Immediacy, a nod to dopamine and finding balance!
Bringing neuroscience and psychology to everyday life...
We live in a world built around immediacy. Paradoxically the human construct of time is contributing heavily to our mental and physical downfall. It is also depleting the planet’s reserves and biodiversity. Which in turn feeds the multifaceted vicious cycle containing things like social media, trauma, health, education, money, consumerism and marketing. Our wellbeing and health cycle are also multi faceted across cognition, emotion, physical and environmental awareness and intelligence. But the human tendency is to hook it on one element in isolation, rather than seeing interconnected systems.
A simple example of this is how dopamine receives a lot of negative press with many people advocating for dopamine fasting, especially when immediacy and consumption of anything is only a touch of a button a way. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter acting on areas of the brain relating to motivation. But it is also involved in sleep, learning, memory and movement. Dopamine contributes to the wanting of something and gusto to go and get it, not necessarily the actual enjoyment of it per se. It is also worth noting some people have a dopamine deficit brain and need the relevant mechanism to be deployed to support that.
Dopamine has also been perhaps unfairly implicated in addictive behaviours. But let’s put that into context social media scrolling, video gaming or gatekeeping your work email do not stimulate the same dopamine release as drugs. For example cocaine or amphetamine after prolonged use can produce giant spikes in dopamine, resulting in dopamine not being our friend. However, keep in mind that there are often multiple interconnected factors at play, addiction is never just about a single neurochemical!
Ultimately we need dopamine, it is an integral for our survival but just like most things in life we need to maintain balance in a reward focused world. So how might we work with immediacy and dopamine ?
The brain and body are working tirelessly to protect us physically and psychologically, even though at times it may not seem like it. This can mean we can’t access the bigger picture or look longer term. Remember also that immediacy can play into in to a sensitivity to rejection something I have written about previously. Here’s how - the internal voice maybe saying, “I must respond or react immediately otherwise I could be left behind, isolated or dismissed”. But one small step to start addressing that is to start noticing where your nervous system is spending its time. Maybe ask yourself is immediacy always benefitting me? Work with learning what your body/nervous system, your emotions, your thoughts and your behaviours are communicating. This in turn can help with understanding and meeting basic but more importantly your complex needs too. For instance, for many years I focused on closing down physical messages of anxiety rather than what and why they were communicating.
Anxiety, anger, avoidance and dissociation are examples of valuable coping /protection mechanisms and powerful communicating methods. But if they are showing up chronically, and being ignored, then they maybe negatively impacting your present and your future wellbeing. As stated above dopamine is key for learning so use it to understand what wellbeing ‘scaffolding’ works for you.
Be open to your sense of self being made up of multiple parts. These parts are constantly updating and interacting, throughout our lifetime, with our biology, our past, our present at an individual and collective level. Remember we are not static beings, we are dynamic and agile totally capable of positive change, ultimately benefitting ourselves and the planet.
