North Brisbane Psychologists

02/02/2026

What do you make of this study?

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DUHIiFnDoPC/?igsh=ZmFvenN6N3R5M2t4

01/02/2026

31/01/2026

For anyone who needs this ♥️

31/01/2026

We have a gratitude tree in the waiting room at our Lutwyche Clinic and I’ve pulled off some of my favorite little notes from the adults and kids who come and see us. So sweet 🥹 ♥️ Rachel 🤓

30/01/2026

There’s a third option 🧐🤓💕

29/01/2026

At our Lutwyche clinic, we have a gratitude tree in the waiting room. Here are some lovely answers from adults and kids from December ♥️♥️ WHAT are you looking forward to in 2026?!?

29/01/2026

Meet my new colleague, Canice Curtis. He and I discuss borderline personality (BPD) and how to have both compassion and boundaries. Canice is super supportive and now taking new clients at both Aspley and Lutwyche ❤️ Dr Rachel

28/01/2026

Love, Limerance and Infatuation

By Ian Read (NBP fan)

When you're properly pi**ed, it seems like you can scale walls, juggle chainsaws, drive like Ayrton Senna (bad example?), and sing like Pavarotti. The next day of course, assuming you're not in A&E, or the mortuary, the Seven Dwarves are mining for misery on the inside of your temples, and Grumpy has put his pick through your optic nerve. As I sneak up on 60 this year, and doing a bit of long-range reflection, it seems booze and human attraction share some tragic features.

Dopamine is a star player in our goal-oriented motivational behaviour. Infatuation, it seems, hacks dopamine production. If dopamine was toothpaste, infatuation throws the cap away and stamps on the tube. A terrifying drug with a shocking hangover, especially when mixed with a cocktail of other neurotransmitters. "My Nucleus Acumbens and Ventral Tegmental Area really dig you baby!" Just to finish the job, a good squeeze of Cortisol goes in there as well, to make sure you're nice and anxious at the same time. According to mythology, literature, history, and science, it's really not all that good for rational decision making. I have read (and experienced) that during intense romantic attraction, activity drops in parts of the prefrontal cortex, which support critical thinking, long‑term planning, and negative judgment. Given the massive investment that raising children represents, it is the sort of suspended disbelief that makes procreation possible; a kind of shared delusion in which we each appear to be imbued with a halo of infallibility, or at the very least our respective irritations can be adequately rationalised away. I'm actually a little bit surprised that it is not explicitly listed among the cognitive distortions that underpin CBT. Although, having spent a little bit of time snapping a rubber band on my wrist and chanting "stop it", I can confidently say it did bugger-all in the face of that kind of chemistry. In the end I just had to learn the hard way to 'drink responsibly'.

Limerance is a much sneakier beast. If infatuation is a data point, then limerance is about fitting a pattern through a bunch of data points. A sort of 'unconscious background addiction' as opposed to a binge. Bowlby's Attachment Theory suggests that early relationships with caregivers shape internal working models of love, safety, and worthiness, which later guide partner choice outside of awareness; where the limerent person is unknowingly trying to “fix” an old wound through a new partner. In practice then, limerence represents an unconscious, learned template for who feels desirable and meaningful, built from attachment history, reinforced in the brain’s reward system, then expressed as a powerful but sometimes maladaptive pattern of partner selection. At some point I realised that what all my failed relationships had in common was me, and that was what had to change first. Bu**er!

Love, on the other hand, seems more like infatuation's sensible but slightly boring Auntie, who shows up in the station wagon when you haven't got bus fare. Who brings you home-cooked soup when you've got man flu, and apparently can't sustain your own conditions for life. Who tells you in no uncertain terms when she's sick of your s**t. Nevertheless, who also harbours passion that is more mountain-building magma-chamber than firework. Who shows up, and keeps showing up for the unstated but obvious reason that she wants you to be well and happy and growing, and makes the room for that to happen. 27 years into that process, and I'm deeply appreciative of the solid ground that brings all the other sparkles, flutters, sputters and face-plants into glorious relief. I wouldn't change any of it though. Without all that, there couldn't be all this.