The Wisdom in Giving Up On Unrewarding Sunk Costs

Low Dopamine States, and Listening to Our Nervous System's Stop Signals

The current medical establishment pathologizes those of us who tend to inhabit low dopamine states, via diagnoses such as Idiopathic Parkinson’s Disease, dystonia, depression, and ADHD. In this worldview, our bodies and brains are broken, and are maladapted to functioning in society.

An alternative perspective is that low dopamine states are part of our natural and wise instincts, designed to keep us alive and to survive acute threats, and are also there to encourage us to make adaptive changes. The problem is then that it is actually the modern world we have created for ourselves which is maladaptive to our evolved physiology and psychology, which were designed to survive and thrive in very different environments. In this view, then, our modern society and culture is chronically stressing us, such that we get stuck in the low dopamine states. This includes the environments of our past, especially our childhoods, because our brains and Nervous Systems predict what is likely to happen in the present or future based on extrapolating from our past experiences.

In this re-framing, chronic low dopamine states occur due to our fight or flight survival instincts being constantly triggered, such that we are constantly turning our dopamine supplies, as fast as we can make them, into adrenaline.

Another, but related, pathway to low dopamine states is via chronic activation of the habenular part of the brain, due to being chronically disappointed and unrewarded by modern society. When the habenula is switched on, it suppresses dopamine production. This occurs when we encounter smaller than expected rewards for our efforts [reward prediction errors], or recapitulation or reminders of past experiences associated with punishment or negative outcomes.

An interesting conversation piece in Psychology Today, “Dopamine Suppression and the Neuroscience of Giving Up” suggests another, but yet again related, dopamine impact factor. This covers how dopamine is not just used to reward and entrench behaviours, but also has a role in natural mechanisms for evaluating and predicting when to “give up” on specific tasks.

“From an evolutionary perspective, the researchers speculate that neural circuits linked to motivation and reward in mammals are designed to preserve energy when resources are scarce. Therefore, dopamine suppressing nociceptin* neurons may be a biological mechanism designed to force humans and animals to cut losses as opposed to continuing fruitless attempts to go after a reward due to sunk costs. ‘Persistence in seeking uncertain rewards can be disadvantageous due to risky exposure to predators or from energy expenditure’, the researchers noted in a press release.”

*Nociceptin is an amino acid neuropeptide which acts as a potent anti-analgesic, effectively counteracting the effect of pain-relievers; its activation is associated with brain functions such as pain sensation and fear learning.

We can again speculate, therefore, that there is inherent “body wisdom” in supressed dopamine states, for very good survival purposes.

Once more, the modern world may be constantly taking us to the breaking point, or presenting us with barriers that make us want to give up, which according to the above, will also place us in to chronic low dopamine states.

However, perhaps true “disease” occurs when we stop listening to such STOP signals, and carry on regardless, with unrewarding, or unhealthy, activities and behaviours. Or perhaps modern society constantly takes us to breaking point, but simultaneously places in the position that we cannot simply “give up”, even when our energy is spent: highly stressful things like the unrewarding job, the commute to work, the toxic relationship.

Perhaps our bodies and brains keep trying to put the breaks on harder, by suppressing dopamine more and more, until we are forced to listen by stopping us in our tracks. Even then we may not allowed to STOP by society, so we are given dopamine replacement pills in order to carry on for a while longer against our body's own wishes. Indeed, we don't even stop to consider that our body may be trying to tell to us something. In this scenario, such conditions become neurodegenerative as the brakes are put on by the dopamine suppression system harder and harder, until we break. Dr Gabor Mate refers to this as "When the Body Says No".

Perhaps, at the point of diagnosis, we might be given some space and time and support to reflect on our lives, activities, and behaviours, and seek to understand ourselves: which parts of lives are we living which have become totally unrewarding, but we feel we must, or are pressured to, carry on regardless. Then perhaps we may be the given space and support to be able to stop - e.g. early retirement, allowed to work from home, marriage counselling?

Learn more via my online course, which, in particular, covers pragmatic knowledge of recovering from low dopamine states: