TJ Power

Yeah, so in neuroscience, we like to call oxytocin the great facilitator of life.

It really is that.

It creates the desire to bond with humans, to care for humans, to procreate, to build a family, to love people.

And

It's a chemical that is underwhelmed and low as a result of this dopamine land that I like to call it, that we're living in.

Because in simple terms, in a moment where you're lying in bed with your partner and you're both scrolling your phones rather than talking to each other or cuddling, dopamine is winning in that moment.

The same as when you're with your kids, your family, your friends.

And a huge amount of the time in moments where oxytocin has its opportunities, yes, connection, love,

eye contact questions listening in those moments dopamine keeps winning and originally for our ancestors dopamine was just a prerequisite to then experiencing oxytocin and what i mean by that is if you watch these tribes they spend all day hunting and they have a good time they're laser focused they get a lot of like accomplishment and reward and achievement from the hunting and

But their real joy comes from when they get home from the hunting and they all laugh around the fire and connect and have fun and tell stories and bond.

That's really the aim of life for them and the hunting enables it to occur.

The modern environment has flipped that whereby we quote unquote hunt all day on our computers by looking for dopamine down that lane, financial reward and so on.

It gets to the evening when we're like, okay, now originally we would just be laughter and chat and conversation and love.

But in reality, it's Netflix and scrolling and sugar and just more and more dopamine.

And dopamine is designed in our brain to never provide the feeling of satisfaction and true fulfillment because our brain is programmed to just more, more, more dopamine to help us survive.

Oxytocin is a very fulfilling, nourishing chemical that if it's prioritized, you feel way more full and way more satisfied with your experience alive.

There are times where they would increase together.

If you were having sex with someone that you felt a deep feeling of love with, both of them would rise together.

If you were intimately connecting with someone that you had no emotional connection with, then it would just be purely dopamine and no oxytocin.

There are times when they interconnect, but in the modern environment, dopamine is distracting us from oxytocin massively.