Hi everyone! I’m at home having a relaxing Friday evening, and felt like sharing an insight & a VERY effective mental exercise with you all.

Limerence is simple to get over, but that doesn’t mean it’s ‘easy’. It’s a strong, fierce addiction to the beautiful, poignant, thrilling emotions your LO makes you feel. And why do they generate these feelings in YOU, and not 99.99% of other people in their life and most likely on the planet? No, not because they’re a designer drug that every human brain responds to like cocaine… others find them annoying, mundane, nice, or rude.

They’re your designer drug, and they seem have that X Factor to you, because of YOUR unique emotional needs – coded for by your genetics, your life experience, and your unfulfilled goals and desires. Due to your psychology, your LO’s specific traits, personality, and treatment of you causes you to feel higher than anything else imagineable. Of course, their physical appearance plays a role of varying strength depending how physically attractive you find them. But this is less important in terms of fuelling the elevated state that is limerence. First and foremost, limerence an emotional addiction – a desire for enmeshment that goes FAR beyond romance/attraction, because of how their behaviour lights up your brain.

So, what do you need to do? Follow the recovery steps and have full faith in yourself… in your wonderful brain’s ability to change and lead you to new ways of thinking, acting and feeling.

But, a few mindset shifts and hacks can make this even simpler.

Here’s one. This is major, so please read this a few times!

Right now, I want you to consider something and really grasp what it means for you. Limerence recovery demands ONE main thing from you. What it demands: to get over limerence, you need to use your imagination to figure out which variables would make your LO seem less addictive to you. And then incorporate as many of these variables into your current life, and/or make plans to move towards a new life that involves them. This is all there is to it, really.

By variables, I mean anything you could add to your life: new types of people you’d like to meet, different experiences, shifts in how people see you (i.e. you crave acting out different roles perhaps?), more general mental stimulation, a chance to secretly break some rules, more opportunities to learn, opportunities to present your work and feel powerful, more money, entrepreneurial success, or even more partying. Yes, I mentioned partying; I want you to be honest and 100% compassionate with yourself; this is a judgement-free zone.

So, the imaginal exercise: think of your LO, and how euphoric they can make you. And, how desperately, painfully upset they also make you, for those low emotions are simply the other side of the bliss and come with it. And then ask yourself, what would make these emotions less intense? Imagine your LO texted you right now… what would you have to be doing, and how would you have to be feeling, to feel LESS impacted? It’s exciting and crazy to feel a glimpse of relief doing this, because you will. As you use your imagination to traverse things you love and have loved, you’ll find a few things that click. THOSE are the things you need to incorporate into your life in clever, healthy ways, no matter how hard it seems. You can do it! 🙂

Examples of this? Some limerents who fall for adrenaline-seeking LOs need wilder experiences in their own life. Variables you may want to add to your life = solo travel, being a bit disinhibited yourself in safe ways (that don’t harm yourself or anyone else, of course!), finally starting that business or YouTube channel, extreme sports, or saying yes to more social events and mingling with random people. Now, this doesn’t need to look like abandoning your responsibilities, but if you often prioritise others, you might need to lean into a more selfish way of living to heal from limerence… occasionally choosing going to a gig with your friends over a quiet dinner with your spouse, or even taking time out to take a dance class. Or, your LO might be soulful and expressive, and your unmet needs might centre around more peace, more connection times, and more social bliss. Variables you might add here = quality time to yourself, reconnecting with a special old friend who really ‘saw’ you (being spontaneous and tracking them down online – why not?!), or the chance to write a novel or self-express in another meaningful way,

Either way, I want you to be a little ‘unreasonable‘ and dream big here, when imagining what would make you feel better and more empowered. It’s just an imaginal exercise, but it’s exactly what you need to do to heal – and might be enough for you to figure out what needs to be changed in your life, to bring that pesky LO back down to the human realm (and stop you falling for any others)!

Hope this resonates. This is a post I’m really excited to share, as I think it’ll change lives. Not at all in an egotistical way, but because I believe it’s a hack that really gets to the core of what limerence recovery is all about.

Until the next time!

Warmest wishes,

Lucy