Trying to Change a Habit? Forget Dopamine Fasting, Take a Holiday!

A behavioral brain trick called “dopamine fasting” has been around for a while now - the idea of restricting most of your pleasurable daily activities — from social media, to watching videos, gaming, or even eating — you can “reset” your brain. The idea also plays into people’s simplistic ideas about how the brain works.

But does it work? TLDR: No, not in my opinion. It is still focused on using willpower to overcome primal drives, using a  high stress method of deprivation, rooted in the false notion that dopamine  imbalances cause bad habits and addictions. They don't, cultural and mental persecution does. Dopamine rises are the result of MAD habits, caused by trauma and disconnection with positive things.  

Instead let’s change all that. Let's use powerful reframing to think positively and take a MAD habit holiday instead so that you can focus on SANE strategies to reconnect you to what you love! This blog is inspired by session 2 of my course: Mindfulness and Emotional Resilience. Here is a summary of some of that session:

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:

Biological Understanding (old)

Sociological Understanding

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?

Willpower!

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:​

MAD habits

This is my bonkers theory. It is not proven by science.
​We have evolved three basic directions to threat detection (stress): Fight, Flight, Freeze. Millions of years of evolution are not overcome by a weekend off your smartphone. The next time you feel lonely or rejected you’ll be back on social media because the powerful autonomic nervous system has evolved to do that. Here are the modern ways we Fight, Flight and Freeze:

Fight: Get busy!

M: Multitasking 
​“Do something!”
We all want to be efficient, but if we try and do too much we are switching between tasks rapidly. This is the truth of multi tasking and it exhausts our brains and makes us dumb.  We should call it multi-failing.  Can you notice when you multitask poorly and instead choose slow things down?

Flight: Avoidance

A: Avoidance 
​“I need relief!” 
We naturally avoid pain and discomfort. 21st Century life  surrounds us with easy ways to find short term relief - from social media to drugs, food to porn. It’s all available at the touch of a button. These things are not bad (in fact it is sometimes healthy and necessary to help us relax), but long term they do numb our feelings and distract us from underlying pain, trauma and desires. If we keep doing that we become addicted and we ignore important signals from our bodies, telling us we have  more important, long-term unmet needs. Can you notice when you do a pleasurable activity as a form of avoidance and instead acknowledge the underlying need?

Freeze:  Panicked Thinking

D: Drama 
“Think! Something is Wrong! Who is to blame?” 
The automatic brain has two main biases that seek problems and amplify them. They are called the Negativity and Impact biases.  Nothing is wrong. This is a healthy neurological and social reaction to this world we live in. Can you notice internal negativity and choose to neutralise it?

SANE strategies

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:
​

• 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). 
  ​
• 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. 

MAD habit holiday
One experiment you can try is a holiday.  Pick one thing that you notice is a MAD habit and decide to take a short holiday from it.  Write it down and look forward to planning a trip away from it. 

Remember - it's a treat. Time off to enjoy yourself. You might consider something you'd actually like to do instead. Write that down too.

A holiday can be an hour, a day, a week, or even a whole month of liberation from something MAD and stressful, ​You lucky devil! here are some more tools to help you...

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Dopamine Doggie Reframe

A neat visual perspective on that is I imagine dopamine as a wee doggie inside me. It is craving and barking and yapping. I choose to see the yapping as a sign of an untrained doggie that needs loving training. If I feed it it will become more yappy. If I say "No, not now, good doggie, sit" then I feel I am doing a good job and the doggie learns it must sit patiently and then I will give it love a different way. I learned this from the book:‘The Easy Way to Quit Sugar’. It is similar to the 'strongest is the one you feed' idea, but more loving and relatable. 

Clap yourself out of it!

A friend of mine introduced one final weapon in fighting the MAD habits. A pattern interrupt you know well: Clapping your hands! Here’s how it works

1. First imagine something that feels great, like doing incredibly well in a job interview and getting offered the hob, on the spot. 
2. CLAP! Associate empowerment feelings with the clap. 
3. Repeat this 3-5 times every week. 
4. Use the clap whenever you notice yourself doing the old habit. This will empower you! Then say “I’m better than…(old habit)
5. Walk away! 

Travel Companion: Accountability Buddy

Find someone enthusiastic, to go  on holiday with 
I like to tell everyone I’m on holiday and celebrate it daily. I can do it so much better if I holiday with another person. We can call this an ‘accountability buddy’. We encourage and celebrate daily. If we get an urge? Tell them. Call each other ‘lucky swine!’ for the fact they have painful cravings. Ha! That’s because the pain is a good sign - a sign of growth and opportunities for more growth if framed correctly. 

Bon Voyage!

Ps. After your holiday you can choose, naturally, without any ‘shoulds’ or willpower, how to re balance your habits.  I will probably still look at visual stimulus sometimes! ;)

Want to experience this course or 1:1 coaching - contact me now.