Dr. Anna Lembke

that when an organism is exposed to right-sized pain, that actually triggers our body's own re-regulating healing mechanisms, and we start to up-regulate our feel-good neurotransmitters like dopamine, like serotonin, like our endogenous opioids, like our endogenous cannabinoids.

So we get our dopamine indirectly by paying for it up front,

which is the way that we evolved to get it.

Again, we evolved to have to do work to get a little bit of reward.

So the message here is to be happier, to experience more joy, we need to do the counterintuitive thing of moderating and greatly reducing our use of

instantaneous, easy pleasures, and intentionally leaning into right-sized pain in order to reset our pleasure-pain balance.

We are so used now to constantly being stimulated, right?

That simply sitting in the quiet is terrifying for us.

It's absolutely terrifying because we're always reacting to external stimuli.

We're not comfortable with our own thoughts.

When we disconnect for a period of time, we have this flooding of these thoughts and emotions that we've been putting at bay by distracting ourselves with all these pleasurable stimuli.

And it can be really scary.

That is painful.

But the longer we can sit and just kind of like, okay, be curious about what comes up for us.

And this is where mindfulness practices are so important.

And even welcome that discomfort, but also name it and recognize it.

So, you know, not even just so much pushing through discomfort, but just going, okay, I'm uncomfortable now and that's okay.

You know, and I can sit with this and just be curious about it.

And it too will pass.

And I will get to a place where I have actually then built up mental calluses to tolerate more discomfort.