Dopamine Nation

 LESSONS OF THE BALANCE

Estas notas son tomadas del Libro: Domanie Nation

Anna Lembke

Estas son las conclusiones deli libro que me gustaron mucho. Las quiero anotar para ternerlas presentes.

1. The relentless pursuit of pleasure and avoidance of pain, leads to pain.

2. Recovery begins with abstinence

3. Abstinence resets the brains reward pathway and with it our capacity to take joy and simpler pleasures.

4. Self-binding creates literal and metacognitive space between desire and consumption, a modern necessity in our dopamine overloaded world.

5. Medications can restore homeostasis, but consider what we lose by medicating away our pain.

6. Pressing on the pain side, resets our balance to the side of pleasure.

7. Beware of getting addicted to pain.

8. Radical honesty promotes awareness, enhances intimacy and fosters a plenty mindset.

9. Prosocial shame affirms that we belong to the human tribe.

10. Instead of running away from the world, we can find escape by immersing ourselves in it.”

“The paradox is that hedonism, the pursuit of pleasure for it's own sake, leads to anhedonia. Which is the inability to enjoy pleasure of any kind.”

"The world is sensory rich and causal poor". That is to say, we know the donut tastes good in the moment, but we are less aware that eating a donut every day for a month, adds 5 pounds to our waistline.”

“Once we get the anticipated reward, brain dopamine firing increases well above tonic baseline, but if the reward we anticipated doesn't materialize, dopamine levels fall well below baseline. Which is to say, if we get the expected reward, we get an even bigger spike, if we don't get the expected reward, we experience an even bigger plunge. We've all experienced the letdown of unmet expectations. An expected reward that failed to materialize is worse than a reward that was never anticipated in the first place.

“I urge you to find a way to immerse yourself fully in the life that you’ve been given. To stop running from whatever you’re trying to escape, and instead to stop, and turn, and face whatever it is. Then I dare you to walk toward it. In this way, the world may reveal itself to you as something magical and awe-inspiring that does not require escape. Instead, the world may become something worth paying attention to.”