The Highs and Lows of Life
How to maintain a healthy Dopamine balance
Life is full of ups and downs. There are days when I don’t want to wake up. My head is full of ideas but I don’t have the motivation or energy to pursue them.
The world doesn’t care if I’m feeling low or unhappy. It just moves on and slowly drifts away.
So, what should we do when we are feeling low and energy-deprived?
The low state and high state we experience are due to a neurotransmitter in our brain called Dopamine.
Dopamine is a neurochemical that influences our mood and feelings. When dopamine is released in high amounts, we feel great and our motivation increases but when dopamine is released in low amounts, we feel tired, bored and have zero motivation to do anything.
Understanding how dopamine works is important to live a balanced life where dopamine is released in moderate amounts.
But why should we live a dopamine-balanced life? Shouldn’t we aim to increase dopamine levels all the time?
Increasing dopamine all the time seems to be a good idea because the more the release, the more motivated we feel. Sadly, dopamine is limited.
When we pursue an exciting activity, we release a lot of dopamine, we feel motivated and focused.
The next time we pursue the activity, the dopamine which is released is lower.
When we continue to pursue the activity, dopamine is depleted completely which is really bad for us because we no longer get the pleasure from the pursuit and we don’t feel motivated to pursue that activity or anything else.
This is the low state where we feel energy-depleted and tired.
Consider an alcohol addict. They drink and feel good and they want to drink more. They drink again and again and again soon there comes a point when they don’t get the pleasure from drinking.
They try in vain to get that pleasure but all they get is pain because they have exhausted dopamine.
Since they have exhausted dopamine, it’d take a while (hours or several days or months)for their brain to reset dopamine levels.
So, It’s vital for us to maintain a healthy pleasure and pain balance. If you are in a low state, you must aim for resetting your dopamine levels. If you are in a high state, you must aim to not exhaust your dopamine.
Ways to maintain a healthy balance:
It is said in popular literature on dopamine that layering different activities releases a higher amount of dopamine. For example, When we listen to music we like while exercising, we release a lot of dopamine.
Using a smartphone for texting, sharing pictures or scrolling through social media releases a huge amount of dopamine.
Drugs like cocaine, nicotine, etc release very huge amounts of dopamine.
Eating delicious food, watching TV shows you like, playing video games, going to parties, public speaking, etc also release varying amounts of dopamine.
Getting a reward or winning releases a lot of dopamine.
So, we can start off by recognizing which activities are pleasurable to us.
Once you know that, you can sort the activities into two categories. The ones which are good for you and the ones which are bad for you.
For example, drug addiction is bad for you while exercising is good for you.
Now, limit the access to the activities which are bad for you. If you think SNS is bad for you, delete SNS apps from your mobile to limit access to those apps.
The activities which are good for you and you want to pursue in the long term, you must do them intermittently so that dopamine release won’t compound over time.
A trick to maintaining balance is to wait when craving something. For example, if you are craving a doughnut, wait for a while or longer until the craving is diminished. If you wait for enough time, your dopamine will be reset.
Another important aspect of balancing dopamine is tolerating pain.
We go into the low state after a high state because the low painful state makes us seek new rewards. The people who win at something feel satisfied for a while but they eventually feel the rush to pursue bigger better things.
But most people can’t tolerate pain and relapse into addictions.
So, it’s important to learn to deal with pain by pursuing hard things (work hard, put in the effort) so that you are willingly in the painful (doesn’t have to be physical pain) state, this will gradually reset your dopamine levels and get you into the high state.
Sleep is a natural way to reset dopamine. Getting a night of good sleep makes you energized and get you out of the low state.
If you layer pleasurable activities together, you are going to release lots of dopamine. Being mindful of layering will help you maintain balance. For example, I used to eat delicious food while watching K-dramas. This made me motivated to keep watching the shows even if I wasn’t deriving pleasure from them.
Since then, I’ve stopped doing those two pleasurable activities together and it has helped me reset my dopamine.
Another way to reset dopamine is Abstinence or Dopamine Fasting. Although it is hard to go cold turkey, we can schedule a day where we refrain from indulging in pleasure-seeking behaviours.
To live a balanced life, be mindful of how dopamine shapes your world through your mood and feelings. You have the power to control yourself and regulate your dopamine levels. High dopamine is good but in the long run, we must try to balance our dopamine levels because the consequence of high dopamine is low dopamine and dopamine deficiency leads to numerous mental health disorders like Depression, Schizophrenia, Parkinson's disease, etc.
Written by Shreya Sinha, Thank you for reading.
Tell me in the comments, what are the things you are addicted to and how do you plan to reset your dopamine and maintain a healthy balance.
Check out the Author’s website: Shreya Sinha
Shout out to Esther George, who in her wonderful article, shows us how we can embrace Wholeness, which is the ability to accept and embrace brokenness as an integral part of life.
Make sure to check it out:
