Name: 為什麼很多人對生活越來越無感？► 聽聽史丹佛大學精神醫學教授怎麼說 - Dr. Anna Lembke 安娜·倫伯克博士（中英字幕）
Uploaded: 2024-12-29T14:59:42.000Z
Duration: 3 min 46 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Modal verbs - A2

Future simple

As soon as I disengage from this behavior, I'm going to experience a kind of a pain.

Basic quantifiers

In a previous conversation we had, you said something that really rung in my mind, which is that many people who become addicted to things have this feeling that normal life isn't interesting enough.

One of the most significant findings in neuroscience in the last 75 years is that pleasure and pain are co-located which means the same parts of the brain that process pleasure also process pain and they work like a balance.

So when we feel pleasure, our balance tips one way.

When we feel pain, it tips in the opposite direction.

And one of the overriding rules governing this balance is that it wants to stay level.

So it doesn't want to remain tipped very long to pleasure or to pain.

The brain will work very hard to restore a level balance or what scientists call homeostasis.

And the way the brain does that is with any stimulus to one side, there will be a tip in equal and opposite amount to the other side.

When I watch YouTube videos of American Idol, it tips to the side of pleasure.

When I stop watching it, I have a come down which is a tip to the equal and opposite amount on the other side.

And that's that moment of wanting to watch one more YouTube video.

This moment of wanting to watch another that is associated with pain, are we always aware of that happening?

Because you just described in a very conscious way.

But when I indulge in something I enjoy, I'm usually thinking about just wanting more of that thing.

I don't think about the pain, I just think about more.

Right, really excellent point because we're mostly not aware of it.

So it's not something that consciously happens or that we're aware of unless we really begin to pay attention.

And when we begin to pay attention, we really can become very aware of it in the moment.

You're on social media and you get a good tweet of something and then you can't stop yourself because there's this awareness, a latent awareness that as soon as I disengage from this behavior, I'm going to experience a kind of a pain, right?

A falling away, a missing that feeling, a wanting more of it.

And of course, one way to combat that is to do it more, right?

But ultimately, we do need to disengage, right?

We can't live in that space all the time, right?

And there are also serious consequences that come with trying to repeat and continue that experience or that feeling.

What happens right after I do something that is really pleasurable and releases a lot of dopamine, my brain is going to immediately compensate by down-regulating my own dopamine receptors, my own dopamine transmission to compensate for that.

And that's that come down or the hangover, that after effect, that moment of wanting to do it more.

Now, if I just wait for that feeling to pass, then my dopamine will re-regulate itself and I'll go back to whatever my chronic baseline is.

But if I don't wait, and here's really the key, if I keep indulging again and again and again, ultimately, I have so much on the pain side that I've essentially reset my brain to what we call like an anhedonic or lacking in joy type of state, which is a dopamine deficit state, which is akin to a clinical depression, anxiety, irritability, insomnia, dysphoria, and then nothing is enjoyable.

 Then everything sort of pales in comparison to this one drug that I want to keep doing.