a big gap between those two things. 20 percent of people have an avoid-in attachment style. That may have some relation to limerence, but probably not, right? So attachment theory in the way that you were raised is certainly a part of it. This is where I sort of put on my, like, you know, this is just the way that I was trained. So, you know, at Harvard I was part of a, the people that I gravitated towards were, what I would call the neuroscience philosophers.

So they're really, really philosophical. A couple generations before my time, the chief of psychiatry at Mass General was a Catholic priest. So, like, these people, like, you know, there's a big tradition at the program that I trained at about being, like, really, like, philosophical and thinking about, like, why does illness happen? And then also, these people are neuroscientists. So they sort of approach it from a couple of different angles.

And I think attachment theory is a great way to start, but I sort of lean heavily into sort this neuroscience approach. And if we look at limerence, there are some features of it that are basically very similar to OCD. So if we look at OCD, OCD is obsessive-compulsive disorder and is characterized by intrusive thoughts. You don't want to think these things. You don't like to think these things.

And you can't control thinking these things. We also know that OCD is highly inheritable. So there's like a large genetic. component to OCD. So there's one really interesting specific attachment pattern which separates limerence from a standard anxious attachment. So when we think about normal anxious attachment, we're talking about your primary caregivers being unavailable to make you feel safe and loved part of the time. So there's some of the time, if you cry loud enough, they will show up and love you. So in people with limerance, there's a really interesting, I don't know if it's unique. I don't know exactly

how common it is. We don't have a great data about this, but there's one really interesting pattern. It's that when your primary caregiver was unable to meet your emotional needs, there is a third party who is distantly connected, who for a brief period of time gives you everything that you want. Right? So this can be something like, oh, you know, my mom and dad, I'm going through a breakup. They're not around. Or I'm getting bullied at school and my aunt flow visits from a different country and she shows up and for one day she takes me out she buys me ice cream she listens to my problems this third figure who's not part of my normal attachment system swoops in and provides me with everything that i wanted emotionally i'm usually a kid i usually idealize this person and here's what happens in limerance so i want you

to think about this, okay? So when we're a child, we learn about the world. We start to form expectations about the world. And so if I'm living in an environment where my parents are intermittently available to love me, and then this magical person shows up, I have a brief interaction, so I don't get to know them long enough to where the idealization can wear off. I have this perfect interaction. What does my brain learn? My brain gravitates towards the things that fulfill my needs. So in this moment, my brain learns, holy crap, there are perfect people who exist out there. And this person can swoop in and this person can make everything perfect for me and they can exist. So one of the things when I'm working with people who experience limerence, this is something I'll actually tunnel down into.

Has there been a period of time in your life where you were really struggling and we had this kind of flag. of perfection from another human being who made everything okay. And then once that happens to you, I mean, maybe it happened to you, maybe it didn't. We don't really know. Once that happens to you, it becomes like cocaine for your anxiously attached little kid inside, right? Like, this is the perfect thing. And then your brain thinks, oh my God, we found it once. Let's start, let's try to find it again. And this is what we tend to see with limerence, which is so confusing about it, is that it, you know, it doesn't happen with people that you know well. Like, that's the whole problem, is that you have this whole life over here.

You're maybe happily married. And then it strikes from another person who demonstrates something. And I think what's going on is in your brain, this old pattern that was really, really important and affected your developing brain, now gets triggered with this limerent object who is distant and perfect. So the really interesting thing, we'll get into this more a little bit later, but is that as we get close to the, limerent object. Sometimes when people experience limerence, they'll start dating the person. And as they date them, the really weird thing will happen. Their fantasies don't become a reality. In fact, there are all kinds of problems that arise. And then the most screwed up thing

is oftentimes their limerence will transfer to a different person. They'll wake up one day and the prior limerent object has now become a frustratingly normal human being and this other person. The limerence just shifts, okay? So that's kind of the attachment perspective. I now want to talk about a couple of other features, okay? So attachment isn't really sufficient to describe limerence, right? So the anxious attachment style, ideal swooper, let's call it that. That's just one piece.

But there are a lot of people with anxious attachment style who don't have limerence. So the other feature that we're going to talk about is something that's really, I think, something along the OCD spectrum. So if we look at limerance, it's character. characterized by a lot of like, I don't know how to say this, but like the, you know, the nuts and bolts of the mental process of limerence are very similar to OCD. And then there's another feature which is that they're divorced from reality, right? So this is also consistent with OCD. So if we think about someone who is like a germaphobe, like the amount of fear that the germs evokes, like sure, germs can make you sick, but the whole point is that your mind does way more with a small stimulus than let's say a health. healthy mind would do. That's the nature of OCD. Okay. The other really interesting thing is that if you look at limerence, there's a lot of ritualization associated with it. So people will do things, they will engage in certain actions to try to like, so it's ritualistic. They'll do certain things

to get this person's attention. They'll dress a certain way. Oh, this person talked to me on this day because I was wearing red. So I'm going to start wearing red all the time. There's a lot of ritualism associated with limerence. And then the last thing is kind of the compulsive nature of it. So we have to explain what a compulsion is. Okay. So a compulsion is something that you do in response to an obsession. And this is what's kind of confusing for a lot of people. A lot of people think that the compulsion has to be a physical behavior. So people will think, okay, if I don't, I'm afraid that the house is going to burn down. So what I'm going to do is turn the stove on and off seven times to make sure the house doesn't burn down. So I have the obsession, this intrusive, unwanted

thought that the house is going to burn down. And I have to do something in order to make that obsession feel calm. So sometimes that's a physical action, but there are mental compulsions as well. So a compulsion is something that we do to relieve the mental stress that we are experiencing in the moment. So sometimes what people will do is I worked with one patient who, for example, would say, in her head, all of my family will be okay. All of my family will be home safe. I will see all of my family tomorrow. Anytime one of her family members was traveling, plane, going back from work, going to the grocery store. If she became aware of it, she would have to repeat those phrases in her head three times in a row. And it was really, really debilitating because, like, her mom is like,

hey, do you want anything in the grocery store? And then she has to stop studying and start going the litany in her head. So what do we see in limerence? We don't quite see that kind of compulsion, but we do see a lot of mental reactions or mental responses to different kinds of stimuli or triggers. I don't think that necessarily these people have OCD, so this is where we also have to kind of understand something else about science. So generally speaking, human beings in terms of, let's say, let's say this is intrusive thoughts. You know, everyone has some unwanted thoughts, but if we look at human beings, there's a bell curve. The people over here have very few intrusive thoughts.

The people here have an average amount of intrusive thoughts. The people over here have a more than average, or let's say greater, greater amount of intrusive thoughts. And the people over here, this group of people qualifies as OCD. Okay? So I think basically what's going on with limerence is we have people who are over here. So they have a genetic predestinal. disposition for something like OCD. So they tend to have a more

obsessional or intrusive thinking style. But it's not so severe that there is OCD. Instead, what happens is we have these genetically predisposed people to OCD who then have some kind of attachment injury. So they, when you take a kid

who may, who won't have OCD, so if they were more intrusive, if they had stronger genetics, maybe they would develop OCD. But you take a kid who doesn't have OCD but is high on that spectrum, and then you put them in an anxious attachment environment. And those two things combine and limerence sort of emerges out of it. Then there are a couple of other features that I think sort of combined to make this pie of limerence, like this limerence stew. It's not just OCD and anxious attachment.

There's more to it, okay? The next thing is a tendency for fantasy as a coping mechanism. So, for example, if you look at studies on like maladaptive daydreaming, right? So this is when people daydream so much that they have difficulty functioning in life, right? Sound familiar? So we know that maladaptive daydreaming may be some feature is somewhat related to ADHD. So your brain or your mind is not brain, mind is not capable of restraining your attention away from the daydream and focusing on what you should be focusing on. You get caught up in the daydreaming.

The reason that we, so there's the attentional component, right? And then you get lost in the daydream for a while. The other reason that ADHD may be related to maladaptive daydreaming is that we know that maladaptive daydreaming is an emotional coping mechanism. So when I am, and I'm sure y'all have experienced something like this. So in my case, I used to be bullied a lot in school. And so I'd have fantasies about standing up to my bully and then being able to fight them back and becoming a martial artist and this kind of stuff. So we know that there is a normal human mechanism where when you have an emotional injury, your brain can fantasize, give you fantasies of triumph for whatever you're missing to make you feel better, right? Because then you feel good. Oh yeah, it's going to be good. You get that justice boner where you're like, yeah, like I'm going to win. So there's sort of a tendency for fantasy. And once again, we talked about this on the OCD side. But I think once again, we're sort of on this bell curve. So here's the ADHD bell curve. And if you're over here, You get diagnosed with ADHD, but the limerence people are over here with a tendency to fantasize more than normal, a tendency to use fantasy as an emotional coping mechanism, right?

And an inability to control their attention, right? This is why you have those intrusive thoughts. You can't stop thinking about them. These thoughts come in. You can't restrain your mind. And so what I'm sort of envisioning, with people who have limerence is that there's like a constellation of these things. They're not necessarily ADHD enough to have ADHD. They're not necessarily OCD enough to have OCD. They're not necessarily like, you know, it's not just anxious attachment. That's not sufficient to explain it. So when you have a brain that has a tendency towards fantasy, a tendency towards intrusive thinking, compulsive thinking, and then you have an attachment injury that may be that very specific kind where someone once shows up and saves the world for you for like an hour, then all of these things kind of mixed together into a stew that results in limerance.

And this is also why generally speaking it's on the rarer side, right? I think the amount of it is increasing very rapidly. So it seems to be way more common. We'll talk about that, why that is in a couple minutes. But this is why it's like, you know, on the rarer side. The last thing that we have to talk about is there's absolutely a physiological component. So this isn't nearly as sexy or interesting as the other pieces. But there are just studies that show that there's a certain activation of the nervous system

where people tend to be highly anxious. They get a lot of sympathetic nervous system activity. Their fight or flight response tends to be really, really hyperactive. And it also gets soothed by their responses, right? So if someone actually responds to you, then your nervous system really calms down. but if they don't respond to you in the right way, there are actually features of things like nausea and like other kinds of, you know, activation. I'm going to show you all.

There are studies that show that there's a lot of like bodily sensations, GI upset, shallow breathing, nausea, headaches, tachycardia. These are all like, so there's also like a nervous system component where it's not just in your head. Your body responds by activating adrenaline, activating cortisol, and then that shape. your thinking. So this, by the way, is a case conceptualization for the development and maintenance of limerence. Okay, we'll talk about this a little bit more at the end. So that's what causes it. I mean, do we know that? Not really. So that's why it's like taken me a couple of years, right? So like I read Tenov's book and great book, by the way, highly recommended. If you all want to like, it's just the language in it is beautiful. And then it took me a while to sort of

try to figure out, okay, like what's going on here? What's really like, what are the features of this? How can we understand this from a neuroscience perspective, from a genetic perspective? Like, What is this person's experience and how can we break apart and really understand the building blocks of limerence by extrapolating from all of these other illnesses that we know a lot about? And that's kind of what I think is going on. Okay. Now let's talk a little bit about the course of limerence. So if you are stuck with limerence, you know, you drew the short straw, four of the short straws. You got a little bit of the OCD, maybe a little bit of the ADHD, maybe a little bit of the anxious attachment style.

a little bit of sympathetic nervous system, hyperactivity. What does this look like for people? Okay? So once again, what we're going to do is we're going to take a quick look at Tenov's book because I think she does a great job of describing it. The course of limerence is as follows. The limerent reactions begins usually at a point discernible at the time and later recalled. So people remember when the limerence struck.

It was like an arrow to the heart, you know, like Cupid hit me. Sexual attraction doesn't need to be experienced, but the primary experience is usually like admiration. Like this person is amazing. Like you admire them. You idealize them. Once limerance begins, you find yourself thinking about the limerent object and receiving considerable pleasure from the process. So this is where that daydreaming component comes in. There is an initial phase in which you feel buoyant, elated.

And ironically, for this appears to be the beginning of an essentially, involuntary process free, free not only from the restraints, the usual restraints of gravity, but emotionally unburdened. You may be more, you may be attracted to more than one potential limerent object. You feel that your response is a result of the limerent objects find qualities. So in the first phase, you feel really great. And the reason, I don't know if this kind of makes sense, but the reason that you're so into them is because they are so amazing, right? So you think that because they are amazing, you are into them. It's not the other way around in your mind. It is a justifiable obsession, a justifiable admiration. Now we get to the scary part with evidence of

reciprocation from the limerent object, which doesn't have to be a lot, right? So they can just say hi to you. That's oftentimes sufficient. You enjoy a state of extreme pleasure, even euphoria. Your thoughts are mainly occupied with considering and reconsidering what you may find attractive about them. So you're replaying events in your head and appreciating qualities in yourself, which you perceive as possibly having sparked interest in you on the part of the L.O. So like, you're really grateful. Oh, I'm like really glad I look great and red. And that was the day that they said hi to me. So you kind of start to have this obsessional thinking. You're spending a lot of energy thinking about it. Your degree of involvement increases if obstacles are externally imposed.

imposed. So this is kind of a really important segment as well where setbacks don't really make things harder, right? So a lot of people will say, oh, if this person doesn't text you back, like, just move on. So one of the key features of limerence is when you get, when you experience setbacks, it doesn't push you away. It only intensifies your attraction to the limerent object. Usually with some degree of doubt, its intensity rises further and you reach the stage. at which the reaction is virtually impossible to dislodge, either by your own act of will or by further evidence of the LO's undesirable qualities. So what that basically means is like at this point you lose control, the limber beast has taken over.

Well, the limerbeast actually took over here. Or you're just thinking about them brings you so much pleasure. And so this results in a doubt and increased intensity of limerence to undermine your form of satisfaction with yourself. You acquire new clothes, change your hairstyle, you're receptive to any suggestion by which you might increase your desirability in the limerent object's eyes. That's why I kind of referred to it as the disintegration of the self. So sometimes people will change, but other times it's more of an experience of like, I recognize that limerance is kind of nutty and I have a regular life over here, but something about you begins to change. Your sense of self-worth

can get caught up in the way that the limerent object responds to you. Okay? So there are a couple of other features about the course of limerence. Like we already said, it lasts about one to seven years. And then this is the really confusing thing. So so far we've talked basically about the limerent object is being distant from you and like not really interacting with you. So what happens when you actually start interacting when they start reciprocating or they don't

reciprocate? So how does limerance evolve with the person? So generally speaking, you know, you're striving for their affection. Sometimes you get their affection. You feel amazing. If you don't get their affection or there's a lot of uncertainty, you start obsessing a little bit more, you think about them more, you think about how can I get this person to notice me, like me, et cetera.

Unfortunately, as limerence progresses, it like never ends well. So even if you get their attention, oftentimes the real version of them, and this is something that I think is kind of confusing. But, so this is what's kind of confusing. If they do reciprocate, at any point in the process, if you perceive reciprocation, your degree of involvement ceases to rise until, of course, you become uncertain again. So this is what's like really confusing is that actually as you get closer to them, the triggers for the limerence actually disappear.

You know, and if you get close to them, they no longer become this idealized object. If you start dating them, like, then your limerence will transfer. to someone else, which is really perplexing and confusing. So, limerence sort of exists in your mind. It exists and is triggered by uncertainty and distance. The nature of limerence is that it is a longing for a fantasy. It is not a reality. You have a reality over here.

The limerence is over here. And if you make the mistake of moving the limerence, if all of your desires become true and they start to become a reality, the limerence actually disappears and a new limerent object can form. And so that's one of the ways that limerance can end. The other thing that can happen is the person can reject you, which is really painful, but then oftentimes we'll develop a new limerent object. And then the third thing that can happen in limerance is that we can sort of get a mixed response from the person. So maybe we confess our feelings, maybe we become friends. I don't want to push this person

away. And the interesting thing about like keeping them at the friend distance is it can actually intensify the limerence, right? Because like, when this person, when you don't really confess to them, they still remain idealized. They still remain distant. They still remain, you know, they're capable of continuing to exist in your fantasies. Generally speaking, though, as people consummate the limerence in some way, as they connect with other people, as there's some degree of reciprocity, usually the most common experience for limerence is that it's disappointing. Right. So even if you move in the right direction, it doesn't satisfy you.

And once again, the reason for that is because limerence is not like a real thing. It is a fantasy that is constructed in your mind. And so then the question becomes, what do we do about it? And this is where, like, I think it's really useful to think about these components of limerence, right? So what creates it? So, you know, if there's like a genetic predisposition for OCD, there's not really a whole lot you can do about that. So that's okay. But we can also use some of these like approaches to OCD.

We can use some of these approaches to ADHD, some of these approaches to sympathetic nervous system activity and attachment theory to sort of figure out how to approach this. So a lot of therapists will believe that basically it's an attachment injury, right? It's an attachment base. So if you heal your anxious attachment style, which can be done through therapy, which can be done through stable relationships, that will be a big part of it. So usually the way that I start this is to try. track back to this origin story.

So think about when did I first start to develop this idea that these fantastic relationships with these idealized people exist. And that's why I gave you all that very specific scenario. You know, has there been a time in your life where you felt unloved and someone swooped in and made everything perfect for you? How did you feel at that time? You know, like that kind of stuff like to really just sort of process that. think about it, think about how that maps on now, think about the lessons that you learn,

what conclusions did you form through those experiences, how do you carry those in the present? Oftentimes you need to work with a therapist to really do that, but that's kind of the direction of what I do with people when I work with them. Also related to that is to think a little bit about what were your unmet needs at that time, and you may notice that there is a correlation between those core unmet needs and the intensity of limerence. So remember that limerance is triggered. by oftentimes something within you, either a sense that you're not good enough, a desire for admiration,

a desire to be worthy of someone. There's all kinds of stuff within you that can trigger the limerence. So it helps to kind of look back at that original episode and try to think about, okay, what were the needs that were not met within me? Because remember, that limerence is triggered by some kind of unmet need within you, right? That's why you have this fantasy coping mechanism to make those. emotional needs kind of calm down. So really think about, okay, what is the thing that is triggering the limerence? What is it in me that feels unfulfilled, incomplete, or unmet? Once you understand what that thing is, hopefully you can get the process of metabolizing it, digesting it, et cetera. Now, the other thing that I think is very helpful is to really take a reality-based approach.

So this is more of like the cognitive aspect of it, but to notice your mental gymnastics. So what does my mind perceive from this person and what literally happened. So I think a really good exercise for this is like, imagine that you are an alien observing these interactions. What would the alien infer about what the significance of these interactions is? When someone nods at you in the hallway, does that mean that they're deeply in love with you? No, right? So this is the nature of limerence.

This is the challenge of limerence is that there's a lot of cognitive reactions, a lot of intrusive thinking, a lot of distortion. And what we really want to start doing is noticing the discrepancy between what the reality is and everything that my mind attaches to it. So this is where we have a membership's lecture on something in the yogic tradition called glistah. So clishta is all of the coloring that our mind attaches to experiences. And if you really, what's really wild about this, you all can go watch that lecture if you want. But by the end of it, we were really able to understand how most of your experiences in life are actually shaped by what you add to them. So when your boss says, hey, I have some constructive feedback for you and we feel terrible, it doesn't mean that we're doing a terrible job.

We may be doing a great job and our boss wants to see us do a better job. That's why they give us constructive feedback. It's a positive thing. it's one opportunity for growth. It demonstrates caring on the part of the boss, but that's not how we perceive it. So to really start to tunnel apart and tease apart, what is the reality of the situation,

what is my mind adding to the equation? And so as we sort of take a more reality-based approach, what we'll discover is there's oftentimes some kind of negative thing that the limerence is protecting us against. So I don't know if this kind of, you all kind of remember, but like here's the basic mechanism, okay? Right?

we have unmet need, okay, we have our parent, and then we have our swooper who comes in and then makes this better. So then what happens is our brain develops this idea that kind of like a programming, if unmet need for swooper, right? Look for this perfect superhero kind of person who's going to fix everything in our life. So the unmet need is what triggers the limerance. Okay. Now, remember that the key thing here is that when we have this unmet need and we have this fantasy, remember, fantasy is an emotional coping mechanism that decreases our negative emotion, right? So the fantasy makes the negative emotion go away. So unmet need equals negative emotion.

Then we have our fantasy, which goes and knocks this out. And that's why when our fantasy becomes a reality, the reality doesn't knock out the negative emotion, right? So the reality doesn't actually fix the problem because now the fantasy is the mental construction, the daydream that soothes the negative emotion. So what we need to do then is go to this unmet need and really understand what is it that we're afraid of. What's the problem here? And oftentimes what people who experience limer is what will have is they'll have some sense of like rejection that they're terrified of. And this is why all this uncertainty around the limerence starts to come up where like, I'm. terrified they're going to reject me. I'm terrified they're going to abandon me. If they reject you and if

they abandon you and that need goes unmet, what will happen? What is this so terrible thing that your mind is so terrified of that it'll create all of these mental gymnastics? So this central fear usually must be faced. The cool thing is once you face it, you'll realize that this central this central fear, especially if you've built a normal life over here, is not really applicable, right? So this central fear that you still primitively are so scared of is oftentimes traumatic in nature. So if you all want to understand how to digest these kinds of things, we talk about it from the yogic perspective and Dr. Kay's Guide to Trauma. So this is the key thing, is that the fear is not, doesn't exist in your regular life. It's something that you carry with you as a traumatic injury.

The last thing, not the last thing, the next thing is your sympathetic nervous system needs to be recalibrated. So what we want to do is do traditional mind-body practices to tone down our sympathetic nervous tone. Okay. So what does that mean? So what this sort of means is that, you know, if our, if our, there's lots of studies that show that yoga, Tai Chi, breathing exercises, all this stuff is going to calm down your sympathetic nervous system. as your adrenaline, cortisol, and blood pressure, as all of these things start to drop from these practices, this will alter the way that your brain functions, right?

Because adrenaline and cortisol travel to the brain and make us think rapid intrusive thoughts. That's like literally what adrenaline and cortisol do. So I want you all to think about this for a second. When your adrenaline is pumping, you can't control your thinking. And that's the way that's supposed to be. So when adrenaline is pumping through our brain and I'm being attacked by a pack of wild hyenas,

I'm going to be thinking about the wild hyenas. There's nothing else I could think about. And that's like an evolutionary feature. It's not, I don't want to be worrying about what I'm making for dinner that night if I'm being attacked by a pack of wild hyenas. So you need to work on a nervous system level as well. And this is what I love about being like a medical doctor is that,

you know, when I work with my patients, I notice that now a lot of psychologists will do meditation and things like that. But they're just not trained in physiology in the same way that we are. So I lean heavily into the stuff. I see a lot of great stuff. a lot of great outcomes because you're altering the nervous system contribution to this stuff. And thankfully, like, this is something that now all psychologists are learning in terms of mindfulness

techniques and stuff. So, it's great. You can also work with a therapist. So the case study that I showed you all, which I'm going to flash to real quick, you know, so here's a paper that shows that treatment of limerence using a cognitive behavioral approach, a case study. This is in the open is an open access paper, thankfully, so you guys can all get it. But this paper is great. I'm not going to go over this. I think it's a bit. So I'm not going to go over all this. Y'all can read this if you want to, but this is a great case study that really goes through, like, the process of limerence and how this person goes about kind of treating it. Okay? So you can absolutely work with a therapist or psychiatrist. And so that's kind of how we deal with limerance, right? So I think you can absolutely get treatment,

but we got to understand that it is this sudden limber beast invasion of intrusive thoughts and fantasies and daydreaming and all these kind of coping mechanisms. And it, it, it, it's, it, It strikes people and we don't know exactly why it strikes people. There isn't really great data about it, but if it's something that you'll struggle with, hopefully this will give you some pathway of at least understanding and dealing with it. Now that I've said all that, I'm about to torpedo everything that I just said. So bad. I should just stop now.

God. Okay. So the last thing that I'm going to say is really going to mess everybody up. It's probably something that is better left unsaid, but I got to say it. So the other thing, the other way that I understand limerance, actually this is a different, good to say. So there are studies that also show that acceptance of the fact that you have limerence. And just to say, okay, I have limerence, it doesn't mean that it's real. This is just a struggle that I have. I have these unmet emotional needs. I have these traumatic upbringing experiences. This is just how things are. So studies show that just accepting that you have this problem actually helps dissolve the problem. Okay. So if I don't accept that limerance is a problem that I have, What I'm going to be stuck in is believing that the limerence is real, and that if this person, if I can get this person to notice me, then I will be happy forever.

But we know from studies on the course of limerence that that doesn't happen. So until you know your limerent, you are chasing the limerent object as a source of salvation, buoyancy, everything. So the moment that you accept chasing this limerent object will never, it's a fantasy, It's never going to, it can't be a reality because I manufacture it in my mind. The moment that you do that, the limerbeast loses power over you, right? Because then you stop trying to make the fantasy a reality. And when you try to make that fantasy a reality, that's where a lot of the depression and anxiety

see been. So the last crazy thing that I'm going to say is that, you know, there's a part of me in the back of my mind that wonders whether the reason we have limerence could be a very complicated neuroscience, genetic predisposition, circle jerk, Harvard, whatever the fuck, Dr. K, of ADHD and OCD and attachment injury and sympathetic nervous system and all this scientific BS that sounds great. But in the deep bottom of my heart, I wonder whether limerance is a past life carmic connection. That in a past life you were attached to this person. In a past life, you loved this person.

And the ache that you have is not about this life. It is an echo of love and connection, that kind of true love kind of crap that you may even have in this life, which I unfortunately believe in. I believe in true love. And that something about that experience, that love conquers all and is so transcendent. In the Hindu tradition, we believe that when you get married, you buy yourself relationships for the next seven lifetimes. Six or seven, I'm not quite sure. I don't know if they count this one or seven more. I don't know.

So there's this idea that in these carmic religions that there's some aspect of you that doesn't end with death that carries forward, that we have these carmic bonds with people. And I wonder whether limerance is just one of the manifestations of that. It's not some super complicated genetic, whatever the F, okay? Now, the key thing to understand is that even if that's true, it doesn't mean that this person is that for you in this life. Right? That is a memory. It is an echo of times past. It is a longing for an X doesn't mean that y'all are good together. And so on the one hand, I hesitate to share that because I don't want that to feed your limerence. Like, oh my God. I'm Dr. Kay, this person is my limerent object and you are telling me that is love from a past life. This means that I need to chase it. Oh, my God. I'm going to don't. I'm actually saying the opposite, right? That this thing is over now. But the reason, there's a good reason you have those feelings. You're not crazy that this is coming from somewhere. If you're scientifically oriented, you can use my Dr. K. extrapolated OCD, ADHD,

daydreaming, empathic, I mean, attachment injury, sympathetic nervous system, hyperactivation. You can use that model if you believe in science. And if you believe in love, you can use the karmic model. But just because there's a karmic connection does not mean that it needs to be lived in this life. So what I'd say is just even if you believe that, say like, okay, this is just a memory of things past. I will accept it and let it go. And studies show that once again, acceptance will help you. I hope I helped.

I hope I didn't torpedo everything right at the end. And good luck and report back. Thanks for joining us today. We're here to help you understand your mind and live a better life. If you enjoyed the conversation, be sure to subscribe. Until next time, take care of yourselves and each other.