Why the focus on Dopamine?
Dopamine is the neurotransmitter that signals anticipation of pleasure. Ir helps you be motivated to get things done and to move. Dopamine pushes you to crave more stimulus. This is a natural drive and nothing is wrong with it. Modern life offers a lot of stimulation of dopamine. Feeling over-stimulated is often a sign of doing too much and getting a high dopamine hit. This can inhibit present moment focus and stop you from enjoying simple things. The opposite neurotransmitter is serotonin - the contentment chemical. The balance of serotonin and dopamine plays a part in our understanding of addiction and I wrote about that here - but does this isn't the root cause, as we once thought. 

Is something wrong with you?
For years we've been labouring under the assumption that addicts must have an imbalance of dopamine  and serotonin as the cause of addiction and depression. We've relied on drugs to balance these levels. This can help in the short term, but not long term.  That's because dopamine isn't the problem, it is the result of a lack of positive connection. If a person is brought up in a negative environment, or doesn't have meaningful work, sustainable income or worse, has a criminal record, then they will feel the pressure of life as stress in the body and negative thinking in the mind. This is the very thing that humans need relief from. In a culture of instant pleasures it makes sense that we find relief in them.  These videos discuss the old and new ways of understanding habits and addictions:

How you think about it matters
Ultimately we all trying to escape the negative mind and stress in our bodies,  Because we have minds that tend to think negatively we often beat ourselves up about our habits. We have high expectations of ourselves and others, so we talk about our habits as 'bad'. This makes the cravings for relief stronger and make it more likely you'll relapse into the old habit, eventually. 
A ‘dopamine detox’ is a way of thinking that uses a serious amount of willpower an  ‘deprivation stress'  to remove all pleasure. Willpower can get used up. The internal slave driver will sap your energy and make things less enjoyable. How long will it be until you need to escape and find some instant pleasure from the old habit again? What you are really running from is the negativity of the mind, felt as stress in your body. Your body needs some relief. A holiday perhaps?

Reframe your habit change, positively - as a holiday!
If you can use the mind in a cooperative, instead of punishing way then you'll be happier AND get more done. Positive, empowered thinking will not add stress, it will add enjoyment! I have a few suggestions to help you here:

• Liberation, not deprivation: See the time off as liberating, luxurious and a relief - like a holiday! 
• Learning not failing:  Recognise this is all a process of learning and finding balance. Nothing is wrong and pain is a natural part of the learning process. In fact pain is a good sign - a sign of growth. 
• Embrace and experience mistakes: Third, if you do slip up, do it consciously and talk about it afterwards. This way you get to expose yourself to the truth of the habit, and learn faster, to naturally let it go.

To help you reframe the habit well I have a few approaches:

1. MAD Habit Reframe: Recognise the habits are not bad, they are MAD: rooted in avoidance of pain, which actually ends up creating more pain. This will give you motivation to move towards your experience, including slip-ups and mistakes. 
2. SANE strategies: Can we find ways that are aligned with out humanity, that work with the fact that we are limited physical creatures with needs and emotions.
3. Dopamine Doggie reframe: Whenever I feel a craving I see it as a little dog that simply needs some loving discipline. I say "No, good doggie" with a smile!  The less I feed it the weaker and more tame it gets. 
4. ​CLAP: Introduce a simple, physical way of catching yourself before you make the mistake of feeding the Dopamine Doggie or doing a MAD habit
5. Get a travel companion: Find a friend to do it with you and enjoy having an encouraging 'accountability buddy'.

Below is more detail on these:​

To help bring consciousness back into balance we can practice, what I call, SANE strategies. Instead of fighting our reactions we are better served to notice and accept them. That doesn’t mean just give in and do nothing, it means we notice and neutralise negativity and play with some experimental actions. When you notice a MAD habit:
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• S: Slow down: Pause and notice what is happening. This is the first part of what I teach (meditation)
  
  
• A: Acknowledge: Say out loud what you are feeling and thinking, and the facts, if possible.
  
  
• N: Notice the negativity: You can then let it go. If it is stuck you can use tools to transform negative thinking. This is the second part  of what I teach (positive psychology). 
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• E: Experiment: Take tiny actions to play with new options . Tiny habits are, in my view, more successful. That's what this is all about. 

This blog is my perspective on why we repeat patterns, get attracted to people who trigger us, and why nothing is wrong - this is all good stuff, if we choose to play with it. 

Reactions Rule
We are emotional creatures (more than logical). Most of our 'reactions' are caused by hidden emotional wounds, obscured by defense mechanisms . Until we can see them and trace them to their origin we will react cluelessly to them. People in therapy are going through a process of recognising, accepting and working with these internal wounds and reactions. 

Michael Singer calls these wounds, the inner thorns. I tend to agree. 

The clues that you are reacting to an inner wound are 'disturbance':

• When you react without clear, conscious choice (lost in the FOG of Fear, Obligation or Guilt)
• When you feel pressure to act immediately  and clumsily
• When you believe things are not ok, something is wrong
• When you criticise harshly others or yourself
• When you feel a need to advise, fix or rescue others
• When you feel powerless and lost

These things point us to an unconscious pattern of defence and avoidance.  It is not the situation, it is your inner thorn - your wound - that makes you react with emotion.  It is very hard to interrupt this reaction without the awareness, but even when you do have awareness it is hard.

I have found the best way I can change my patterns is to prepare to remember. If I do some prep work then I can spot  the wounded reactions and more easily interrupt them. Prep involves facing our fears. 

What is the underlying need or fear?
Fear and need are two sides of the same coin. So working together and switching between fear and need the two questions you could ask repeatedly are:

• 'What is the need beneath that?'
• 'Then what is the fear of  what might happen?'

Here's an interview between a Client (C) and Questioner (Q):
C: "I need to get this job and I'm feeling anxious all the time"
Q: 'What is the need beneath that?'
C: "I need money and a career that I like!"
Q: 'What is the need beneath that?'
C: "I guess security. And maybe satisfaction?... No... Purpose!"
Q: 'What is the need beneath that?'
C: "I don't know!"
Q: 'Then what is the fear of might happen?'
C: "What if I don't get it? I'll be penniless, broke... my girlfriend might leave me."
Q: 'Then what is the fear of might happen?'
C: "It'd be awful. I'd feel like such a loser - alone and lost"
Q: 'Then what is the fear of might happen?'
C: "I don't know... I guess I could become depressed, go mad and lose the will to live!"
Q: 'What is the need beneath that?'
C: "I guess I'm needing connection and the knowledge that I'm OK"
Q: 'So what you're really needing is a sense of connection and acceptance"
C: "Yes. I want a job for those reasons. I guess it's not really about the job after all..."

Deep Diving Reveals Insights
If we keep diving into this 'fear and need' we will get closer to the wounding within. However the nervous system does not always think in verbal language or even in images. Some stuff is pre-verbal and not remembered, so much be explored through the emotional system itself.  You have to 'feel to heal'. 

The Role of Mindfulness
Meditation and mindfulness invite us to see beyond our thoughts and stories, our words and imaginations, to look into the void within, to feel the sensations and emotions of the body and to hold them in loving awareness, so that we may find and heal wounds and change patterns of behaviour. To cultivate loving responses rather than fearful reactions.

The Nervous System Wants a Disconfirming Experience 
Until we do realise our reactions we will continue to unconsciously create that which we fear the most. I believe this is our nervous system's way of recreating the original wound, as a way of finding a healing experience, or a 'disconfirming' experience. 

For example: A client of mine was afraid of getting close to men, because of a difficult early experience in her life. When she experienced a man who she wanted to be close to, and she engaged with him with openness and some coaching, they found a surprise. With open communication and boundary skills the man was loving, kind and safe. This 'disconfirming experience' helped her to relax and enjoy his company.  She was drawn to men like this and, unlike in her youth, the person was not mean. It meant she could relax, knowing 'it isn't always true' that men are nasty. That meant she could let herself get closer to men.  She could do this in a safe, balanced way.

Gradual Exposure Reduces Fear
The original difficult experience, and many others, confirmed the fear was legitimate. The only way to change that is to expose ourselves, vulnerably, to something similar, and have a different outcome - one that changes the way the mind and body perceive the reality. To see that positive outcomes are possible and then we can relax and stop reacting through fear. 

Be Process Oriented 
Life  is a process. We can be a slave to it or we can be an active participant and use the process to help us heal, grow and learn. Coaching, therapy and training mindfulness is simply a way of getting into that process more consciously, so we can move it forward. It will be painful, it will be difficult (at times) but nothing is wrong. This is OK. This is exactly where you need to be. ​

Create Safer Exposure For Yourself, Now. 
If you'd like to begin this process, in a safe fun way, come and chat with me and do an introduction Coaching session or a course with one of my Groups or In your Workplace. You can contact me below.