Dopamine Over Distraction: Building Resilience Without Relying on Porn

Episode 271

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Zach Spafford: Hey, my friends, welcome to Thrive Beyond Pornography. I'm your host, Zach Spafford. Happy Veterans Day, by the way, to all of you out there. Thank you to all those veterans. Who have served my father, both my grandfathers and my brother among them. Today, we're exploring a powerful approach to stress management.

A lot of times what we're talking about when we're talking, when I'm dealing with folks who are struggling with pornography, one of the things that they are not doing very well is they are not addressing the underlying reasons why they choose pornography. And one of the reasons why we do this is that we, we don't like cortisol.

Cortisol is that negative chemical that comes up when we are in the stress response or the anxiety response.

What we're doing is we're boosting dopamine to try and mask or minimize the way that we feel when that cortisol is running through our body.

And instead, what I want to do is talk today about how we can kind of hack the brain's reward system, the dopamine system, to help us build some natural resilience. For a lot of us, when stress or anxiety hits, we seek relief. We're like, whatever is going to make me feel good right now. Sometimes what that does is it creates a habit that takes us in a direction that's outside our values, like viewing pornography or excessive shopping or excessive overeating, whatever that looks like for you, this is the same basic strategy that a lot of us have when we have this cortisol response or when we have, you know, anxiety, stress in our lives.

Often we're not necessarily looking for the content itself. Right? So it's not the food, it's not the shopping, it's not the porn per se, it's the dopamine hit that we get, which is that temporary reward that helps us escape our anxious or overwhelmed state.

But what if we could build a more sustainable buffer against stress by learning to, to boost dopamine through other Effort based activities.

One of the things that you need to understand about dopamine is it's designed to give us a reward after effort. And most of the ways that we are stress responding. So if we're excessively shopping or overeating or doom scrolling or seeking out pornography.

Most of those are not effort based activities. Isn't that interesting? They're very low costs to us. And that's why they work so well to give us enormous amounts of dopamine , in the times when we're stressed.

In this episode, we're going to look at how to manage our stress by creating a steady flow of healthy dopamine, effort based dopamine, giving us a powerful tool for building resilience and addressing those root causes of our anxiety rather than just numbing it.

To start, let's look at what dopamine and cortisol actually do in our bodies and why we turn to quick sources of dopamine in times of stress.

Cortisol is essentially our body's stress response. It can give us energy to focus and manage threats. But when we're chronically stressed, cortisol doesn't just disappear after the threat passes, it doesn't drop in our body.

It stays in our system, leading to burnout, anxiety and other issues. And if you're using stress as a way to drive action, so a lot of us do that, you know, especially folks who have ADD, we use stress, we're like, oh, I only have 15 minutes because, you know, the queen is coming. So I have to clean this space.

That is one of the ways that cortisol actually helps drive some of us in our lives, right? It's like, oh, I can be action oriented when I need to be. But if we use it too often, it creates burnout. It creates higher anxiety, and other health issues can also come along because of the way that we're using this cortisol system.

On the other hand, dopamine, often called the reward chemical, is released when we experience something pleasurable. And it plays a crucial role in motivating and satisfying us in our lives.

When we get dopamine after working toward a goal, like completing a project or finishing a workout, it reinforces that effort and makes us feel accomplished.

So here's the shift. Rather than reaching for the quick dopamine fix and the sources that are behind them when we're anxious, one of the things that we need to train our brains to do is to get those rewards from meaningful effort driven activities throughout the day.

This doesn't mean relying on habits that give us instant relief, but instead we're creating a routine that lets us build , a healthier, more resilient cycle of effort and reward.

With that approach, our brains start to associate effort with positive outcomes, which not only feels good. But helps reduce stress and prevents those cortisol spikes that we get from chronic stressors. So let's dive into a few practical ways to use dopamine for stress management.

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This is the, these are the actions that we're taking. So if, if you haven't listened to the podcast that we did on the Detour Cycle, go back and listen to that. I'll link to it in the show notes, but I want you to recognize what you're not doing here is you're not saying, "Oh, my brain's offering me porn. Let's run and do something else."

If that's how you interact with this, you're not actually addressing the problem. You're not getting common centered. You're not creating space for you to move towards your values. All you're doing is trying to run from the problem.

All right. So back to those practical ways to use dopamine to manage stress.

One of the first and simplest ways to do this is to set small, achievable goals. Setting small, achievable goals can increase dopamine production. For example, if a big project feels overwhelming, break it down into smaller tasks.

Each time you check one off, you'll get a nice little dopamine hit. You'll be excited about the task. And over time, this small one approach trains your brain to associate this productivity that you're engaging in with positive feelings, reducing stress that's created when we're only looking at the bigger picture.

Again, you can't just sit down and go, "okay, I'm going to do these small tasks." And not address the anxiety or the underlying struggle that we're dealing with, but once you get calm centered and ask yourself, what direction would I like to go that aligns with my values? Then as you engage in these tasks, you're going to feel that low level, steady , longer term dopamine.

This I think is the big difference between how pornography helps us deal with our stresses and how we can deal with our stresses in a more values based scenario.

Pornography is high dopamine, really quickly, very easy to get. Whereas these kinds of dopamine hits are much lower in their intensity.

But they have more capacity for maintaining a long term sense of well being.

The next practical way that you can use dopamine to manage stress is to practice gratitude for effort, not just results. Many of us only celebrate the big wins. In fact, many of us only celebrate when we're perfect, but acknowledging the effort put into each step is equally valuable.

For instance, when you're studying or working on a long term goal, don't wait until the end to feel accomplished.

Recognize the progress at each step. This gives you a small dopamine reward along the way and it makes progress less stressful and more enjoyable.

One of the ways I like to talk about this with people who are viewing pornography is, you know, oftentimes they say, well, I, you know, I watched porn for 15 minutes , this week and I'm, you know, I just, I'm terrible and I, I, I'm not perfect and I'm horrible.

Well, if we just flip that on its head and we talk about it in a slightly different way, 99 point, uh, let's see, 99. 9 percent of the time you didn't watch porn this week.

That's a great win. And if I can reduce my pornography viewing by 5 minutes, that's another great win. Even if I can do it just by 1 minute. Over 15 weeks, if I drop my pornography viewing by 1 minute each week, that's By the end of the 15 weeks, I'm not viewing pornography.

So all of these things are ways in which we can. Practice gratitude for the effort, for the journey, for the process. And instead of saying, "well, I'm not perfect yet. And so I can't celebrate." We say, Hey, I'm better than I was yesterday. And I will be better tomorrow than I am today. That's all we're doing there.

Another thing that you can do is once you're centered, once you've calmed down and you're not freaking out with the cortisol response, you can move into physical activity. Take some time, get connected physically.

Physical activity is one of the most important natural dopamine boosts that you can have.

Exercise, especially aerobic activities like running or cycling can be great stress management tools. I personally, I prefer to go lift weights. It is, to me, the most effective way for me to get centered, get calm, stay in line with who I want to be and stay use that time to meditate over how I want to show up.

And instead of running from my stress or from anxiety or frustrations I have, I can aim for consistent, Physical activity that I enjoy, and I can even use those simple activities, like taking a walk to create a sense of wellbeing, which by the way, helps us feel good again, over a longer period of time at a much lower level, rather than that high level of dopamine over a short period of time.

So this is essentially veggies versus Doritos.

So those are three simple ways that we can start engaging in low level, consistent dopamine engagement rather than going for the high engagement, high dopamine activities that come through pornography or overeating or whatever. So why does this work? When we create a routine that rewards effort rather than only the end result, our brain associates effort with dopamine.

And this offers a feedback loop that strengthens resilience against stressors.

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Rather than just reacting to stress, we're building a dopamine rich lifestyle that keeps us resilient and prepared for challenges.

Let's talk about what to avoid. As not all dopamine sources are good at managing stress, quick fix dopamine activities like binge watching, Or endless social media scrolling may feel good temporarily, but they don't offer long term benefits.

This is the difference between effort based and non effort based dopamine.

When we rely on dopamine from effort free sources, we can become more prone to stress and less motivated for activities that actually require real effort, which actually provide us with the greatest levels of satisfaction. Again, not high levels in the immediate term in the right now, but higher than average levels over a longer period of time.

So rather than focusing solely on lowering cortisol, right? So a lot of us think, "Oh, well, if I just get rid of the triggers, I get rid of the stresses, I get rid of, that's going to save me." But that's not true. Because stresses and difficulty are a part of life instead of trying to lower the cortisol.

What we are trying to do is trying to build resiliency and a lifestyle that boosts dopamine through meaningful effort based activities.

This rewards us for small, consistent actions, and that helps buffer us against stress by helping us tackle the challenges more calmly, effectively, and habitually. All right, my friends, I hope this has been helpful.

Thank you for joining and I will see you guys next week.