Gary, thank you for writing this. I wasn't familiar with the habenula or its function, but in reading your article a thought came to mind that I can't help but think might deserve more reflection... I grew up in the Midwest during the 70s. We were taught from a young age self discipline, boundaries, to practice self-restraint, and to set goals and work hard to achieve them (i.e. "hard work pays off"). We were fully immersed and vested in a climate of competition - whether it was sports, academics, trying to make 'First Chair' in the trumpet section of the school band, or winning praise in a family of six kids. Whether that specific cultural environment was more regional, generational, or familial I cannot say, bust most I grew up with seemed to share the same experiences. Has this changed over the decades? Did the pop culture decades of 'Do what feels good,' moral relevance, and every kid gets a trophy contravene what common sense and wisdom had built into our culture? Has the declining size in families effected this? Perhaps we've taken a cultural left turn somewhere along the way?
"From the above, I propose the key to happiness is to take pleasure in the pursuit of happiness itself, and that a good life is when we live in alignment with minimizing the time in which our habenula is activated. Meditations which de-activate the habenula, re-framing our goals and purpose from trying to win the finite games to playing the infinite games to the best of our ability"
Interesting essay. In my own very limited experience, I can only refer to my twenty years spent rescuing dogs, which may seem an odd place to go but it's relevant. Dogs, unlike humans, live almost exclusively in the present moment. It is only traumatised dogs whose behaviour is governed by memories of the past in conjunction with the fearful anticipation of the immediate future. Once they can get over that - sadly, some cannot - then they start living in the present, for the present. Nothing else matters. That is why dogs are so happy and content most of the time, just enjoying life for what it is. They play the infinite game because, paradoxically, the present is not bounded, therefore, in isolation, it is effectively infinite. The present only becomes bounded when it is framed in the context of the past and the future. Humans are so good at making the present finite and thus degrading its infinite potential.
Hmmm. I'm thinking of my sometimes feeling "It's all too much" in the evening, when I look at all I want to get done, maybe at something that didn't go as I wanted it, and so on . . . I know, in my case, what to do. Go to bed. Get sleep. My body resets when I sleep. I wake up. It's a different world. I'm ready to go on, so much feels do-able. Sometimes something has solved itself during the night.
Whether or not you are in accord with Dane Wiginton's and Mike Adam's theory about the hurricane, just finding out about the loss of the citrus crop and the fertilizer plant are immeasurably unsettling. The import of the Nord Stream sabotage will not only have a deleterious effect on Europe, but also the whole world will suffer the dire ramifications. Not to mention the angst, no matter if you have or have not been jabbed, about our future.
Just yesterday, I was talking to an acquaintance about our mutual despair.
But, thanks to you, we have been introduced to the habenula, and we now know that we need to heed its wisdom. Be kind, help one another, and be meditatively contemplative
But, admittedly, it is so very hard- most especially, for me.
Oct 6, 2023·edited Oct 6, 2023Liked by Gary Sharpe
Very timely. I have been working on just this myself. I've listened to a bit of Huberman stuff about it, and read a few other articles, and tried to understand the various steps through which dopamine progresses, to see if I can establish where mine is falling over - if that is what is happening. I certainly have very many symptoms of low dopamine. I have too little desire left to conjure up anything I desire, which means I can no longer get reward from fulfilling that desire, so it is not that easy to turn this back on. I started with food, which is the only minimal pleasure left in my life. I tried not eating until I am actually hungry, then thinking through what food I desire, and waiting for the "yum" sensation before I satisfy it. (Although most yum foods are forbidden for those with high blood sugar). But my body has quickly tricked me out of that one. It worked a couple of times then my body simply said, well starve to death then, and refused to give me hunger signals any more, or refused to give me the "yum" at something that should sound delicious but is now "ho hum".
So now I am resorting to supplements. I am using olive leaf extract which is a precursor to both dopamine and serotonin, and have just added velvet bean which is also a precursor to both dopamine and serotonin. One of my low dopamine symptoms is extreme stiffness and immobility of my body, and the olive leaf extract seems to have loosened my body up enormously, but at this early stage, no change to my ability to actually desire anything. So low dopamine production may be part of my problem but not all. I am still playing with this - early days.
You described it well with the issue of too little reward for too much effort - that is the story of my life, and at 73 I have pretty much given up on trying - particularly to achieve the things that really would give me reward. I don't know how to switch what is essentially "hope" back on again - how can you argue with 73 years of losing, most of which time has been spent in severe pain? It's a fact. And as yet, I have not worked out what I want THAT I can actually get, in order to switch this system back on again.
And in addition to that, I have other hormones playing up like insulin and cortisol, and so there is no real way of knowing how to jig or trigger them all back to the point where I am interfacing with life in a healthy way. I think there is possibly a single key but I don't yet know what it is. Further down in this post someone talks about dogs. I was just talking with someone last night about how we see dogs, cats and horses all do this. They can be terrified and simply refuse to engage, for days, weeks and months. And then the miracle happens. From moving away from the person trying to rehabilitate them, they suddenly come to a decision and walk towards that person they have always walked away from. Then they demand snuggles and physical attention. It is as if a switch has just flipped. But the reality for 73 year old women in this culture, is that no-one is going to nurse us and care for us, protect us and coax us for days, weeks or months, and feed us our favorite foods, until we come around. We either perform exactly as they require us to perform, or they walk away. The kindness shown to animals is NOT shown to lonely old people who still have to perform tricks to even be seen. So of course we simply wind down and die. There is nothing else left to do - particularly in this current post covid world of pure awfulness.
As I said in response to another of your posts, this is a pretty scary time to be getting old.
I am so glad I followed a link from another Substack to yours! So far in life, I have only been tangentially affected by Parkinson's (a client when I worked as a caregiver - now I understand why the family liked me, I always remained calm & kind no matter what he did; my sister's formerly extremely successful businesswoman sister-in-law) but really appreciate your efforts to learn any possible way to respond to this challenge in your life in a creative way. And the findings about dopamine & disappointment are personally relevant. My life in retrospect seems one grand failure & disappointment; however, this work proposes a completely different view of it! Very interesting!
The amount of research and work you put into this is astounding! What a fascinating thing, the human brain - and it’s curious we’ve figured out how to hack this entire system and creative lucrative industries all based on this part of the brain!
I see the newest generation (my kids) reject and rebel against the saccharine adult behaviors. They can smell the lack of authenticity. They don’t want participation trophies. They feel more confident with who they are. Maybe the kids are alright, after all. I have hope!
I approve of the use of visioning. Belleruth helped a particular client with battle-memory to vision new loops to help him out of loops that had repeated for years. Probably, there are more details about this on a current site of hers. I am remembering this from many years ago.
Small triumphs help me. I cannot lose at lottery if I do not play! Moving to a place where I need Spanish-as-a-second-language, has also helped. Just taking a taxi is more difficult than just trudging through for a coffee. Some days, my bike works, so those are cruise days. I learned some time ago from Belleruth Naparstek that trauma occurs in the visioning part of the brain, often, and is thus not as accessible to cognition as some forms of therapy counsel, which is not to say that cognitive has not helped me, as it has. Nonetheless, it helped when my family was somewhat intact. It was of zero use, pretty much, when family crashed.
From my 30 years of self exploring, discouragement, defeat, and disappointment are old feelings out of the past. No human mind gives in to circumstances essentially before they have to and everybody's told not to give in and don't be a weakling. No human mind gives in initial until the defeat is thorough and we were defeated. The thing is to notice how bad it was and discharge on it and not be confused by it. There is no reason to be unhappy, by what we have and what we have done.
Thanks for this Gary. This is so etching I'm sure we all have struggled with, and to have it explained in such a clear way makes this issue so much easier to deal with.
Gary, thank you for writing this. I wasn't familiar with the habenula or its function, but in reading your article a thought came to mind that I can't help but think might deserve more reflection... I grew up in the Midwest during the 70s. We were taught from a young age self discipline, boundaries, to practice self-restraint, and to set goals and work hard to achieve them (i.e. "hard work pays off"). We were fully immersed and vested in a climate of competition - whether it was sports, academics, trying to make 'First Chair' in the trumpet section of the school band, or winning praise in a family of six kids. Whether that specific cultural environment was more regional, generational, or familial I cannot say, bust most I grew up with seemed to share the same experiences. Has this changed over the decades? Did the pop culture decades of 'Do what feels good,' moral relevance, and every kid gets a trophy contravene what common sense and wisdom had built into our culture? Has the declining size in families effected this? Perhaps we've taken a cultural left turn somewhere along the way?
"From the above, I propose the key to happiness is to take pleasure in the pursuit of happiness itself, and that a good life is when we live in alignment with minimizing the time in which our habenula is activated. Meditations which de-activate the habenula, re-framing our goals and purpose from trying to win the finite games to playing the infinite games to the best of our ability"
Interesting essay. In my own very limited experience, I can only refer to my twenty years spent rescuing dogs, which may seem an odd place to go but it's relevant. Dogs, unlike humans, live almost exclusively in the present moment. It is only traumatised dogs whose behaviour is governed by memories of the past in conjunction with the fearful anticipation of the immediate future. Once they can get over that - sadly, some cannot - then they start living in the present, for the present. Nothing else matters. That is why dogs are so happy and content most of the time, just enjoying life for what it is. They play the infinite game because, paradoxically, the present is not bounded, therefore, in isolation, it is effectively infinite. The present only becomes bounded when it is framed in the context of the past and the future. Humans are so good at making the present finite and thus degrading its infinite potential.
Hmmm. I'm thinking of my sometimes feeling "It's all too much" in the evening, when I look at all I want to get done, maybe at something that didn't go as I wanted it, and so on . . . I know, in my case, what to do. Go to bed. Get sleep. My body resets when I sleep. I wake up. It's a different world. I'm ready to go on, so much feels do-able. Sometimes something has solved itself during the night.
Thank you!
Whether or not you are in accord with Dane Wiginton's and Mike Adam's theory about the hurricane, just finding out about the loss of the citrus crop and the fertilizer plant are immeasurably unsettling. The import of the Nord Stream sabotage will not only have a deleterious effect on Europe, but also the whole world will suffer the dire ramifications. Not to mention the angst, no matter if you have or have not been jabbed, about our future.
Just yesterday, I was talking to an acquaintance about our mutual despair.
But, thanks to you, we have been introduced to the habenula, and we now know that we need to heed its wisdom. Be kind, help one another, and be meditatively contemplative
But, admittedly, it is so very hard- most especially, for me.
Thanks again.
Very timely. I have been working on just this myself. I've listened to a bit of Huberman stuff about it, and read a few other articles, and tried to understand the various steps through which dopamine progresses, to see if I can establish where mine is falling over - if that is what is happening. I certainly have very many symptoms of low dopamine. I have too little desire left to conjure up anything I desire, which means I can no longer get reward from fulfilling that desire, so it is not that easy to turn this back on. I started with food, which is the only minimal pleasure left in my life. I tried not eating until I am actually hungry, then thinking through what food I desire, and waiting for the "yum" sensation before I satisfy it. (Although most yum foods are forbidden for those with high blood sugar). But my body has quickly tricked me out of that one. It worked a couple of times then my body simply said, well starve to death then, and refused to give me hunger signals any more, or refused to give me the "yum" at something that should sound delicious but is now "ho hum".
So now I am resorting to supplements. I am using olive leaf extract which is a precursor to both dopamine and serotonin, and have just added velvet bean which is also a precursor to both dopamine and serotonin. One of my low dopamine symptoms is extreme stiffness and immobility of my body, and the olive leaf extract seems to have loosened my body up enormously, but at this early stage, no change to my ability to actually desire anything. So low dopamine production may be part of my problem but not all. I am still playing with this - early days.
You described it well with the issue of too little reward for too much effort - that is the story of my life, and at 73 I have pretty much given up on trying - particularly to achieve the things that really would give me reward. I don't know how to switch what is essentially "hope" back on again - how can you argue with 73 years of losing, most of which time has been spent in severe pain? It's a fact. And as yet, I have not worked out what I want THAT I can actually get, in order to switch this system back on again.
And in addition to that, I have other hormones playing up like insulin and cortisol, and so there is no real way of knowing how to jig or trigger them all back to the point where I am interfacing with life in a healthy way. I think there is possibly a single key but I don't yet know what it is. Further down in this post someone talks about dogs. I was just talking with someone last night about how we see dogs, cats and horses all do this. They can be terrified and simply refuse to engage, for days, weeks and months. And then the miracle happens. From moving away from the person trying to rehabilitate them, they suddenly come to a decision and walk towards that person they have always walked away from. Then they demand snuggles and physical attention. It is as if a switch has just flipped. But the reality for 73 year old women in this culture, is that no-one is going to nurse us and care for us, protect us and coax us for days, weeks or months, and feed us our favorite foods, until we come around. We either perform exactly as they require us to perform, or they walk away. The kindness shown to animals is NOT shown to lonely old people who still have to perform tricks to even be seen. So of course we simply wind down and die. There is nothing else left to do - particularly in this current post covid world of pure awfulness.
As I said in response to another of your posts, this is a pretty scary time to be getting old.
I am so glad I followed a link from another Substack to yours! So far in life, I have only been tangentially affected by Parkinson's (a client when I worked as a caregiver - now I understand why the family liked me, I always remained calm & kind no matter what he did; my sister's formerly extremely successful businesswoman sister-in-law) but really appreciate your efforts to learn any possible way to respond to this challenge in your life in a creative way. And the findings about dopamine & disappointment are personally relevant. My life in retrospect seems one grand failure & disappointment; however, this work proposes a completely different view of it! Very interesting!
The amount of research and work you put into this is astounding! What a fascinating thing, the human brain - and it’s curious we’ve figured out how to hack this entire system and creative lucrative industries all based on this part of the brain!
Thanks for this, I’m saving it for reference!
I see the newest generation (my kids) reject and rebel against the saccharine adult behaviors. They can smell the lack of authenticity. They don’t want participation trophies. They feel more confident with who they are. Maybe the kids are alright, after all. I have hope!
I approve of the use of visioning. Belleruth helped a particular client with battle-memory to vision new loops to help him out of loops that had repeated for years. Probably, there are more details about this on a current site of hers. I am remembering this from many years ago.
Small triumphs help me. I cannot lose at lottery if I do not play! Moving to a place where I need Spanish-as-a-second-language, has also helped. Just taking a taxi is more difficult than just trudging through for a coffee. Some days, my bike works, so those are cruise days. I learned some time ago from Belleruth Naparstek that trauma occurs in the visioning part of the brain, often, and is thus not as accessible to cognition as some forms of therapy counsel, which is not to say that cognitive has not helped me, as it has. Nonetheless, it helped when my family was somewhat intact. It was of zero use, pretty much, when family crashed.
From my 30 years of self exploring, discouragement, defeat, and disappointment are old feelings out of the past. No human mind gives in to circumstances essentially before they have to and everybody's told not to give in and don't be a weakling. No human mind gives in initial until the defeat is thorough and we were defeated. The thing is to notice how bad it was and discharge on it and not be confused by it. There is no reason to be unhappy, by what we have and what we have done.
Thanks for this Gary. This is so etching I'm sure we all have struggled with, and to have it explained in such a clear way makes this issue so much easier to deal with.