Dopamine Deficits & Dopamine Mining

 Just yesterday I was talking to my relative about something I call a “dopamine deficit”. I characterize it as a period of time in which someone is getting less dopamine triggered than their typical baseline and causes general dysphoria. 

For example, I recently went through a period of time where I cut someone out of my life who gave me dopamine, I cut out sugars (a high dopamine trigger) and I also did a digital detox which all three put my dopamine levels way lower than what I had been used to. Overall, I felt down, moody, and that general dysphoria. 

It was all for my benefit in the long run because I was overly dependent on those things for dopamine and in that period, I had to go on a journey of finding things that give me dopamine in a healthy way. 

I call the act of rebuilding things to release that missing dopamine “dopamine mining”. I started working out daily, watching motivational content, talking to friends again, and drinking tea. 

It is a process that retrains your mind to get dopamine and then consequently crave things that are more aligned with your goals and intentions. 

However, in my relative’s case, she fell into a dopamine deficit unintentionally. It wasn’t because she was detoxing unideal habits, she had fallen into a dark place mentally because she felt like the things in her life weren’t working out the way she needed or wanted them to. She was in a dopamine deficit. 

So, I told her that regardless of how she got there in that deficit, she needs to go mining. She needs to mine for enough dopamine to motivate her and give her hope to establish goals and decisions for a better life. Whether it’s her getting a massage or watching her favorite movie with her favorite snack, she needs to get out of the funk intentionally. She felt so plagued with all that is going wrong that no solution was in sight. She was in the darkness. She needed a little light to get her way out, any kind of non-destructive dopamine can do the trick. 

She felt a little silly to be focusing on simple pleasures when there’s these big problems however, getting your mental health and mindset to a functional baseline is a NECESSITY for improving and changing your life. It will be incredibly hard to maintain a proper level of motivation and self-belief in a dark period or a dopamine deficit. Sometimes dopamine mining really is the first step to the solution. 

Are you in a dopamine deficit? Or would you be willing to put yourself there to rebuild new dopamine triggers? 

- Dani 💚💙