Limerence, Trauma & the Longing to Be Chosen: A Clinician’s Guide to the Ache Beneath Obsession

When Love Feels Like a High
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“I can’t stop thinking about them.”
“It’s like they’re under my skin.”
“I know it’s not healthy, but I can’t let go.”
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As trauma-informed clinicians, we hear this kind of language often, especially from clients with complex trauma histories. What looks like infatuation, or even addiction, is often something deeper: limerence. A potent cocktail of longing, fantasy, fear, and unmet need, limerence isn’t about love. It’s about survival.
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🔹 What Is Limerence, Clinically Speaking?
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Coined by Dorothy Tennov in the 1970s, limerence describes an involuntary, obsessive longing for another person, often one who is emotionally unavailable or unpredictable.
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Key clinical markers:
• Intrusive thoughts and compulsive fantasising
• Intense emotional highs and crashes
• Idealisation of the other
• Emotional dependency on perceived reciprocation
• A strong desire to be chosen, at any cost
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🔹 Why Is Limerence So Common in Trauma Survivors?
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Because trauma wires the nervous system for hypervigilance, attachment dysregulation, and identity enmeshment.
Limerence often stems from:
• Disorganised or anxious attachment styles
• A history of being ignored, abandoned, or unseen
• Fantasy as a self-soothing strategy in childhood
• Developmental arrest: the adult body holds a longing child within
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🔹 Meet the Inner Voyagers™ Involved
In The Voyage®, we see specific internal parts drive limerent cycles:
• 🗝 The Lost Treasure: longs to be found, chosen, and adored
• 🌊 The Storm Surfer: chases emotional intensity for aliveness
• 🏝 The Remote Islander: avoids true intimacy by fixating on fantasy
• 🕊 The Spiritual Seagull: bypasses reality in the name of soulful destiny
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These aren’t dysfunctional. They’re trying to protect something sacred, the original wound.
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🔹 What NOT to Do in the Therapy Room
• Don’t shame the longing
• Don’t pathologise the fantasy as “just addiction”
• Don’t rush the rupture (cutting off the object prematurely can retraumatise)

🔹 What TO Explore Instead
• Polyvagal awareness: mapping their nervous system during “obsessive” spirals
• Parts work: Who’s speaking? Who’s longing? Who’s afraid?
• Embodiment and co-regulation: Helping them feel safe within themselves
• Grief work: Limerence is often grief in disguise
• Meaning-making: Rewriting the story of worthiness, beyond being chosen
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​🔹 Final Reflection: Limerence Isn’t Love, It’s a Message
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Underneath the ache is a child still waiting to be seen.
Your job as the clinician isn’t to pull them out of limerence, it’s to help them listen to what it’s trying to say.