Are you feeling flat, foggy, and fried lately? Drained? Your energy, motivation, and zest for life that you once had just seem to have disappeared? And now nothing feels fun anymore, does it?
So (understandably so) you’ve been scrolling, secretly hoping that the next video you watch might finally change something and snap you out of how you’re feeling. However, nothing has been working, has it? In fact, every video you watch just seems to drain your energy a little bit more. Drain your energy so much that you keep watching videos at 2x speed hoping to get to the point faster
I know you desperately want to stop feeling like this and get back to feeling like your happy, motivated self that can face life and all of its challenges. The problem is that no one’s ever taught you have to do so.
Amongst all of this pessimism, I’ve got great news! You are not broken. Let me say that again…you are NOT broken. You’re just a bit overstimulated and in something called a dopamine hole.
It’s okay! It happens to the best of us and we can all get out of it by finding a new solution. Here’s how to get out of a dopamine hole without forcing discipline or motivation onto yourself and without needing to change everything about your personality and life.
Why You Have Fallen Into a Dopamine Hole
To fully understand the problem we have to start with why we got here in the first place. I get it. It’s annoying because you just want the solution and stop feeling how you’re feeling, but if you don’t understand why you got here you’re far more likely to get into this situation again. You can’t fix something that you don’t understand.
When we chase cheap pleasure, like doom-scrolling, watching adult content, eating junk food, or playing video games, our brain’s motivation or battery drains which is why we feel flat, foggy, and fried. However, we don’t want to feel these things so we chase more cheap pleasure to relive ourselves from these feelings which only leads to one place…being in a dopamine hole.
What is a Dopamine Hole?
A dopamine hole is a state of mind where you’re chasing cheap pleasure, but nothing satisfies you.
If you stay in a dopamine hole things in your life like the necessary administrative tasks or hard things you need to do like exercise or productive work feel too hard to face.
This happens because every time you flood your brain with quick spikes in pleasure, annoyingly, you’re also flooding it with longer-lasting spikes in pain. When it comes to pleasure, pain, and the brain, there is no free lunch. Meaning, every burst of pleasure must be paid back.
Our brain does this because it wants to maintain a balance of its dopamine levels. That’s why big peaks in pleasure always followed by deep dips in pain. That’s why when we chase cheap pleasure, we don’t feel energized.
You might not feel a little guilty and ashamed of all the time you’ve spent scrolling or doing any number of “cheap, pleasurable” activities. But guilt or shame isn’t going to help you get rid of these feelings. What will make them go away is understanding what a dopamine hole is not.
A dopamine hole is not failure, laziness, burnout, weakness, clinical depression, or a personal flaw that you’re doomed to repeat. Though it might feel like these things, a dopamine hole is simply a neurochemical low caused by a bit of overstimulation. That’s all.
How To Get Out of a Dopamine Hole
You need to unplug from the sources of cheap pleasure and give your body one to three days of time and space to recover and re-sensitize. You can do this by following the S.T.O.R.E.R. method.
What is the S.T.O.R.E.R. Method?
The S.T.O.R.E.R. method involves making the painful shift from making easy choices that lead to hard life to making hard choices that lead to and easy life. You need to treat your dopamine like a precious currency that you store instead of let leak.
S – Stop Digging
A dopamine hole gets deeper the longer you keep chasing cheap pleasure so your first move toward getting out of it and back on track isn’t heroic. It’s actually boring, frustrating, and the last thing you want to do…stop digging!
Close the tab. Turn your phone off. Put your phone in another room. Delete the app. Turn the TV off. Throw the junk food away. Turn off the source that is leaking your dopamine.
The key shift is that you’re not denying yourself pleasure, you’re just hitting pause on the things that offer your short-term pleasure, but are quietly draining your energy in the long-term.
T – Tune into the Body
You can’t rely on your brain here because it’s fried. You need to do something that gets you out of your head and into your body. To do that you could:
- Do 15 burpees like you’re at Barry’s Bootcamp
- Run to the bathroom and splash water on your face
- Shake it like a Polariod picture. (IYKYK)
Any of these things will create energy and clearly tell your brain “we’re doing something different now.”
The kicker is that you won’t want to do any of this. You’ve probably been bed rotting or making becoming one with your couch. You won’t want to move, but if you want to get out of this hole you have to create energy where there is none.
O – One Small Win
Now you have a spark of energy and you need to capitalize on it to create more momentum before the spark fades because this energy has a time limit. It’s important that you channel it toward gaining more momentum because when you’re in a dopamine hole you don’t have any momentum. You’re stagnant. By focusing on one small win after the energy spark you’ve created you’re able to get some of that momentum back.
Now you need to pick your win. Look around your room or place you’re in and ask yourself, “What needs doing?” Pick one thing and get it done.
Make your bed. Take a shower. Fold your clothes. Chug a glass of water. Brush your teeth. Vacuum the floor. Just pick one.
This isn’t about productivity. It’s about reclaiming your momentum so you can get out of the dopamine hole. You’re sending a key message to your brain–we’re moving in this direction and back online.
R – Regulate with 10-15 minutes
Just like the spark you created from the “Get Into Your Body” exercise won’t last forever, neither will the momentum you get from the one small win. However, those two things give you a much needed nudge in the right direction. All you need to do now is take the momentum you get from the nudge and channel it toward doing a low-resistance, high-stability habit for 10-15 minutes.
You could take a short walk with nothing but your thoughts, read a chapter of a book, make some coffee and sit in silence, cook a meal, or do some light stretching.
Doing these activities might seem hard because you’re in a dopamine hole, but doing these will restore your dopamine levels naturally. Why? Because when you’re in a dopamine hole you’re choosing pleasure first and pain later. When you do a longer but necessary activity you’re choosing pain first to feel pleasure later.
E – Engage One Target
This is where most people go wrong and the reason why most people stay in their dopamine hole much longer than they need to. Most people use their bursts of momentum and energy to try and catch up on everything that they need to do. Don’t do that.
When you try to catch up on everything all at once you’re not focusing on escaping the dopamine hole within a few hours. That’s not going to happen.
All you need to focus on is moving in the right direction by following the momentum and sparks of energy from the previous steps. Now you need to choose one target that you’re going to re-enter the day with, regardless of the amount of time you have left in your day.
Ask yourself, “If I only did one thing today with the energy I have right now, what would make me feel accomplished?” It could be 60 minutes of work, completing a workout, or even tying up X number of loose ends. Pick one thing and focus on nothing but that for the rest of the day until it is done.
R – Reflect On the Signal
As you start to walk on level ground again, feel your motivation become steady, and feel your enjoyment for life coming back, reflect on the feed back from the previous hole. Ask yourself:
- What led me into the hole today?
- Was I tired? Bored? Avoiding something?
- What can I adjust tonight or tomorrow to prevent the dip from happening?
What You Need to do to Balance Dopamine
In summary, what you need to do to get out of a dopamine hole and start living a more balanced life is:
- Stop digging
- Tune into your body
- One small win
- Regulate for 10-15 minutes
- Engage one target
- Reflect on the signal
Store your dopamine. Don’t leak it.
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