Hey there, it's Dr. Susan Peirce Thompson, and in this week's vlog, I'm going to explain to you a trick I've been using lately to funnel excitement into gratitude and thereby circumvent the rev that some of us can get when we have a dopamine dominant brain. Let me explain. This vlog is for people primarily who have an addictive relationship with food and want to lose their excess weight. It's about Bright Line Eating®, but people who have an addictive relationship with anything have usually, maybe by definition, actually a dopamine dominant brain. What does that mean? It means that of all the neurotransmitters, they are driven by dopamine, the neurotransmitter of more the wanting, the craving, the pursuit, the got to get it. The part of the brain that gets hooked on things is a dopaminergic system. It's the ventral tegmental area and the nucleus accumbens and the prefrontal cortex sort of all wired together, but it's all Dopamine D2 Receptors, Dopamine 2 Receptors. There's lots of kinds of dopamine.
When you have a brain that gets carried away with its dopamine signaling, there are other types of personality traits and experiences that can often go along with that. One of them is the rev. Now, this is not a scientific term, this is my term or just a term for a lot of excitement, wild ideas, pinging all over the place. Like, oh, and then we could, oh, and how about we? And oh, yes, and then it would be amazing if and on and on and on. And the rev is great. A lot of amazing ideas are born in this state, out of the box thinking, revolutionary concepts, new masterpieces, important proposals, great birthday party themes, all sorts of things are born in this state. Sometimes it leads to not sleeping at night saying things to people that you might have wished that you didn't say, embarrassing yourself by going on and on about something you're passionate about, that other people are like, "Hmm, why are they still talking about this?"
What else are the downsides of the rev? Well, continuing on with the ideation phase and not being able to converge into the follow through that is needed to bring the amazing idea into fruition. Lots of to continuing on with the rev, especially for someone who just at some point needs to get some frickin' sleep, and some of us have this to the point where it becomes not mentally healthy, it can turn into hypomania or full-fledged mania. This is the beginning of a bipolar cycle where you're up and then you're down and what goes up must come down. And so, even if it doesn't ever creep up into hypomania, hypomania, meaning not quite full-fledged mania, but still a pattern of experience, characterized by grandiose thinking, lots of ideas, basically the rev, even if it's not quite that extreme, it still can really have an impact because what goes up must come down.
That is how the brain works. The brain really tries to keep equilibrium, and if you're too revvy for too long, it's going to eventually do what it has to do to bring you down. I mean, this is the sort of law of bipolar disorder is the swings are determined not by the depressive phase, but by the manic phase, that if you want to stabilize someone with bipolar disorder, the key is to not let them ever go up. That's the key, because what goes up must then come down. So, there are benefits to learning how to get yourself out of a rev state. Again, even if this never creeps for you into the realm of clinically speaking, poor mental health, there are still downsides to revving too hard, too fast. People who have a dopamine dominant brain, which are probably most of the people who listen to this vlog, may have experience at some point with this kind of excited ideation revvy state that you might just want a little trick for not letting it escalate.
Now, the challenge with not letting it escalate is that you don't really want to not let it escalate. It feels so darn good. The ideas are amazing. You feel on top of the world, you're solving important, big problems, and you're seeing things clearer than you ever have before, and you just know that what you're coming up with is so amazing. The challenge with circumventing the rev is not so much with implementing it, it's with wanting to implement it because it feels so good to feel good, and the rev feels amazing. Let's be real. But the good news is that the solution I have to offer you actually feels amazing too. It's even more amazing and feels even more amazing because it's sustainable. Unlike the dopamine high of the rev that must come down, the solution I'm about to offer you feels amazing and never has to come down. As a matter of fact, if you get adept at using this hack, you can actually learn to exist in a state of near bliss a lot of the time is what I've found.
You curious? You want to know the hack? You want to know the trick? Here it is. You funnel the rev into gratitude. I already said it at the beginning of this vlog, you funnel the rev into gratitude. Now, that might sound like pretty similar or sleight of hand or something, but it's actually night and day. Here's the difference. The rev is dopamine. Dopamine is the molecule of the future. It's never satisfied. These ideas that you've got, they never end and they're never concrete enough to be brought into the here and now because dopamine can't see the here and now. It always lives in the future, and it's always out there needing to be chased. Serotonin, which is the molecule of gratitude, is right here, right now, and it can't see the future, but it's satisfied. Gratitude by definition is an expression of extreme contentment and satisfaction. And so, you don't have to chase the idea. You can be grateful for having had the idea, grateful to be someone who has ideas, grateful to be someone who has the resources to bring ideas to fruition, grateful for the ability to get a good night's sleep so you can implement some of those ideas tomorrow. Grateful for the roof over your head and the clothes on your back and the food in the fridge and the Bright meal that you're about to have so that your brain can function to have ideas at all. You see, you can go on and on and on with it.
The serotonin that you generate with that gratitude brings you back down and then gives you a quiet joy that can allow the ideas that you've had to be manifested to be followed through on to be made real and concrete in the moment. That gratitude lowers the rev but increases the quiet joy deep inside and creates something that I like to call outrageous joy. That's the state of near bliss when you're wanting to rev, but you funnel it into gratitude and you generate a state of outrageous joy with it. In the here and now, you start to implement ideas. Because here's the other thing, dopamine has two main pathways, desire dopamine and control. Dopamine desire, dopamine is the chase for what's not here right now. Control dopamine is the planning for what could be made real in the future. If you pair controlled dopamine, the planning, the follow through the execution, remember dopamine's always in the future, serotonin is in the here and now, so if you pair some gratitude for the ideas you've had with a little bit of planning, that's using dopamine now, but in a different way, planning for how you're going to execute on those ideas tomorrow, now you have a winning combination for productivity and outrageous joy, and it gets you out of the rev. You get a good night's sleep, and you start to make real what you were imagining just a little bit ago.
Now, I will warn you, when you're in a rev state, you're not going to want to channel into gratitude so easily if it's really ready. But putting pen to paper and forcing yourself to write a gratitude list and then staying out of the ideas, but into the implementation of what would be the next step, committing that to somebody, and then more gratitude, more gratitude, more gratitude, more gratitude. It is the formula for a life of outrageous joy. So, to all those with a dopamine dominant brain out there, I see you. I feel you. I love you. I have been experiencing that rev a little bit lately and have been using this trick, and I hope you enjoy it and appreciate it. Lots of love. I'll see you next week.
