As I deeply cover in my first book on limerence, The Limerent Mind, one of the foundational steps to recovering from limerence is precisely identifying and meeting your own unmet emotional needs – the feelings you crave every day. Until you supply them yourself, your brain’s dopamine circuits stay locked on your LO as the only possible source of relief, primed to chase every text or glance.

Dopamine Is the Molecule of Pursuit, Not Pleasure

True pleasure—the warmth of a hug or the satisfaction of a job well done—depends on other chemicals. Dopamine’s job is pursuit, craving, and chasing: it powers motivation and attention. Dopamine drives the search for what our brain thinks we need to survive, whether water, food, shelter, mates or, once those basics are met, higher‑order rewards such as art, music or an intellectual challenge.

If you’re limerent, your brain falsely believes you need your LO to survive because they give you access to specific emotions you aren’t giving yourself. At least, not in as many ways, or as consistently or intensely as you need.

Tonic and Phasic: How Limerence Messes With Your Dopamine System

Your dopamine system works on two levels:

• Tonic tone is the steady background level that keeps you generally engaged in life.
• Phasic spikes are rapid bursts triggered by unexpected rewards or cues.

In limerence, your LO’s unpredictable messages, smiles or gestures become powerful cues. Each one triggers a phasic spike—a sudden rush that feels electric. Because those cues arrive at random intervals, your brain treats them like a slot machine. You never know which interaction will deliver the big hit, so you keep checking, waiting, hoping.

Why Phasic Dopamine Fuels the Chase

1. Intermittent Reinforcement
   Rewards that come at irregular times create the strongest learning. A smile today, a missed call tomorrow, a long reply next week keeps your dopamine system in overdrive.
2. Sensitisation
   The more your brain experiences those PHASIC spikes, the more it craves them – and this starts to affect your TONIC dopamine release. Ordinary activities lose their appeal. Only your LO’s signals feel potent enough to lift you from a dull baseline. Just like a heroin addict’s brain starts to guide them away from socialising, working, and doing anything else besides securing their next high..
3. Withdrawal Crashes
   When the spikes disappear—your LO goes quiet or fails to match your hopes—phasic activity halts. You feel an urgent low: anxiety, restlessness, obsessive thoughts. It’s the same biology as drug withdrawal.

a) Meeting Your Precise Emotional Needs

First, map out which daily feelings you’re missing—e.g. inspiration, progress, calm, confidence, bliss and flow, adrenaline, power, recognition or joy—and then add specific shifts to your routine that deliver those emotions directly:

• Speak up in meetings so colleagues notice your expertise
• Volunteer for presentations or mentoring roles to reshape how you’re seen
• Reconnect with old friends and expand your social circle
• Share your passions through writing, art or conversation so you don’t rely on your LO for validation
• Take better care ofyourself /treat yourself
• Read interesting books and learn new skills
• Change careers to one better suited to you
• Get really fit and impress yourself/others
• Reconnect with your religion (if you desire to)

ANYTHING you do to meet your unmet needs is a good, smart move. Even if you feel like you’re mixing with people you wouldn’t normally be friends with, being more bold/more ego-driven than you’re used to, or severing ties with old parts of your life. If you’re feeling hits of that good emotion you want to feel, you’re moving in the right direction! 🙂

And, you’re also fixing your dopamine system issues in the process. Behaviours that meet your unmet emotional needs Each of these actions generates small but reliable dopamine releases. As you fill your own emotional well, your brain stops tagging your LO as the only source of dopamine spikes. It stops seeing your LO as the one true ‘fix‘… the one true door to a better, brighter life. It realises it was mistaken, and quickly starts to schedule dopamine release around your NEW activities, connections, behaviours, and coping mechanisms.

b) Supporting Yourself with Natural Dopamine Regulation

Next, supplement that work with practices designed to regulate both tonic tone and phasic spikes on your terms:

1. Cardio and Strength
   A consistent 20‑minute run, swim, or workout not only raises your baseline dopamine but also delivers reliable phasic bursts.
2. Music and Creative Flow
   Spend five focused minutes listening to or playing a song you love. Then dive into a 25‑minute creative session—writing, painting, coding—to trigger flow‑related dopamine surges.
3. Meditation
   I’m a huge proponent of meditation. I suggest experimenting with what works for you… Calm and Headspace are great apps for general meditation. If you’d like one specific for limerence, check out the professionally recorded ones available on this website. Here are links:
   • main ‘anti-limerence’ mediation (#1)
   • my special question affirmations designed to make you feel wonderful & get your subconscious mind seeing your situation differently (#2)
   • finally, an energising running meditation (#3).
   • These three will offer you immediate results to support you as you heal!
4. Sunlight & Nature
   Morning light exposure or a short walk eases withdrawal‑like tension and sharpens your capacity to enjoy natural rewards. Simple breathwork reinforces the neural circuits that shift focus away from craving.
5. Breathwork: Simple breathwork reinforces the neural circuits that shift focus away from craving.

–> Block time in your calendar for each practice. Keep a log of how energised you feel immediately after and again an hour later. Over weeks, you’ll track diminishing mood swings, briefer cravings, and fewer intrusive thoughts

By understanding how phasic and tonic dopamine keep you locked on your LO, and by deliberately generating both kinds of reward through self‑sourced activities, you reclaim your brain’s reward system. The slot‑machine effect fades, your baseline mood steadies and limerence loses its power. You emerge free to enjoy genuine connections without needing them to save you – and that is the true cure.

THAT is how you become immune to your LO and to your trigger archetype as a whole, so that the next person who could become an LO can’t even ‘glimmer’ to you in the first place. And that is freedom! True nonchalance and indifference, rather than walking on eggshells. I believe that should always be your goal, which is why I like to attack the ‘limerence problem’ from its very roots. It’s not always the easiest, but it’s the only strategy that truly works. 🙂

As always, feel free to reach out at neurosparkle@gmail.com