When Crushes Turn Into Obsession: Limerence, ADHD, and the Nervous System

You know that feeling when a crush stops being fun and starts taking over your mind?

You keep checking your phone. Replaying conversations. Imagining scenarios.
Trying to “read the energy” and thinking about them far more than you want to admit.

It feels electric, addictive, intoxicating — and then suddenly overwhelming.

This isn’t just having a crush. This is the nervous system in a limerent state — a pattern that’s especially common for women with ADHD, rejection sensitivity, and a history of overfunctioning in relationships.

What Limerence Actually Is

Limerence is the intense, obsessive, fantasy-driven stage of infatuation where the brain is chasing dopamine, certainty, and emotional reassurance.

It’s not love. It’s not intuition. It’s not destiny.

It’s a biochemical response mixed with unmet emotional needs and a nervous system trying to regulate through connection.

The intrusive thoughts, daydreaming, and fixation aren’t failures of self-control — they’re survival strategies that once kept you safe, attuned, and connected.

Why Women With ADHD Experience Limerence More Intensely

If you have ADHD, your brain is wired for:

• Dopamine-seeking

• High-intensity emotions

• Hyperfocus on things that feel exciting

• Difficulty shifting attention once it locks on

A crush can feel like a full-body chemical event: Finally, something stimulating. Something to look forward to. Something that lights up your system.

Your crush is now a limerance-object or LO for short.

And when the other person is inconsistent, unpredictable, mysterious, or emotionally unavailable?

Your nervous system reads it as a challenge — and the limerence intensifies.

How Rejection Sensitivity Feeds the Obsession

For sensitive, intuitive, or neurodivergent women, the fear of rejection can feel like physical pain.

So your mind tries to prevent it by:

• Analyzing every word or text

• Searching for signs

• Imagining the “perfect future”

• Trying to earn their approval

• Becoming endlessly accommodating

• Staying hooked on the hope of reciprocity

This isn’t delusion, it’s your nervous system scanning for safety.

When connection feels uncertain, your brain fills in the gaps with fantasy — because fantasy feels predictable. The real world does not.

The Somatic Root of Limerence: A Nervous System Looking for Regulation

Under the obsession is a body that learned:

• Attunement must be earned

• You must work for connection

• Love is inconsistent but intoxicating

• Attention equals safety

So when someone activates old attachment wounds — even subtly — your body goes into a familiar pattern:

seek → fantasize → idealize → obsess → crash

It’s not just emotional. It’s physiological and it’s taxing on the nervous system.

Your system thinks it’s chasing romance, but it’s really chasing dopamine.

How Somatic Therapy Helps Untangle the Obsession

Somatic therapy helps you bring the obsession back into the body — where the pattern actually lives — instead of trying to “think your way out of it.”

Together, we work on:

• Noticing where the craving for connection settles in your body

• Tracking sensations of anxiety versus excitement

• Separating fantasy from nervous system activation

• Feeling the difference between longing and intuition

• Rebuilding internal safety so attraction doesn’t feel like survival

The goal isn’t to shame your desire.
It’s to help you hold it without spiraling into obsession.

How EMDR Helps Break the Pattern

Limerence usually comes from earlier experiences where love felt:

• unpredictable

• inconsistent

• unavailable

• something you had to earn

EMDR helps reprocess those memories so your system no longer confuses intensity with intimacy.

This opens the door to:

• clearer thinking

• less activation

• more grounded attraction

• healthy connection that doesn’t hijack your entire nervous system

You stop craving people who destabilize you — because your body stops interpreting chaos as chemistry.

When You’re Ready for Something Other Than Intensity

If you’ve been caught in obsessive crushes, limerent loops, or ADHD-fueled fixation, you’re not alone.

Your brain and body are trying to find safety.
Your system is trying to regulate.
Your heart is trying to feel connected in the only way it learned how.

And all of that can be re-patterned once you begin to feel more safe from the inside on your own.

I offer in-person therapy in Carmel-by-the-Sea and virtual sessions across California, supporting intuitive, creative women who want love that feels grounding — not destabilizing. If you’re ready to shift these patterns, learn more about EMDR therapy and different weays of working together on my website.

Disclaimer: This blog is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional medical or psychological advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Results from therapy may vary. If you're experiencing mental health issues, consult with a licensed mental health provider near you. Ashley K. Whelan is a holistic psychotherapist in California offering EMDR, somatic therapy, and psychedelic integration for women seeking mind-body-spirit healing.