On his YouTube channel, Dr. Jordan Peterson held an exclusive interview with neuroscientist, Dr. Andrew Huberman. As the primary reward system, the dopamine system was discussed in the clip. Peterson brought attention to the fact that how our body handles the denial of expectations has a severe negative impact on one’s mental structure.
When Huberman revealed that his dopamine levels once fell below baseline, Peterson relayed this information. He remembered wanting to do a ritual with his partner, but they didn’t have phones at the time, so he jotted down the requirements for it on paper.
But, Huberman decided that the beach during the sunset would be the ideal place to begin their ritual. To his surprise, he realized he had misplaced the paper. This devastated Huberman. He began to hold himself responsible for not keeping the paper safe.
But he also said how he was overjoyed to see the paper half buried in the sand. He explains how his dopamine levels dropped to the lowest when the anticipation was denied, but they went up again as the situation took a U-turn.
While Huberman was expecting a whirlwind of emotions after losing the paper, Peterson explained how the hormones confronted mortality. When Huberman’s dopamine levels dropped suddenly as a result of his expectations, it hurt emotionally, according to Peterson.
After remembering how careless he felt about losing the paper, Huberman agreed with Peterson’s comment. The Canadian psychologist further emphasized this, saying:
“It’s also so interesting. Think about this is a depressive cascade, and it’s very hard to bind, because imagine you anticipate something and then you make a mistake. Now the question then becomes how significant is the mistake, and one view of your error would be ‘well the paper blew out of my pocket and that could have happened to anybody,’ and the more catastrophic interpretation would be and it’s an extension of the thought path you started to walk down.”
Peterson expands on this by describing the perspective of someone who is depressed. He made the point that the individual’s self-perception becomes distorted as a result of this one slip-up, which impacts their whole mental framework.
Andrew Huberman once revealed the secrets of dopamine
Dopamine is a trending topic in the realm of health and fitness. Andrew Huberman once brought attention to the fact that it regulates human behavior. Because it causes skewed vision and influences decision-making, it plays a significant role in the nervous system’s operations. The neurologist further examined a notion put forth by Wolfram Schultz in an interview with Jay Shetty.
He demonstrated the rise in dopamine levels that occurs when one expects a good result. But if the outcomes are counterintuitive and don’t pan out as expected, this spike will soon fade. These dopamine levels significantly drop, even below the levels before expectations even occurred. One way to control one’s dopamine levels, according to Huberman, is to understand what one may anticipate.
