I came across a social media post recently that made me laugh. "I'm so sorry," it said, "I can't do the laundry, I just don't have the dopamine." I laughed because it rang so true.
And while it's funny, things also need to get done, so we don't laugh ourselves into tears.
In today’s episode, we look at what “not having the dopamine” really points to, and how we might begin anyway. Not by forcing a start, but by showing up and, for a breath, simply being.
#ADHD #FindingFlowWithADHD #WavesOfFocus #ADHDadults #WanderingMind #ADHDfocus #FlowState #ExecutiveFunction
References:
Dr. William Dodson, the interest-based nervous system: https://www.additudemag.com/secrets-of-the-adhd-brain/
Mesolimbic pathway: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesolimbic_pathway
Transcript
Sorry, I can't do the laundry. I just don't have the dopamine.
I saw this post on Instagram. It was funny. I laughed. It's this honesty that makes something real.
We can join in with more examples, more laughter. It's great. I love that, "I can't do the laundry. I don't have the dopamine."
Laughter's good medicine, but past a certain dose, any medicine can be a poison. We have to be cautious because we can fall together into this sort of celebration of helplessness. Not because any of us are weak, but because the joke becomes the whole conversation, and then it leaves us where we began.
Those of us with wandering minds can have real difficulties, and they can be hard for others to understand. But I think it's vital that when the laughter fades, we need to be able to ask, "What, what can we do from here?"
What do we do when we don't have the dopamine? We might even use science against ourselves, naming dopamine as the prime mover of a reward system deep in the brain.
And because it's this chemical that we can't touch with our fingers, we might conclude that the only access we have is through medication or some trickery or something outside of our own sense of agency.
Another path might be reaching for a more psychological version of the same move. For example, we can invoke Dr. William Dodson's otherwise very helpful description of what tends to engage an ADHD mind, namely challenge, interest, novelty, urgency, and passion.
And then we can say, if none of these emotions are present, then like the missing dopamine, I suppose we are helpless.
This is that interest-based nervous system we explored in episode eight. It's real, it's a useful description, but the trouble is that conclusion that we draw from it.
Play and Its Cousin, Learning
Much of this, though, we can gather under the single idea of play and its close cousin, learning. Challenge, interest, novelty, passion, dopamine itself are all aspects of playful.
And, novelty is play reaching towards something new. Challenge is play testing itself against an edge. Interest and passion are play that has found something it cares for. Even urgency, at its best, is play with the stakes raised.
And the ADHD mind, in my experience, both of myself and as a clinician, often carries this powerful capacity of play.
And everything it represents, whether it's whimsy or discovery or deep engagement.
That play describes so much of what goes right when we're in flow, and so much of what is missing when we can't begin.
We looked at some of this before in episode seven as the cautions of dopamine and a lean toward mastery.
Not Buttons and Levers
So we need to be cautious not to reduce our brains to buttons and levers, this remnant and a metaphor of the industrial age.
We can point to a dopaminergic pathway called the mesolimbic pathway, and tie it to pleasure, to reward, then to drugs and sex and food as though that were all it were for.
But if we look experientially, where we actually have agency, we can notice that when we're engaged well, we're in flow. We're learning, at play. The motions of molecules and the firings of neurons from one nucleus to the next make a flow no less deep or nuanced than our climates and oceans.
We can see that the experience is not some on-off switch. We don't leap from, "I don't feel like it," to, "I feel like it," by some sudden revelation. There's a process we move through from one state to another.
Emotions Gather, Conditions Change
From our depths, emotions gather, ideas form. They crest in their own time on the surface.
We can't win arguments with an emotion, but we're also not helpless against ourselves.
Emotions shift and change with their conditions, and we do have the ability to change conditions. We can position ourselves to make those small transitions that might stir the mind.
The Visit
One way I often espouse to changing conditions is through the visit, in which we show up to a task, hard or not, and then simply be.
Whether it's laundry, a budget, a report, we bring the materials in front of us, move distractions aside, and for a few moments do nothing but be with it. We pause in the now.
We don't need to force ourselves to do anything, and it can seem strange to think of this as a unit of work. What good is it to do nothing?
Too often we privilege action. "Just start," we're told. But such advice can be corrosive, a repeated message that we cannot trust ourselves to decide and to act.
By being with the work, we're not doing nothing. We're meeting the emotions, the true ground from which our decisions are made, from which action of any real conviction is born.
Whether we begin in anxiety, shame, irritation, or more likely, a whole ecology of feeling, any real flow begins in being with those sensations.
In this way, we do the visit, which is we show up, be, and then decide.
The winds and waters of dopamine, of interest, of engagement, of whatever we choose to call them, may even begin to tickle the sails.
So consider as a takeaway, what's something that you don't have the dopamine for? Sometime today, somewhere before going to sleep, can you show up to it or bring it to you and then simply be, if only for a single deep breath?
You don't have to do it anywhere beyond any reality that says otherwise. And if you can do that, consider what's that like?
Music — Wind at Play
I end this week's episode with piece is called "Wind at Play" in C major, all the white keys, and in three-quarters time. Either of which just lends to that childhood play that I like to find. Not sure why, but it does. I hope you enjoy it.
Mentioned in this episode:
Waves of Focus YouTube Series
Look out for new episodes of the new Waves of Focus YouTube series here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJpQS5q6yvRw
