Welcome back! Thank you for your support. You could probably learn about destroying yourself somewhere else. It means so much when you choose to do it with me.
Now let’s apply the concept and prevent relationships with dopamine instead of human beings. Let’s kill our chemical romance.
First…
Here’s a thing I never speak about; in doing the trauma project, I realized that people take what they want out of an episode and run with it, causing well-meaning messages to be used as confirmation for whatever the person was already doing.
So that they walked away with the exact opposite of what the episode was saying and thanked me for giving them the validation.
Meanwhile, I was screaming inside. Because my efforts became enablement for, often, the exact thing I was trying to warn against. The exact thing I was dealing with.
See: a string of middle aged women bragging about abusing their family members while calling it “long-awaited self-expression.” Taking the covert narcissist route of victimizing themselves to validate being nightmares. As, I was going through the same thing with my mother and trying to spread the word of those relatable mind games to protect against them. The result was, instead, encouraging and intensifying the same behaviors, from others, onto others.
It was a real boner.
It made me question if I was simply unable to communicate effectively all of a sudden, that my words kept making antithetical impressions. (maybe)
And made the project feel not only pointless, but more harmful than not doing it at all.
….
So.
Let’s make sure it’s not happening again!
Last time, we talked about the instantaneous, immediate, automatic reaction of the brain upon meeting someone new – especially someone who falls into a “type.”
It starts making assumptions and stories without pause, so that we are thrown into a state of unreality.
And we discussed the nature of being two separate protein bodies – we cannot spend as much time with another person as we can spend with our thoughts about them. So, we’re doomed to create and then believe the narratives we create.
And when our lives aren’t sating all our needs, it’s adaptive, it’s smart, and it’s natural – it’s neurobiochemical and pretty unavoidable – that we 1) try to predict what role people will play in our lives before finding out ourselves and 2) find alternative ways to support ourselves when miserable, which can unconsciously tumble into addictions, bad habits, bad relationships.
So, from the compassionate standpoint, the lies we tell ourselves aren’t our fault!
…
And also.
I want to make sure it’s heard…
There IS A POINT WHEN WE ARE CHOOSING TO ENGAGE IN SELF-STIMULATION OR EMOTIONAL MASTURBATION.
And we are fucking ourselves over, with awareness.
The unconscious behaviors become conscious decisions. We have the option of rolling it back, but instead we push forwards.
Because it feels so good.
…
But, fuckers. Buttfuckers.
This is the moment to catch ourselves. The second that we become conscious of what the old mind is doing and we hit a fork in the road.
Come back down to boring reality and patiently find out what is possible based on what is transpiring with slow and careful analysis and potential pain. A path of persistent self-management.
Or leap into what we hope can become reality, skip the wait, and deliver ourselves congratulatory drugs on an immediate basis. A path of persistent delusion that feels easier sometimes and so, so, much worse, most of the time.
Especially if the relationship becomes real enough to rack up any time on a calendar.
Because when we’re swinging, tethered by dope to the sky, our feet way off the ground… choosing the path of the dope string… we become wrecking balls.
Body dangling in the air… The pendulum swings.
At first it’s all wonderful! Isn’t it? Pretending that our chosen reality is happening or is right around the corner.
And then, as we said, as the relationship progresses (or not, but the idea of the relationship did), it changes. Reality seeps in a little. Fear seeps in a lot. And those ungrounded thoughts can go dark as a mind makes up stories about those details. Those other stories of doom. Of self-doubt. Of worthlessness and betrayal and abandonment.
This becomes the new reality, for the mind.
Everything was already baseless, existing only on the thought plane, so why wouldn’t these new fake ideas count, too?
And hence, we get the anxious part of anxious attachment.
Automatic brain events and subsequent chem rewards – a purely positive experience – transform into the miserable experience of always being quite sure something is wrong and relationship dissolution is underway – a purely negative experience….
BECAUSE OF THE RELIANCE ON THE PURELY POSITIVE THOUGHTS AND CHEMICAL REWARDS. (that felt so good in the beginning)
What goes up must come down.
…
Unless you stop it before it has the chance to take over.
One drip of dope? Fine. It passes through. Notice it and recalibrate.
But as they say with heroin, by taste number three, you’re hooked. Once this becomes a reward PATTERN, you are conditioning yourself to move towards your own hell.
SO.
The instant that we catch ourselves starting to ruminate about a person? To daydream? To get ourselves off with what-ifs and hopefullies….
Is the instant we need to put an end to it, before it snowballs into that crutch. That bungee cord to the clouds. That tether that turns us into wrecking balls.
The help
For help with this, obviously, check out that very recent episode on ending rumination. All of those tips apply. We have to break the obsessive thinking patterns, to deliver ourselves “stop signs” that our executive centers are lacking. Those pointers crossover to this topic.
I want to highlight, though, the mention in that episode of ESPECIALLY not thinking about the object of your doping right before bed or whilst you’re occupying it.
Because daydreaming about your fake relationship is actually thinking about yourself, in the context of them. And thinking about your self – who you are on earth and the success of that person - sparks rumination, which messes with your sleep, and separately but assisted by that insomnia, diminishes your cognitive control.
So, you’ll be more likely to dope again. And again. Establishing the pattern we just said not to.
And.
On top of those tips, I can recommend that you do the following.
Don’t date one person at a time OR date when you don’t have much else going on.
If you create one single attentional blackhole for yourself by only knowing one person of interest, obviously it’s going to be hard to change this pattern.
If you only gain pleasure from the one single blackhole you created for yourself because the rest of your life is uninspiring, obviously you’re going to put too much weight on the thing succeeding.
Combine the two?
And you’re fucked.
Spread out your attention between multiple people. Get to know all of them.
But do it casually, like a part time hobby that will always be there. Not like it’s a career.
Tip we’ve all heard, but the anxious attachers refuse to follow it: Divest your attention and your drugs. Or the brain is quite fated to ruin you.
Set an anchor
You know when you’re hanging out with someone and realize “eh, this is okay, but they didn’t laugh at this, we missed the mark on that, I don’t love that they did this…”?
REMEMEBER THAT MOMENT OF “MEH, not the end all be all.” Seal that sensation into your body.
This is how you feel about that person.
Meh.
If they’re on a dating app and you saw their profile and said “meeehhhh…. Not quite, but I guess I would see if they had a really great personality or could re-frame this thing on their profile or…”
REMEMBER THAT.
This is how you feel about that person.
Because later, when you’re apart and lonely and looking for something to get tummy tingles about… your mind might tell you otherwise. Imagining if this or that or everything was actually a little different than where it currently was, with you, alone, somewhat bored… or exciting itself with the sensation of being liked, even if that like isn’t returned… and you might write some feelings into existence.
So, NOTICE how you REALLY FEEL – about facts – about them – about you, when you’re near them. Describe it. Consciously put it into words. Do not miss this opportunity to establish your purest, least dope-corrupted impression.
And if you sense something different down the line, a much more fantastical emotional dribbling when your mind is just Michigan Doodling around, bored, making shit up with no regard for reality….
Idk, don’t be mean to yourself. But do gently remind you that you are doing the thing again. And return back to how you know you really feel.
Not sure how you feel about someone?
Great side tip. Don’t program them as a contact.
Then, through following my other suggestion – dating a few people at once so you can’t get sucked into just one of them, you get an interesting moment for self insight…
When a number comes up and you have to figure out who it is – which of these bozos is texting you right now – and figure, over time, you can wrack up quite a few of these unprogrammed numbers with people who sortof fall off and come back - notice what your brain and body do.
When it’s this person in question… are you disappointed, wishing it was someone else? Belabored? Exhausted? Frustrated?
Neutral – you feel nothing?
Or are you anxious? Addictingly distracted, immediately? Ready to drop everything you’re doing to answer them as fast as possible, hands shaking and heart pounding?
Or are you… genuinely and healthily – meaning you can put the phone down, concentrate on another thing, and not fear that something will have imploded – excited? Glad to hear from them but not in a desperate way?
Great. Important information to have that tells you how the mind has already been perhaps subconsciously responding to the person, if you’ve not noticed it consciously.
… but you do want to notice.
Notice the trance taking over
You must realize when you aren’t thinking of a thing that happened or is happening.
When you aren’t reminiscing over a real memory. You aren’t assessing something that is actually, physically, taking place. You are… pardon my English.. making some shit up.
Note: if the event is verbally taking place (promises) this does not count.
If your mind is anywhere but here, right now, or considering a real physical behavior that you observed, yourself…. Check your time orientation, check your mind for escaping into dopedreams, & bring your thoughts back.
Do the “count things in the room” trick. Or find something in your day that needs attention, and give it. Don’t allow your brain to get out of sync with time-space while you passively allow it to wander.
And. If you need more help noticing the trance…
Notice the feelings in your stomach mutating.
Do they go from “neutral” to “charged” at some point?
Pay attention in that moment to the shift.
Did anything significant – real, life developments – happen? (again, not words)
If not, return to details. Return to reality. And, another point
Sort the imaginings and the observations into two separate piles in your mind, or on paper.
What is “observed”?
What is “imagined or extrapolated”?
And one last time… words… promises… allusions to future events… are imagined or extrapolated. Sorry. Behaviors only.
As you probably guessed, because brains WILL flip into this state of self-deception… It also helps if you:
Put the cumulative emotional anchor in writing.
Write down you how really feel. Return to it later, as needed.
And… you might tell someone ELSE how you really feel, in writing. After a first date let your best friend know your honest assessment. For me, they are always “eh. Don’t really care if we do that again.” And provide some small detail.
Guess what? Now you have a witness. In a few weeks if you’re about to burn the house down because they haven’t texted you back about the second date you didn’t want to go on…. you have a pal to kindly remind you, “You didn’t want to go anyways. You weren’t impressed by coffee shop Brad. Something else is going on with the story you’re telling yourself.”
Ask them not to be mean to you, either.
But it helps to get an OUTSIDE reminder that perhapssssss you are falling off the wagon.
And maybe they can even help you with this next tip:
Try to think about the outcome of your (insert appropriate style here) attachment behaviors from the very beginning, from the moment of initial dope drip.
If you know that you get attached hard, think about them obsessively, and lose track of your own life entirely… just go ahead and skip forward to that part as soon as you notice you’re doing the self-stimulating. Don’t let yourself be chemically rewarded for a known-fake-future, instead think of how humiliated and butthurt you were last time it happened.
Cockblock yourself from gorging on the dopamine.
It helps, again, to experiment with having and not having romantic relationships or romantic prospects. Because you can notice when the behavior kicks up and execute this corrective behavior, instead, to achieve long-term changes.
See this very first dream thought as the moment that you completely disempower yourself and fuck the relationship. As well as your future of relationships.
When you move into obsessive thought, this is the instance that all is lost. You give up all control of your contentment to this person. Sorry, let me say that again… this person!?!
You know you’ll be saying that in the future. Might as well start to see it that way now.
Give yourself blueballs by throwing unpleasant, experientially true, material into your fantasy bank when the mind is trying to withdraw. Make the dopamine drip dry right up, deflating your self-stimulated bone.
So you aren’t as likely to return to the thought pattern next time. And the time after that.
Remove the reward.
Insert the damning lens of reality.
And soon, you’ve discouraged the habit.
But you have to catch yourself and take unpleasing action, you can’t chase dragons and expect anything to be different next time or the next 50 times after that.
You must, perhaps, talk to yourself in a very unromantic manner:
Recognize this is the pivotal moment where you give up your autonomy normally and everything goes to shit as your brain becomes inhabited by zombie virus that drives you to chase this person you think you like off a cliff.
So, honor the importance of the second that you catch yourself. Even if it is the ten millionth time you have caught yourself.
And change your tactics. Bringing something ELSE into focus, talking yourself off the shakey ledge you perch upon, and getting reconnected to real life.
See if you can change your attention, bring it to the touchable aspects of the life you live, and get back to your baseline level of cognitive control, when fantasies aren’t on the table.
And keep trying. Seeing what works for you.
Importantly…
Improving your own life as you do so. Make your life better as you date.
Part of the doping problem? Is having a shit life without an object of obsession. Either having an empty existence and then adding someone into it… or, through the act of adding someone into it, letting your life empty out. In both cases, ultimately having nowhere positive to put one’s attention or actions, so that the dope tether grows thicker.
The anxious attachment too.
Instead…
When you’re slipping into the ultimately unhealthy and self-decaying pattern of dream thinking, recenter around something that matters – that satiates you – that you can feel proud about - more. Something in your life that is reliable. That is real. That is reflective of things you know you care more about than some (insert whatever gender or other identifier here).
You might be able to recognize them by thinking of the last relationship you had that went the wrong way – what was lost through it? What did you mourn or chide yourself for giving up, for that guy?
Pick the most important three to five things in your life. Mine: Marcus, my body health, my mental health, my creativity, and this work right here.
Ask: Do each of these things have a deeper, richer, personal history than this person?
Has it been there for you before, and will be there after, you knew this individual?
Is it something that you can find reward within? But not another cheap hit. I mean, like, some intrinsic, values based, self-issued reward. Like self-esteem, innate enjoyment and flow, or the priceless bond with a dog.
Excellent, THIS is what we want to center around.
Not the dope drip in the sky or screen.
When you’re dating or building a relationship? Put MORE EFFORT AND ATTENTION INTO THESE THINGS THAN EVER.
When you’re trying to change your attentional stream? (You can’t text them again but they’re not texting back. You COULD text them, but you don’t actually want to establish this rapidfire communication. You realize you’re future tripping about absolutely nothing that’s based in reality. Etc.)
Get out your mental list of 3-5 things.
Choose one.
Put your attention on that.
Nurse THIS relationship or shipS, instead.
And then, do it every day. Throughout. Connecting more intensely with the pillars of your life than ever before.
Practice disconnecting from those relationships to go live and flirt and whatnot… and then reconnecting again. Building something concrete, stable, reliable, tappable, easily return-to-able for times that you need to be flexible, which becomes a centerpiece of your life.
So that this fake relationship in your head doesn’t.
Build your REAL LIFE.
Not the fake one the mind would rather skip off to.
So that dating actually becomes an act of self-improvement that prepares you for the right relationship… and the right mindset, in that relationship.
Conclude
And those are my tips!
Overall, the task is to notice when your mind is getting away with itself. Havin a ball, but actually doing a great deal of damage for fake thrills. Then to return your thoughts to YOU. Not you WITH someone. But YOU. In your life, on your journey. Perhaps some important and less important characters filter in and out, but they’re not the point.
You can’t attach to them or anticipate that they change the direction of the whole story. You don’t know until you find out. And in the meantime, because it will take a very long time, to find out, this is how you retain interests and friends and purpose.
And sanity.
Recognize the real relationships that mean everything to you. that have been with you for some time. that you can return to, whenever you need to.
Rather than waiting for someone to feed your sense of contentment – rather than disempowering yourself by putting your happiness in the hands of someone else of whom you probably do not really know anything substantial. Rather than praying that they will live up to your expectations. Your dreams. Your dopamine addiction. So you don’t ever have to re-contact reality.
Relationships built on dope drips are like trying to build from the sky, down. And hoping that there’s a foundation to support the whole structure in material reality once you eventually arrive there.
Instead, you gotta (or, you know, you don’t have to do anything) test out the viability of many foundations to decide which one is worth adding your thoughts and dreams to.
Let people come and go.
Maintain the important relationships in your life, throughout. MORE intensely than when you’re not dating.
Anchor your REAL FEELINGS, perhaps in writing, perhaps to another person IN writing, so they can reference you back to you if you start acting dumb.
Start to notice the trance taking over. The second when your thoughts flip into a future orientation, a dreamland, or an anxious state about what the other person is doing.
Recognize the importance of this moment and start to use it. Pull yourself back from the ledge. Choose the wiser path.
You might mentally jump ahead to the REAL OUTCOME of these FAKE THOUGHTS AND FEELINGS in the past. Heartbreak. Shame. Confusion. Embarrassment. Real loss for imagined scenarios.
Realize that this is the moment that sets you up to relive those things. It’s when, historically speaking, you sell yourself out – you choose your own destiny of suffering by giving up control of your emotions to someone you don’t even know if you like.
Instead, choose the feeling of internalized control. Of emotional regulation without requiring another person to do what you want them to.
Re-engage with the relationships in your life that matter to you. And get obsessive about THEM. Making THOSE your new boyfriend or girlfriend.
So that when things go wrong?
You actually… make your life right-er… more inhabitable… less bleak, so that you aren’t so inspired to escape from it…
Make it something that you don’t want to give up… a precious stone you protect… instead of getting lost in the pursuit of something you don’t even want, which will mooooost likely rot out the life that you’ve built, as you go swinging from its dopamine strings.
Overall… Use mental and emotional awareness to catch the moment when the dope factory first starts pumping out product, for your eventual destruction.
And break the machinery that normally powers the process.
So you can use the resources to build something real.
That is how I recommend:
Dating in Dystopia.