By Shifan Hu-Couble

Counsellor / Psychotherapist / Parenting Coach

We are the most privileged generation in human history in terms of our access to pleasure, comforts, and entertainment. Yet, we are also the most stressed, anxious, depressed and medicated generation. It seems that more pleasure and comfort have also brought us more pain. What is happening?

The Dopamine Cycle

In her book called "Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance In The Age Of Indulgence." Dr. Anna Lembke brought our attention to the most interesting findings in neuroscience in the past 75 years is that pleasure and pain are co-located in the brain. So that means that the same parts of the brain that process pleasure also process pain, and they work like opposite sides of a balance. So if you imagine that in your brain, there's a teeter-totter, like in a kid's playground - and when it's at rest, it's level with the ground. When we experience pleasure, it tips one way; when we experience pain, it tips the other. But one of the overarching rules governing this balance is that it wants to remain level. It doesn't want to be tipped for very long to the side of pleasure or pain, and our brains will work very hard to restore a level of balance, or what neuroscientists call homeostasis.

For example, when I eat a scoop of ice cream, I get a little release of dopamine in my brain’s reward pathway, and my pleasure-pain balance tips to the side of pleasure. Soon after, my brain tries to counter the increased dopamine by downregulating dopamine transmission, not just to baseline but below baseline. This is when I experience pain – craving for more ice cream. I have two choices now: I can choose to gratify my craving by taking another scoop which will keep me in the loop of wanting more and more; or, I can sit through the moment of discomfort of wanting more yet not getting more to allow my dopamine transmitter return to its baseline.

The sad truth is that we would most likely resort to the first option: gratify our craving the moment it arises due to the abundance of comfort and pleasure modern technology offers. We are constantly bombarding our reward pathway with excessive dopamine throughout the day, starting with checking our smartphones the moment we wake up, to highly addictive food with high sugar, fat and salt content. When we finish work and return home, we continue to flood our brains with dopamine by binge-watching Netflix, or alcohol, or just mindlessly scrolling social media.

When we flood our brain with dopamine by engaging in highly rewarding substance and behaviors, the brain releases less and less dopamine transmitters in its attempt to balance the pain and pleasure scale. This means when we are not engaging in a rewarding behavior or consuming a rewarding substance, we will experience a dopamine deficit. In other words, we will experience the universal symptoms of withdrawal from any addictive substance, which are anxiety, irritability, insomnia, dysphoria and craving. And we're so insulated from really our bodies and the kinds of painful experiences that our bodies were designed to tolerate that we've ended up in this dopamine deficit state where we feel incredibly depressed and nihilistic and unhappy, and we don't know why. And so what do we do? We reach for more of those things that give us pleasure in the short term. And yet those are the very things that are creating the despair in the first place.

Dopamine Detox

How to break this vicious cycle? The answer is simple, but not easy: dopamine detox. It starts with refraining yourself from pleasure. For example, can you not watch Netflix for a month? Can you remove IG from your phone for a month? Can you stop playing video games for a month?

Of course, things are going to get worse before they get better as the brain restores its reward pathways. Before you embark on a dopamine detox journey, here are some strategies you can adopt to ensure success:

1. Equip yourself with effective emotional regulation skills

When you experience difficult emotions as you withdraw from dopamine, you need to be able to sit with your feelings. This is a skill to be acquired. You can work with your therapist to identify regulation techniques that would work the best for you: breathing, mindfulness, bilateral tapping, etc.

2. Anticipate and rehearse challenging moments when you are in a calm state.

Pick a moment of your day when you feel neutral and calm, imagine what thoughts, sensations, and emotions might arise if you crave for dopamine, have a conversation with different parts of yourself, get their buy-ins and agree on a plan. For example, when you come home from work and feel the urge to order takeout and watch Netflix for the rest of the evening, ask the part that craves what needs to happen for him to step back for a while, and be curious about the answer.

3. Circle a date on your calendar.

Having an end date of the detox gives you a sense of certainty. Decide on a realistic date, not too lenient nor ambitious.

4. Start to intentionally invite pain into your lives

For example: exercise, ice bath, or having a conversation to address the elephant in the room. As you invite more pain in your life, the pain-pleasure scale will start to balance again.

When your reward pathways are restored to a healthy balance, you will be able to enjoy life in its simpler form: the breeze on your face, the aroma from a cup of coffee, the giggling of your child, and the endless pursuit of the next high will finally stop. Start your first step of this recovery by booking a session with me!