Were you ever feeling down but then you decided to treat yourself to those new shoes, that chocolate ice cream, that new book you’ve been wanting etc.. & then you suddenly felt better? If so, say hello to dopamine! Most of us don’t have much of a desire to learn about the behind-the-scenes process of the chemical reactions of the brain but I encourage you to get familiar with the basics of just this one. Here’s why:
When my daughter was around 6 years old, I read a book called The Female Brain by Dr Louann Brizendine. I took away so much from it, that I made the decision to gift it to her when she turned 16. In fact, I was hoping that it would make its way into schools, if only for health classes. It was one of the most insightful reads for me at the time, & not just because of my background, but because it’s filled with a ton of information about how the female brain operates. Because of other great works like hypnosis, meditation, listening to music & dancing- we’re very much familiar with our ability to rewire the brain. But this book focuses primarily on the hardwiring of the brain & the scientific role that plays in how brain chemicals differ in women. Sometimes, attractions can’t be explained on a rational level, & what then seems or feels like irrational, ends up being scientific in nature. For example, take this study, where after you first kiss someone, a surge of dopamine gets released into your body mimicking the same feeling & firing up the same parts of the brain in the same way as someone that was using cocaine. Symptoms include: (although, short-term) loss of appetite, sleeping disturbances, addiction, obsession, etc. Yikes! & that's just from a kiss. You might be trying to work, or sleep, or study, or eat but your body (following the commands of your brain) is like nope. To compliment that, the scientists at HeartMath discovered that the auric field surrounding the heart was measured to be more powerful than the brain's, & also acts as a command center. This is where worlds collide. Meet Dr Brian Weiss. He was a traditional psychiatrist running a general practice until one day, during a regression with his patient, he realized she was recalling things from a “different time.” Many Lives, Many Masters is definitely worth the read. & while she ended up with the guy from her past life connection, soul ties are not just about Cinderella stories that finds her prince & hops on the horse & rides off into the sunset. Some soul ties can be very messy. Some past life lovers show up because there's unfinished business, unresolved feelings, desire to reconnect (but during “bad" timing), an overall call for healing or just to incarnate as part of a soul tribe but not to be together this lifetime, etc.. It can seem overwhelming, but it doesn’t need to be.. once you have the awareness you can identify it & decide what you’re going to do about it. For some, it can be so powerful that there is actually a detox for it. & in our dopamine addicted society- kissing might seem very minuscule compared to other things that can fire up the pleasure centers, but it’s equally as effective. This can be especially challenging because the brain says yes, the heart says yes, but the mind says no. It judges, analyzes & decides ‘this is a bad idea’. As we already know, the brain & the mind are not always friends. But sometimes, you have to tell your brain to step aside & sometimes you have to tell your mind to settle down. & sometimes, even still, the brain & the heart create scenarios simply to bring things into the awareness for healing, learning & individual growth. As the Haruki Murakami quote says, "Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional." With the right tools we can learn how to subside, minimize or alleviate the effects of our emotional pain. Recovery of any kind, especially post-break up, is not only about submergence to avoid pain, it’s also about our ability to move through grief with the awareness that it's normal to feel like a detox (because it kind of is) & when we shift our perspectives with new awareness, we no longer need to suffer from self-judgment about what that grieving process should look like & feel like to others.
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