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You've probably seen the dopamine molecule just about everywhere that you have gone. Printed on gym tanks, coffee mugs, even tattooed on people's arms. It's become a badge of hustle, culture, the chemical of motivation, drive and reward. But here's the paradox. Most of the people wearing that molecule, whether it be on their clothes or on their person, they in fact are worshiping their own hijacker. This is because dopamine has become a problem for many people. It's the imbalance of dopamine that is the true issue. And people don't even understand it. Dopamine was never meant to be a trophy, to accomplish or to get or to get more and more and more of it was meant to be a teacher. It tells your brain this matters, pay attention. Yet in a world wired for constant novelty, like clicks, explicit matter, endless goals, it has become the molecule that signals compulsion to people. It's supposed to be the molecule that, that helps you to focus on what's really important to you. That's when you're making dopamine from the inside out and it's connected to your meaning. In today's culture, dopamine is flooding your system in excess from external sources. So this is the difference, my friend. Welcome back to another episode of the podcast with me, Dr. Trish Lee, cognitive neuroscientist, and hopefully your guide out of a high jacked lifestyle into a super normal one. Every single November, the Internet shouts no fap Dopamine detox, reboot your life. But here's the truth. This November we're going to do something different. Because what's really needed is not just a no FAP November, it's much more than that. It's no numb November. And this applies outside of NoFAP. But most of the people that I work with are trying to step away from explicit matter. But this applies to anything else that falls into the numbing category. We'll run down them in just a second. But I want you to know that the real problem isn't the behavior that you are, you think you're avoiding. The real problem is, is the numbing that your brain keeps chasing. Whether it's explicit matter, endless scrolling, drinking legal substances, illegal substances, prescribed substances. It's the numbing that your brain is looking for from the constant noise. Each hit trains your nervous system to escape, escape the feelings, not to restore the balance. So when you try to quit cold turkey, you're fighting the symptom, not the underlying system that is creating it. So here's what I want you to know for this episode, you cannot out discipline a dysregulated brain. Okay, so let's move on to what is the problem then? The problem is the illusion that dopamine gives when your brain is flooded with novelty, explicit content. TikTok, even productivity hacks, podcasts. People can get addicted to podcasts. Dopamine spikes skyrocket. They go through the roof. Each surge feels good in the moment, right? It's just for a beat most times, but then it drops lower than before, and this leaves you feeling empty or feeling worse. So of course, then you have to chase the next hit. More tabs, more intensity, more distraction, more escaping, more numbing. It's not pleasure anymore. It's pain. Right? That's the pleasure pain paradox that I talk about in Mind over explicit matter, my book. It's pressure. That's what compulsion is, pressure to go back. It's urges. It's cravings. You need it. It's not pleasure. It's just distraction and escape. So then this is what happens in no numb, November or NoFAP, if that's what you're doing. When you stop the stimulus, you expect peace, but in fact, your neurons are still wired for noise and for intensity and for high levels of dopamine. That's why people relapse or feel completely flat during November. During nofap, the stimulation stopped, but the circuitry didn't heal, not even remotely. So you know that I can see how people's brains perform. I have seen thousands, over 50,000 brain maps. Probably much more than that on a brain map. What this looks like is red chaos in the reward circuits, the striatum, the prefrontal cortex. They're firing too fast and out of sync. So instead of your attention being guided through dopamine toward purpose, instead, now you're caught in the loop of chasing and crashing, recovering and chasing again, crashing again. It's an endless loop, a downward spiral. And you know what I always say? I always say there is no such thing as a horizontal spiral. There's just an upward spiral or a downward spiral. This is the downward spiral. What do I want for you? I want the upward spiral. That's what we're going to talk about. So it's kind of like the GPS in your brain has been hacked by a marketer, right? The algorithm is miswiring your brain, and it keeps rerouting it to the nearest hit over and over and over. This is what I mean by the dopamine hijack. We've made a mascot out of a molecule that's quietly running all of our lives. It's running and ruining for most people without them knowing until it's late. Hopefully not too late, but late. The wake up call is usually ed Erectile dysfunction or SAD Sexual Arousal Dysfunction. I don't want you to be sad, my friend. This November is the time for you to no longer be Sad, which is 100% accomplishable. I want you to know that. So this mascot dopamine, it's convincing you that stimulation equals more success in a really distorted way. The opposite is actually true. You know what the true reward is? The sacred kind. I've been talking on my YouTube channel, Super Normal, Supernormal Dr. Trish Lee. I've been talking about the sacred science. I'm firing up new series over there that I'm totally stoked about adding the neuroscience to the thoughts of great thinkers throughout the centuries and of books that are popular today. I just recorded a series on Mel Robbins Let Them Theory and one on Napoleon Hill. So go over to Supernormal Dr. Trish Lee and if there's a book you want to hear about the neuroscience behind, please let me know in the comments because I'm showing up for that and I'm so psyched. But the sacred kind of reward, it doesn't come from chasing dopamine spikes. It comes from restoring that natural rhythm from the inside. When your dopamine system finally settles into balance and it stops screaming at you for novelty, that's when it can start signaling back toward meaning. That's when your drive becomes your devotion and pleasure turns back into purpose. So I live this for far too many years. If you saw my brain 20 years ago, guess what you'd see? Red. High beta. Chaos. I'm not proud of it, but I am glad. And I have such gratitude for being able to make the journey from hijacked to rewired. That's what I want for you. And I'm working every day towards getting towards super normal. And I'm so close. But you know, years ago I had five babies. Plus I worked full time. I love to work, but I need to work too. So I'm not kidding anybody. Well, well, we belong to a country club and it's bougie. My husband loves it. And one of my not so favorite things is when someone is being extra bougie and they will say to me, oh, you still work? I'm like, yeah, bro, I still work. First of all, I love my work. I will be working until my last breath. But secondarily, I got five kids. I Have to work. So, you know, this idea of overdrive is partially out of necessity. And that's why I'm trying to say to you, like, I. This comes with no judgment. I get it. You have a family to take care of and you have work that needs to be done, then there's too many screens on top of it. And back in 10, no, 20 years ago now, thank God, when this was happening to me, I would drink far too much Chardonnay at the end of the night, and I literally would joke. And of course, you know, if you've ever heard someone kind of divulge where their mind is at by casually saying something, I would joke that Chardonnay was my best friend, that she was with me through thick and thin. Thankfully, she's no longer with me. She is the friend who served me back then, but not the friend who serves me into becoming super normal. So maybe explicit matters, your Chardonnay, maybe you've got babies at home, or maybe they're adults that need your help still. Maybe you love to work and you still have to work, but this is the overstimulation that I'm talking about. And honestly, I always have too many goals, too. I feel like Alexander Hamilton from the Broadway musical and from the. From his biography, where, you know, he's always trying to produce quickly and impactfully. I feel that way, too. But when I finally unplugged from the screens, from the Chardonnay, from the chaos, and I balance my schedule and you know how I did it, you have to actually schedule it. If it's not scheduled, it's not real. When I finally unplugged, guess what I thought would happen? I thought the comm would come rushing in in those first few days. But of course, I didn't feel calm. I felt agitated. I felt empty. I felt like I wanted a glass of Chardon. But that's when I realized you can't just remove the overstimulation. You have to retrain your brain to find stillness, rewarding again. At that point, I was a college professor, and honestly, it's when I pivoted my work full time into using my brain training program to help people get their brains back on track. It's the number one thing that you can do to accomplish your goals. So on brain maps, I have seen it 50,000 times or more. Now that overstimulation looks like this high beta chaos, the brain firing too fast. So when you stop, when you stop giving it the dopamine, the thing that it needs to calm those chaotic circuits, it's like you've suddenly slammed the brakes on a car that's going 105 miles per hour. If you've ever done that, you will know that you will get whiplash. So if you are starting your no numem, your no fap November journey, and you feel well, today is only the first. But if in a couple days you feel like you have whiplash, I want you to remember it's because you've slammed the brakes on a car's engine that is over firing. It's still revving underneath, even though you've cut out the input. That's what you need to know. Cravings, irritability, emotional swings. You may experience them and they're not weakness. They are signs of withdrawal from artificial dopamine spikes. Your prefrontal cortex, it's completely depleted your amygdala, that fear center, it's on edge. So rewiring is what restores the rhythm. We want to get back to that gentle rhythm of the happiness trifecta. Balanced dopamine coupled with serotonin for joy, coupled with oxytocin for connection. So when you get this rhythm going again, it trains your brain to release dopamine in balanced waves instead of in desperate spikes. And in this way, you move from survival to regulation. Now I am teaching my fifth and last precious daughter, Saoirse to drive. She's only been driving for. Her birthday is early October, so she's only been driving for a few weeks and she's gotten a lot better, if we're being honest. But the first couple times together, she was white knuckling the the yolk because I do drive a Tesla that has a yoke and no, I don't drive it as a political statement. If you know me, you know I'm not political at all. I got it long before the politics because it is so easy to drive and it saves me so much money and gas. But anyways, moving on. She has her hands on the yoke and I am up here. My nervous system is buzzing with high beta. First of all, it was super busy week for me and I told her, you shouldn't be driving right now because I need to chill. So I knew I was pretty close to the threshold and I was probably more stressed than I've been in a long time. Just a lot of working parts. She was stressed because it's her first time in the car. So anyways, you know, if the song changed, she jumped. If a car even peaked out, she would be on edge. So she kept over correcting if the text buzzed right over. Correction. She would move to the left and move to the right, she would nudge. It was the more chaotic driving than. Than a day or two later when just she settled into this rhythm of being able to drive with me. And honestly, I chilled out too. First of all, my life got a little easier just over a couple days. Secondarily, she got better. My stress came down. So it really wasn't because, you know, she didn't know how to drive at all. She had to take six hours of driving with a driving instructor, iad. Iad, whom she adored, but it was because her nervous system was still learning to trust itself in the context of driving with me. And my nervous system had to learn how to trust her and to trust myself to give her good guidance. And we actually had a chat because part of the problem was I was giving her feedback and she would snap at me and not want to take it. I'm like, sister, if we're going to drive together for 60 hours, which is the regulation in North Carolina, which, by the way, will make it 300 hours of me driving with a teenager, yes, that's insane. And I shouldn't have to do it, but that's the rules. That's why my nervous system's on edge, because I've done this with four other precious children. But the idea is, you know, we both have to learn to trust and we have to ebb and flow back and forth with each other. So this, you know, every ping, every cue, every impulse, setting your nervous system in, on edge or setting it off. This is exactly what the dopamine hijack does. If you're not flooded with excessive dopamine, then you're in a dopamine drought. It leads to feelings of anxiety. That's what withdrawal is. This is the up and down, the back and forth, the pleasure pain paradox. So when you rewire, it's like sitting next to Saoirse in those early days. And instead of me being on edge, I have a hand gently on the wheel with her, which this is what happened, saying, breathe, ease up. The road isn't out to get you. This world of overstimulation, it's not out to get us. We don't have to try to control everything through sheer willpower this November. Don't try to control this month with sheer willpower. The ride will become shakier than ever. What we're going to do is focus the efforts on the rewiring of the rhythm. How are we going to do that? We're going to do it by digital dopamine Detox. Explicit matters. Got to go. You can watch more shows that have story structure that are healthy for you. Healthy fantasy. That's a really good, you know, five degrees off from what your brain's looking for, but in a healthy way. Healthy screen time, healthy fantasy. But more importantly, you've got to get back into your life and dopamine stack for now. In these early days, you want to get as much dopamine as possible from your real life. That means spending more time with your people and having fun. Remember that word, fun? It's spelled F U N. Go get some. Spend time with your honey if you have one. Reconnect intimacy. Share about yourself. Go out date nights. You know you can watch shows that you like, but your work. Fire yourself back up. You have to reset the pleasure pathways in your brain and your life. That's what the name of my masterclass program is for a reason. It works. So you have to get back into your work. Start with the parts that you love. Leave the parts that you don't so much love till later on. And then of course your hobbies. Go do one thing that you used to do that brought you joy and pleasure. This is the pleasure pathway reset. Now, of course you may need help on this journey, so please go over to Dr. Trishleigh.com check out the masterclass tab. On that tab you can read everything that you need to do for the rewiring. So it'll be a great resource. If you're inspired to sign up, please do. That way we can meet. We meet one time a month in a group coaching call. Plus there's 134 lessons on rewiring there. Nothing's left out because this is what I want to tell you. This is our first podcast episode in a five part series for no num November. If you are engaging in no FAP and you don't succeed, I want you to know it's not a failure. Hear that? If you in five days you're shakier than ever. We talked about it here. It's an incomplete formula. NoFAP doesn't usually work for people. That's why I'm not doing my regular NoFap daily lessons. Because instead this year I'm here to teach you. You need more than no fap. You need a rewire. So you stay here with me on the channel. Subscribe. If you're inspired, go over to Dr. Trishleigh.com join the program. There's thousands of people in it. It's an awesome program. I'm there. I will help you. I will teach you how to use technology to rewire your brain. It's a game changer. Because when your nervous system learns how to rest, regulate, and reward itself through purpose, connection, passion, love, self control, well, it becomes effortless. You don't even have to try. Abstinence isn't a thing you even think about. You know why? You're too busy rocking out your best dang life. You can't heal overstimulation through sheer restriction. You heal it through restoring the rhythm. That's why this month we're doing no num November. Because this is what it means. I want you to feel again. Feel deeply. I want you to engage again and live fully. That's what supernormal living is. That's what I call it. It's the top 1% state of regulation where calm creates clarity. Clarity creates freedom. Okay. I want you to live a life from an optimized brain. Not from strained brain filled with stress and anxiety and fatigue. Not from drain brain, one that dopamine has completely flooded and stuck in lack of motivation. Ed and sad. I want you to live super normally. That means creating this balance and scheduling it. If it's not scheduled, it's not real. All those things we just talked about, get them into your life. Better yet, get over to drtrishlead.com, join the masterclass. I'm here for you, my friend, because the world profits from your distraction. You profit from your clarity. Now is the time to commit and to follow through. Commitment is, in fact, an event and a process. So let's do it. All right. I want you to remember that we got four more episodes in no numb November. So stay tuned. Subscribe to the YouTube channel, stay here on the podcast on streaming services, and and of course, as always, control your brain or it will control you. I'll see you next time.