Your Ups and Downs Are Natural...& also learned PART 1

Описание: Loretta Breuning shows you how to turn on your happy brain chemicals in new ways to have more of what you want and eliminate unwanted patterns.

Quick Quiz (The summary below will help.)

1. Happy chemicals are meant to do a job rather than flow all the time. What is the job of each one?

2. What is the value of bad feelings?

3. How do brain chemicals promote survival in the state of nature?

4. How does your brain make sense of the world as it flows in from your senses?

5. If our operating system evolved for survival, why do we end up with some circuits that hurt survival?

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Your Next Step

Figure out what turns on your dopamine. What gives you the excited feeling that a reward is coming? Food examples are easy, but consider complex social rewards too. The biggest reward from your mammal brain’s perspective is finding a way to stop pain, so look for examples of that. Compare your dopamine experiences today with those of youth and puberty, and notice any similarities.

What turns on your oxytocin? When do you feel safe and protected? When do you wisely withhold trust? Compare today’s oxytocin experiences with those of your past and notice any similarities.

What turns on your serotonin? When do you feel confident about your place in the world? Compare your serotonin experiences today with those of youth and puberty, and notice the similarities.

What turns on your cortisol? Notice when your threatened feeling turns on. Decide what might be useful information, and what might be a false alarm triggered by the pathways of your cortisol past.

When you feel alarmed, what circuits do you rely on to feel good?

If you could turn on your happy chemicals in a way that serves you in the long run, what would it be?

Watch Episode 2 and complete the next worksheet


Summary of Episode 1

Emotions are caused by brain chemicals. We’ve inherited these chemicals from our mammalian ancestors, but we control them with neural pathways we build from life experience.

Our brain chemicals are not meant to flow all the time. They turn on and off in response to the opportunities and threats we see around us. You define opportunities and threats with the neural pathways you have. An opportunity triggers a happy chemical that motivates you to go toward it. A threat triggers an unhappy chemical that motivates you to avoid it. Each spurt is soon metabolized, and you have to do more to get more. Opportunities and threats for your genes get your mammal brain’s attention whether you consciously think that way or not.

The good feelings of your past paved neural pathways that wire you to expect more good feelings by going toward similar things. The bad feelings of your past wired you to expect bad feelings unless you avoid similar things. We all end up with some quirky circuits because our past experience is never a perfect representation of the world.

Each of the happy chemicals has a specific job to do. Each motivates a special type of survival behavior.

DOPAMINE spurts when you approach a reward. It releases your reserve tank of energy so you can do what it takes to meets your needs. New rewards are powerful because your brain adjusts to old rewards.

ENDORPHIN produces a euphoria that masks pain. Physical pain is what triggers it. We are designed to avoid pain, not to create it. Endorphin evolved for emergencies, not for a constant flow.

OXYTOCIN creates the good feeling of trust. You feel safe with those around you when it flows. Safety in numbers helps a mammal survive, but it’s not safe to trust every critter, so oxytocin goes on and off.

SEROTONIN creates confidence in your ability to assert yourself. A social animal has to assert itself to get the food and reproductive opportunity necessary to pass on its genes. Serotonin makes it feel good.

CORTISOL creates the bad feeling that your survival is threatened. It motivates you to do what it takes to make it stop. Bad feelings are information. They help us avoid paths that don’t meet our needs.

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