Imagine waking up feeling electric with happiness. You are excited about your day, feeling in good spirits.
Everything is going well. You have a good day, a better than good day in fact. You are productive, you have head space as everyone else in the family is either at school or in the office.
Then it gets to night time and things start to change. You’ve eaten dinner but you want to snack. You check your device, computer looking for an email, a comment on social media, something to "action".
You start to regress from your children and struggle to engage. The feelings of happiness that you experienced during the day have faded. Nothing particularly bad has happened throughout your day, no bad news has arrived, no fights with your partner or the kids, it hasn't been particularly stressful, you just sink into this sense of lowness.
This my friends is how a drop in the Neurochemistry in your brain can manifest into your day and take you from happiness to dullness.
This is what a significant drop in Dopamine feels like.
Dopamine is responsible for allowing you to feel pleasure, satisfaction and motivation. Having low levels of dopamine can make you less motivated and excited about things.
If you have a significant drop in your dopamine levels you may start to engage in “dopamine seeking” activities.
These might be snacking, drinking, mindlessly scrolling social media, constantly checking emails or messenger to see if anything has come in since you checked 5 minutes ago.
Behaviours that give our brain a short burst of dopamine that momentarily make you feel better.
How do I know this?
Because this was my day today. And this is me now writing about it.
This is a reasonably common occurrence for me and now I can recognise it as my years of study have given me a pretty good understanding of what’s going on up there in the grey matter. This time I felt the lowness and decided to pen my feelings out.
At the height of my depression in my teenage years I wrote poetry. Really it was just my feelings on paper. They are however deep and some might even consider them dark.
I didn’t have an understanding back then about the impact on low dopamine and depression or how dopamine seeking behaviours can wreak havoc in your life.
I learnt those lessons the hard way.
I also see Dopamine seeking behaviours playing out in my coaching clients.
Clients who excessively shop because they get a dopamine hit every time they buy something new even though they don’t need it.
Clients who are either all on or not at the gym chasing the dopamine.
Clients who started having a glass of wine a day to help unwind and now it’s turned into half a bottle to a bottle a day.
All dopamine seeking behaviours.
You can increase your dopamine levels naturally by eating a healthy diet, including foods rich in L-Tyrosine (the protein needed to make dopamine). These include almonds, avocados, bananas, beef, chicken and eggs. Turmeric, vitamin D, magnesium and omega-3 supplements are also claimed to increase dopamine levels.
Activities that make you feel good will also raise dopamine. I like to put on my headphones and crank up the dance music when I need to raise my dopamine levels. Going to the gym and meditation are also supportive.
Dopamine seeking can also be caused by trauma but that’s a whole other topic in itself.
If any of those behaviours I mentioned sound like you, it’s possible you have an issue with dopamine seeking also.
If this is something you are ready to work through, if you want learn how to identify the behaviours and equip yourself with supportive strategies to manage when your dopamine drops then send me a message and let's chat.
I’ve got openings for 2 more private coaching clients from now until mid June. I’m also taking expressions of interest for my next Group Coaching Program and my end of year Retreat.
Let’s set up a time to talk over the phone and work out which one of those is the best support for you.
Breathe, Smile Breathe as a dear friend always reminds me.
Simply being able to write this has given my brain the neurochemical rebalance it needed.
Ahh, thank you sweet dopamine.