How Working With Limerence Can Support Auhtentic Intimacy

I hear that limerence is having a moment on TikTok, and for good reason!

Many of us can recognize ourselves in obsessively thinking about someone we barely know, replaying interactions with a crush, or feeling elated or crestfallen over whether a message comes through. One name for this experience is limerance.

A lot of the discourse around limerance I’ve heard frames it as something unhealthy to outgrow. I prefer to take a different approach and explore how working with limerence, using somatic inquiry and parts work, can support the development of secure attachment with self. Limerance can be a doorway to internal security and relationships that feel authentic.

First, we need to understand that limerence is often a self‑regulation strategy.

Limerence as a way to feel better

At its core, limerence can be understood as a valiant attempt to soothe ourselves. Fantasy often becomes a refuge for those of us who grew up with emotional neglect, chaos, or experiences where we felt too much or not enough.

Limerence creates an inner world where you are wanted, chosen, and adored. In that imagined relationship, there is a version of you who is finally met with warmth, interest, and devotion. Entering that fantasy can bring relief, hope, and aliveness. For a moment, the ache quiets.

That’s why limerance is adaptive. At some point, fantasy love may have been the most accessible way to survive the pain of not having connection or acceptance. When IRL relationships feel unavailable, unsafe, or rejecting, imagination steps in to help meet our needs for safety, co-regulation, respect, or attunement.

Why it feels so intense

Limerence is powerful because it works! The nervous system can settle, the body may relax, and dopamine might be released. It can feel like our inner world brightens.

Alongside this brightening, there can also be a sense of confusion where we start to associate the feeling of relief we’re experiencing with acceptance from a specific person. If we take the fantasy too literally, we develop an attachment to things playing out exactly as they do in the fantasy, feeling that this is what we need to keep the good feelings going.

Through a parts‑work lens, limerence can be understood as a part of us carrying shame and longing, desperately wanting reassurance that we are lovable. This part creates a fantasy in which the other person becomes the answer. If they choose me, I’ll finally be okay.

But here’s where it gets interesting: the felt sense of warmth, hope, and aliveness we get from the fantasy doesn’t actually come from them. It comes from inside, from your system responding to the idea that your needs might be met.

The relief was always coming from you

This is the quiet reframe that can change everything: the good feelings you experience in limerence are not being given to you by another person. They are being generated by you!

The fantasy opens the door.

A part of you is longing for a more resourced presence that delights in you, accepts you and holds steadiness and compassion. We might not know how to access those qualities directly yet, so the fantasy comes in as a bridge.

That means something important: the capacity to feel soothed, hopeful, and alive already exists inside you. Limerence is not proof that you need them. It’s evidence that your system is trying very intelligently to regulate pain and move towards greater coherence.

Turning toward the part instead of chasing the person

Seeing limerances as a regulation strategy can help us turn towards ourselves.

Noticing that we are trying to get someone to text back, analyzing every interaction or outsourcing worth or acceptance, can be a cue to turn inward.

We can get curious about the part that’s doing all the hoping. What does it believe would finally be different if this person chose you? What does it still ache for? How old does it feel?

Meeting this part with curiosity allows attunement and soothing to come from our inner relationship with self. We can learn new ways to settle and feel held that don’t depend on imagined futures.

The nervous system piece

While we often first notice limerence through thoughts, fantasies, or patterns of fixation, it can be helpful to widen the lens and notice how our nervous system and somatic experience shifts when we enter limerent fantasy.

For some people, limerence lives in a state of hyperarousal, marked by a sense of speed and urgency. Thoughts might loop or fixate, attention could narrow, anxiety may increase, and sleep and appetite may be disrupted. In hyperarousal, the body can feelmobilized and on edge, scanning for cues of connection or rejection. In these moments, fantasy may work by providing temporary relief and giving the nervous system something to organize around.

For others, limerence functions as a quieter, hypoaroused, or dissociative strategy. Instead of urgency, there may be drifting, zoning out, or living in imagined futures. The body can feel heavy, collapsed, numb, or distant. Here, fantasy might offer an exit from a present reality that feels empty, painful, or intolerable.

Often, limerence involves oscillation between these states. Limerant fantasies can soothe anxiety while protecting against emptiness.

Seen this way, limerence is a form of regulation through imagination. It is the nervous system trying to stabilize itself in the absence of felt security or secure attachment.

Creating more choice

Creating more choice starts with awareness.

As we begin to broaden our attention, we may notice other layers of experience present during limerant fantasy. Things like sensation in the body, shifts in the nervous system, emotional tones, and energetic qualities can start to show up. Growing this, curious self-awareness builds an inner sense of security by teaching the system that we can stay present with experience without being overtaken by it.

As we cultivate this attunement with ourselves, somatic tools can help us steady ourselves. We can learn to draw support from the body, from the earth, from relationships that feel steady, or from spiritual or ancestral connections we already have. For some, opening to mystery or something larger can help loosen our grip on the idea that there is only one way to feel okay.

This matters because limerent fantasy often carries the belief that safety, wholeness, or relief can come only from one particular person. Somatic and parts work invite us to expand that perception.

Through internal attunement, through resourcing, and through allowing support to come from multiple directions, the system becomes less dependent on a single strategy.

As capacity widens, choice widens. Limerence can still arise, but it no longer has to be the only way the system knows how to regulate or feel held.

Limerence as a portal.

Limerence is information.

It points to places where connection and acceptance have been missing, and where the nervous system learned to rely on fantasy to survive. When we learn to unshame ourselves for the ways we’ve survived, limerence becomes a portal to deeper self‑relationship.

As internal regulation strengthens, fantasy loosens its grip. Obsession gives way to curiosity. Relationships can be approached with more steadiness and discernment, seeing who someone actually is rather than who they need to be.

Approached with enough time, space, and respect, limerance can become a doorway to a greater coherence and inner security.

Sam (they/them) is an IFS and Somatic Therapist based in Vancouver, offering trauma-informed therapy for individuals and couples.

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