Dr. Alok (Dr. K)

This person won't be a part of my life.

And that part of my life, when that person is in my life, I really enjoy it.

But where does the real...

chunk of suffering come from the the primary chunk of suffering doesn't come from their absence it comes from because you can survive with you survive with them without for an hour totally fine and then you can survive a second hour and a third hour and they've been on vacation you were totally fine everything was totally fine even in their absence it is that it is when your mind piles those absences together

accretes them, right?

Now it'll be forever.

It'll be never again.

And never again is where the suffering comes from, even though you can survive for an hour.

And what do we find from a clinical perspective, from a practical perspective?

As people let go of never again and forever and these kinds of thoughts, and they start dating again, well, that facilitates their ability to date again.

Then they find they are able to date again, and then they find that they're doing fine.

Right.

You fall in love again and then you're engaged in this relationship.

I also like that.

Right.

So I think that there's a big part of.

And it's not just trying to be gratified in a relationship, I think half the problem in the world today is that we're trying to extract as much we live our lives as if we're trying to extract as much dopamine as we can from our brains.

My life becomes a dopamine extraction machine.

And the more that I extract dopamine from my brain, and I've seen this with people who are addicted to methamphetamine, where they're releasing a thousand times a regular dose of dopamine, the more that life or relationships become the extraction of gratification, the worse you're going to get.

And there's a lot of beautiful stuff in engagement or involvement.