dysregulated

Dopamine dysregulation caused all my woes and most of my joys. It’s why I was traumatised and why I was successful. It’s why I was motivated and depressed, and why my life has been one of extremes.

Essentially I have a stronger dopamine latch than most. It finds something stimulating and it sticks there like a neodymium magnet.

Stimulation can be either negative or positive, but our primary instinct is survival so let’s start there.

Someone told me to protect the weak. That idea stuck in there, chiselled in hard. Spiky dopamine means a sharp chisel: my rules are in there deep and this is why people like me can wind up with rigidity of thought, a strong moral compass, same thing.

This made me stick up for people and take on the bullies, but the dopaminergic response to pain and violence also made me more susceptible to trauma. What might be a +30 for someone else is a +100 for me and it gets carved deep.

Dopamine is also why I am an HSP - highly sensitive person. Irritations sure are stimulating, as are thoughts of ‘god damn I wish that irritation would stop irritating me’.

The flip-side is that things which interest me *really* interest me. I learn faster than most. Not bragging here: that’s also why I was traumatised. I learned. But this chisel is sharp and when it decides ‘nibbana is interesting’, it carves those grooves like that fucking tunnel-digging machine in Total Recall.

The thing is, these grooves don’t always line up. I am told that the world will be kind if you are a good person, but business teaches me otherwise. I am told that living humble will bring satisfaction, but have advertisements shoved down my neck at every turn. 

Over time these competing rules begin to really grate, and I develop this steelwool sensation in my head, which I wasn’t even aware of until my recent upgrade. Head bees abound and my mind can’t just default to a middle-ground like a ‘normal’ brain might; it flips between track 1 and track 2 like a madman and eventually I shut down or have a binge or whatever.

But it’s not all bad.

I can use this sharp-ass chisel to change my world.

Despite the rigidity of thought, I have an incredible amount of neuroplasticity. I am able to carve new tracks way beyond the age when most have lost their edge. Mine is tamahagane and it is a fucking beast, but it’s also easily taken out of my hand.

Those flashing lights and +1’s really tickle my willy and off goes Mr Chisel to carve that shit in there despite it being against everything I know is well and good in the world.

So this chisel is the phasic dopamine. The dvar. It’s amazing for learning. But you *have to control it* and you have to hone it and you have to not let society take that power from you.

Do not blunt it with drugs because all that shitty conditioning that was out of your control will remain. You are pouring crude oil on top of this convoluted carving full of cognitive dissonance and self-doubt.

What you need to do is bring in a planer. And you need to sharpen that fucker to an edge that can be measured in a handful of atoms.

This planer is your tonic dopamine. Creatures like me never had a planer in our kit; we just had a sharp-ass motherfucker of a chisel. So the stuff we have carved into our brains is intricate and amazing and intriguing and unique. But it’s also a bit of a mess.

The planer can come in and sort out that mess. It can selectively remove the programs that you picked up along the way but which do not match your current understanding of the world.

And then you need to make sure that you use your chisel well. Because you can’t just put it down. It will always be sharp.

But you *can* control it. You can tame the tiger and you can make it do your will.

You can take control of that man-eating tunnel-digger and ride it straight through Cohaagen’s oily little face.

You can carve some really deep shit into your sim and change your world in a huge way in a matter of months, where it might take someone else years or decades.

But you *need to do this consciously*. The machine is always running. It is always there. 

If you don’t bring in a planer every now and then you’re looking at a face-plosion eventually.

You think you’re safe, Cohaagen? Think again!

/jb202509041512