What causes limerence anyway?

The debate around childhood trauma, neurodivergence, and attachment

Back in Am I normal?, I discussed how limerence does not have one singular underlying cause that unites all limerence experiencers. Limerence is a brain state we enter into: a collection of symptoms or particular manifestations of experiencing the world based on recognizable emotions, body sensations, fixated thought loops, and dopamine seeking behaviors which become activated in the nervous system due to identifiable inputs.

Because of this, there can be many underlying presentations, behavioral patterns, and mental health diagnoses which contribute to an individual’s unique experience of limerence. Limerence is a symptom of a deeper genesis.

What is underlying and activating each person’s unique experience of limerence can be numerous, but the source can generally be categorized into the following groupings:

1.     Survival strategy patterns based on over-control and characterized by extreme anxiety, such as OCD, eating disorders, and perfectionism

2.     Survival strategy patterns based on under-control and characterized by extreme moods and attempts to regulate, such as bipolar disorder, substance addiction, and behavioral addictions

3.     Survival strategy patterns based on attachment injury and characterized by relational anxiety, avoidance, or a swing between the two, such as childhood emotional neglect, childhood trauma, BPD, anxious attachment, dismissive avoidant attachment, and fearful avoidant attachment

4.     High-functioning, secure individuals with no prior experience of severe mental health issues who happen to enter into a limerent state due to identifiable inputs (attraction + barriers + continued contact creating no outlet for resolution and being out of alignment in their life/relationships)

Photo by Dina Gazizova

The reason it is helpful to identify the underlying source that is contributing to and activating the limerence is because it allows us to know which direction to work from when healing the limerence.

For some people, getting a handle on their deeper issue around anxiety, control, and fear is going to be important work alongside rewiring limerence.

For others, it’s going to involve connecting to a wider recovery support system around addiction and undoing a lifelong habit of seeking dopamine externally.

For many, it will be learning the skills to heal their attachment wounds and show up differently in their relationships.

And of course, some will have multiple layers that need to be addressed, but making sure to target each one respectively will be an important piece of the puzzle.

And lastly, as I discussed in Am I normal?, there will always be a part of the population that does not identify with any significant childhood trauma or mental health issues before their experience of limerence and this is completely valid and explainable as well.

The intricacies of these differences are what make online limerence groups on Reddit or Facebook tricky, because many well-meaning individuals can project their own experience onto limerence as a whole and assume that everyone must experience trauma or identify as x, y, z in order to suffer from limerence. This can create even more shame and confusion for people who do not fit into such neat boxes.

Understanding that limerence is the symptom, and not the cause can help us have more understanding and compassion for all of these differences in who, where, and what limerence shows up for.