The human brain is extremely complex. It operates everything we do, say, think, feel, and experience, yet most people don't receive the opportunity to learn about how it works. Without understanding how something works, it's nearly impossible to operate that something at its full potential.
Without understanding the human brain, it may feel like we're going through life lost. When we understand how the brain responds to our environment and shapes our behavior, we can achieve greater self-awareness, fine-tune our behaviors, and shape our experiences and outlook on ourselves and the world. While there are many brain areas that are uniquely fascinating, I'm going to start by taking a deep dive into explaining dopamine, as it is the driving force behind all human behavior. I'll be speaking about this topic generally and as it relates to childhood trauma so everyone reading this can benefit.
Let's start with a quick definition of dopamine:
Simply put, dopamine is a chemical released in the brain that makes you feel happiness and pleasure. It plays a part in many functions including movement, memory, attention, sleep, arousal, mood, learning, and reward and motivation. Its ability to serve as a "reward" means that it has the power to reinforce everything we do and experience.
So now that we understand what dopamine is, the next question you may ask is,
"What constitutes something being rewarded or not?"
The brain is wired to release dopamine to reinforce things that are crucial for survival- eating, drinking, sleeping, and reproduction. While things related to these categories are often naturally rewarded in the brain, there are many other non-essential things that are also reinforced. This is due to a variety of factors including genetics, early life experiences, impulse control (or lack thereof), emotional gratification, traumatic experiences, etc.
Individuals who have caregivers who suffered from alcoholism are more likely to be predisposed to addiction as well. If they are in an environment surrounded by access to substances, they will be more likely to reach for that substance because of the genetic wiring that creates a natural pull to something that they may not logically want or understand. Individuals who are naturally impulsive or had a parental upbringing that didn't aid in regulating impulse control will be more susceptible to responding quickly to cravings and desires. Individuals who received a lot of love and bonding with their caregiver as a child are more likely to receive a spike in dopamine when they feel connected, accepted, and loved by others. In the example of traumatic experiences, things that kept an individual alive in trauma will be reinforced. If a child was physically abused for anything they did that was considered "wrong" by the abusive caregiver, the child would have felt internally "rewarded" or safe when they hid things from that parent. If they didn't share when they got a bad grade, lied when they accidentally spilled their drink, forgot to do their homework, etc, and didn't get hit as a result, then the lying behavior was reinforced.
Dopamine Baseline
Now that we know what can influence the dopamine reward system, we must also understand the dopamine baseline. This pertains to the level of dopamine that our brain and body are aiming to achieve. Our baseline level of dopamine is influenced by genetics, early life experiences, and day-to-day factors. It is ever-changing as we move through life. What is important to understand is that we are wired to maintain a level of homeostasis. If we didn't have balance with dopamine levels, we would always be aiming to achieve more pleasure and we would never be satisfied in life. So the baseline is essential in maintaining balance. If anything offsets our baseline level of dopamine in either direction, our brain is wired to counterbalance that offset. Imagine a balance scale. When something causes a tip up to the right, the left side goes down simultaneously. For example, imagine that you went on a wonderful vacation. For a week straight everything was happy, exciting, and fun. Your brain was pumped with an excess amount of dopamine causing the level to spike high to the right side of the scale. As soon as you returned home, you felt sad. The vacation was over and now your brain had to balance out the scale so dopamine becomes depleted. This is called the opponent process reaction.
Let's say, for example, a child is born into a nurturing and safe environment. His parents held him, responded to his cries, fed him, gave him love, etc. This child's baseline level of dopamine is likely to be pretty high. Now let's imagine that when this child entered middle school, he child was bullied. While his parents were loving and supportive, he felt ashamed to tell them what was going on. He was used to maintaining high dopamine levels, but now feels pain because of the bullying and cannot maintain that baseline level, so he will be looking for external ways to feel pleasure. Let's say someone offers him marijuana and in that first experience with marijuana he now feels pleasure again. His dopamine level will spike and that will help him return to baseline, actually, he will have surpassed the baseline and the brain will then reinforce the act of what just occurred. The brain will reinforce being friends with the person who gave him the marijuana, reinforce the act of smoking itself, reinforce not sharing with his parents that he was bullied in the first place, etc. So now, over time, his brain will need more and more marijuana to reach that baseline dopamine level because his tolerance will go up. In time, he will have to consume a far greater amount of marijuana than he did the first time to receive any pleasure at all or to just feel "balanced" or "normal."
Studies have been conducted to better understand how this process works. The consensus is that the dopamine system works so hard so that the brain can establish shortcuts and not have to think through the pros and cons of every situation. Instead, if it deems something as "good" or "pleasurable" it rewards that behavior and initiates a craving for more of that thing and eventually, it becomes habitual- requiring little thought. Here are some examples of habitual learning that is automatic:
- moving
- eating
- brushing teeth
- getting dressed
- driving a car
- talking ("i.e. automatically saying please, then thank you)
- writing
If we had to spend time thinking about each one of these things and re-learn the process, that wouldn't be efficient.
So, in these studies, the researchers aimed to interrupt this process so we can choose what behavior is beneficial and what system is not.
One study reviewed the literature of fifty-four randomized controlled trials between 2009 and 2017. In these trials, researchers had a group of participants who regularly smoked cigarettes or had some form of behavioral addiction (BA). They divided the participants into a control group and an experimental group. In the control group, they told the participants to continue their substance "treatment as usual (TAU)" to help them stop the behavior. In the experimental group, they had participants engage in "mindfulness-based interventions (MBI)" that allowed participants to keep smoking or engaging in the behavior but to be mindful about what they are feeling and experiencing in the present moment when they engage in the behavior. The results of the trials showed that mindfulness-based interventions were successful in "reducing dependence, craving, and other symptoms while also improving mood state and emotion dysregulation (Sancho, M., De Garcia, M., Rodriguez, R., et al)." The trials further recommended that mindfulness interventions coupled with regular therapy would allow for even greater benefits.
This study highlights how once a behavior becomes automatic, the logical part of the brain shuts off. The reward part of the brain is so strong that individuals will continue a harmful behavior or one that offers no value, even when they know it's harmful.
So here is how we can take this information and apply it to our own lives and unwanted behaviors.
Applying the Dopamine- reset principle
One of the main reasons for depression in our culture is the need for constant pleasure. I'm going to provide one more example of how awareness and mindfulness can help interrupt the dopamine system for unwanted behaviors (spending too much time on social media, eating unhealthy foods, maintaining unhealthy relationships, using substances, etc).
In today's culture, the majority of people have some form of social media (if you don't, kudos to you!). While having social media may provide some benefits such as staying in contact with friends and family, documenting happy memories, marketing business, etc., Often times, we are on social media and scrolling aimlessly and detaching from the real world or present environment. This is because you may scroll through 50 pictures or videos or tweets, and 49 of them brought no value to you at all. Maybe you just scrolled through 50 pieces of random content but one of the pieces of content happened to be something that brought you value, your dopamine level spiked and reinforced the entire behavior (picking up your phone, scrolling aimlessly). That one piece of content may have sparked a business idea, it may have resulted in you obtaining validation or approval from your virtual audience (i.e. a like), or it may have initiated a conversation between you and an old friend which felt nice because humans are wired for connection. Whatever the circumstance of "pleasure", the entire system was rewarded.
If we were mindful in that moment we would have recognized that we were aimlessly scrolling. We could have paused to ask ourselves, "what is my intention right now?" and "what am I missing in the real world/my current environment?" If the answer is, "I'm looking for business inspiration," turn to the internet and search for business ideas related to your field. If the answer is, "I want to feel connected to others," then exit out of the social media app and engage in a conversation with those around you or call a friend to chat.
When we are aware of the dopamine system we can start to re-wire the reward center. We can ask ourselves what is being rewarded, what we can do instead, adjust to momentary bouts of discomfort until an urge or craving passes, and better ourselves in the short term and long term by rewarding healthy behaviors and letting go of unhealthy habits.
I hope you found this information useful. I encourage you to take some time to look at what behaviors may be naturally reinforced or rewarded and identify if there are any behaviors that are unhealthy or not serving a long-term purpose. As always, please reach out if you have any questions or contact another mental health professional if you want assistance working through past trauma or navigating life's challenges.
Sancho M, De Gracia M, Rodríguez RC, Mallorquí-Bagué N, Sánchez-González J, Trujols J, Sánchez I, Jiménez-Murcia S, Menchón JM. Mindfulness-Based Interventions for the Treatment of Substance and Behavioral Addictions: A Systematic Review. Front Psychiatry. 2018 Mar 29;9:95. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2018.00095. PMID: 29651257; PMCID: PMC5884944.
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