I Feel Stuck - Dopamine Traps
People will commonly feel stuck in life when they fall into dopamine traps. Dopamine traps are behaviors, substances, and/or foods that spike your dopamine and create significant troughs that result in you pursuing the same behavior again. The things that can make you feel stuck include, social media, digital entertainment, processed food, drugs and alcohol, and even our smartphones, among many others. Feeling stuck is a difficult place to be but dopamine coaching can help you spring from the trap and pursue your best life.
What is a Dopamine Trap?
In this day and age, a large number of things that we pursue and get addicted to are things that offer high dopamine rewards with very little effort. The fact of the matter is that technology companies spend billions of dollars to find the best way to target your reward pathways and keep you engaged with their products. This is why social media apps no longer place content chronologically. Instead, the algorithm decides. Video games offer chance rewards from loot boxes instead of achievement based rewards. Fast food companies put sugar in almost all of their food and include a large soda with every combo. Every single day, we are bombarded by advertising, activities, and substances that try their best to target our reward pathways and overstimulate us.
What it Feels Like to be Stuck
What happens when we live in a world of overstimulation is that we are more and more likely to only participate in behaviors that are low-effort, high-procrastination activities. Whatever your vice may be whether it’s food, porn, or the stock market, the instant gratification offered by these activities is what leads to procrastination, addiction, and depression. Over stimulation and addiction is the progressive narrowing of the things that bring you happiness. So, as you become more trapped in the instant gratification loop it gets harder to get out. It begins to feel like the only thing that gives you feelings and pleasure is the very thing leading you to sadness.
Dopamine Traps to be Aware of
Dopamine traps are everywhere and can even find their way into our brain without us realizing it. Many of the things that have become common behaviors and activities play a significant role in making us miserable. It is time for us to acknowledge the common players in the progressive saddening of the human race. Let's go more into depth with some of these traps.
Social Media & Digital Entertainment
It started with a beautiful idea: connect you with your friends, family, and colleagues so you can keep up with what they are doing, communicate with old friends, and know where everyone is at in life. Then it got dark. Facebook, instagram, and Tiktok, all have to keep the lights on and they do that by casting a shadow over your brain and heart. With the monetization of social media has come the age of digital addiction. We spend hours mindlessly scrolling what instagram decides that we see. Instagram’s number one goal is to keep you scrolling and if you're not scrolling, it will find something to notify you of to bring you back to the platform.
Think you’re not addicted? I implore you to turn on screen time tracking and see how much time you spend scrolling. What we have been told is connecting us and giving us a community is actually driving a spike straight through our families, relationships, and friendships. By targeting our reward centers, these companies have been able to sneak addiction under our noses and make themselves boat loads of money through our collective grief.
So next time you reach for social media, instead reach out to a friend, call your parents, play a game of cards with your spouse. Replace your false sense of community with a real community. Your brain, heart, and soul will breathe a collective sigh of relief.
Processed Food & Sugar Drinks
Oh no, not food too. Yes. Your food can also be a dopamine trap, it can make you miserable, sad, and lethargic. I will not be picking on all food though. There are many foods, snacks, and meals that will not cause you any concerns with dopamine or with health. Whole grains, vegetables, meats, legumes, and fruits are all manageable and will not lead to adverse affects in your brain chemistry. When it comes to dopamine we need to watch out for processed food and added sugar as these lead to spikes in dopamine, craving, and eventually food addiction.
Chronic metabolic diseases cost Amercians trillions of dollars every year, yet 75% of these diseases are preventable (the numbers are strikingly similar in Canada). That means there’s also trillions of dollars being spent unnecessarily due to added sugars, high caloric and high fat diets. Processed sugar is considered a staple for your diet in the minds of many people but has been proven to have very little nutritional value. High sugar foods typically serve one purpose: to keep you wanting more. “More, more, more” is the typical message that sugar sends through your body and mind until your spoon hits the bottom of the ice cream pail and you know you have a world of pain coming.
This is not to say that you can never enjoy a pizza or a pop again. This is to remind you that, similar to gambling, you’ll want to set a limit before you begin and stay within that limit. Your brain is very clever and it will do everything in its power to continue to spike your reward circuit.
Alcohol & Drugs
I will not spend too much time here as I believe most readers will be quite familiar with the dark side of alcohol and drugs, their local MADD group having visited their elementary school giving most children their first exposure to drugs and alcohol. I will use this area to say that dopamine is the measure by which we use to identify the likelihood of addiction something will cause and drugs are unnaturally high on the dopaminergic scale. Sex, the highest natural dopamine spiking behavior leads to a 2x increase. Alcohol is also approximately 2x, marijuana 2.5x, and other illicit drugs ranging from 10x-10,000x. These unnatural and extreme spikes in dopamine lead to an eye-tearing dopamine trough that almost always results in a second, third, and eventually hundredth use.
While we will not all be able to avoid drugs and alcohol, it is important to understand that the risks of addiction are very real and can capture even the most diligent mind once we open the proverbial Pandora's box.
Smart Phones and Notifications
Lastly, in the pocket of everyone over the age of at least 12 (as early as 8) are our smartphones. At this point, they feel to humans like what I imagine a tail feels like to a monkey. These devices are meant to keep us connected, create vast opportunities to network, interact with friends, and keep us updated on what is happening in the world. They are so good at this that they now have no issue disrupting family gatherings, interrupting business meetings, and they have even found their way into a married couple's bed. Notifications, badges, banners, are all designed to be captivating and attention grabbing so that when a ringer goes off the whole room will turn their head to identify the sounds as instagram lets you know that your favorite person you don’t know has found “THE BEST” sandwich in town. Your poor reward circuit cannot keep up with every new thing there is.
There’s a super simple solution here: Turn your iphone off and never turn it on again. I’m only half kidding as this would defend you against the addictive grip of our phones but it’s almost impossible to do unless you want to live your life out as a hermit and miss out on all the exciting developments in our beautiful world. The better solution is to be very picky with your notification settings. Social media is already addicting enough, there is no reason it should vibrate or ping when the latest influencer post pops up. Your phone receives enough of your attention in a day without being able to cry, whine, and throw a fit when you’re not looking at it.
There’s also a number of other strategies to reduce screen addiction and time including monochrome/gray-scale, bedtime modes, and app timers and blockers. Time away from your phone can often be very difficult but has a profound effect on our motivation levels and focus.
Other Dopamine Traps to Watch For
While this is not an exhaustive list, I have done my best to cover some of the major culprits of dopamine traps that can lead to a dull life. Since I was not able to write about all of them, here is a number of other things to be wary of when optimizing dopamine levels and increasing motivation:
Caffeine
The stock market
Email
Instant messengers
Video games
Certain prescription drugs
Online Shopping
We have become so accustomed to overconsuming instead of creating, our addictive behaviors line the pockets of the drug, food, and tech industries. It is important that we become familiar with the dopamine traps that have been created for us and to carefully pick our path in a way that keeps us safe and happy.
Dopamine Coaching will Help you get Unstuck.
Dopamine has been scientifically proven to have a direct influence on the decisions and actions we take. Dopamine coaching will support you to identify how you are spending your dopamine, the universal currency of motivation, and help you create the life you want to live. It is very easy to fall prey to dopamine traps, as they are abundant and unrelenting in consuming more of you. Dopamine coaching creates awareness, removes barriers, and creates action. If you're looking for a way to change your life, dopamine coaching is a great way to start.
