Dr. Anna Lembke

Thank you for inviting me.

I'm absolutely delighted to be here.

If you're like me and you're like many of my patients, you are probably unconsciously organizing your entire life around reward and little dopamine hits.

From the moment we wake up in the morning, we reach for our phones.

We scroll, we go get our coffee with our caffeine.

We get in the car, we're listening to our music.

It's not interesting.

We're flipping the stations.

Then we get to work and all of a sudden we have to let go of those instantaneous pleasures.

Now we're like bored, we're frustrated, we're restless, we're anxious, we can't concentrate.

So then we're interrupting ourselves and saying, oh, I better check my phone or maybe I should look at that video.

And we're doing that through the entirety of the day.

until we get to the end of the day where we go home, we can't wait till we get there to have a glass of wine, watch our shows, eat a cupcake, and then have difficulty falling asleep at night because we're so wound up and restless.

So what I'm saying to you is that I hope by the end of the conversation, you can get out of the vortex of compulsive overconsumption and get to a place where you're not constantly seeking these rewards, but instead really showing up for your life.

Okay, so dopamine is a chemical that we make in our brain.

It's what's called a neurotransmitter.

Neurotransmitters are the molecules that bridge the gap between neurons.

Neurons are these long spindly cells that conduct electrical circuits.

Our brains are fundamentally a bunch of wires.

Okay.