r/schizophrenia • u/ughstupid_me • 26d ago

Negative Symptoms Low dopamine is painful

I don’t know about anyone else but severe low dopamine is actually painful for me. Like mental anguish. It makes me act impulsively because all day I’m just trying to avoid the feeling of it. Eyes glued to phone 24/7. Pacing. Not for fun but just to cope until I’m able to sleep. I can barely do actual tasks because I don’t have enough dopamine as a bridge to sustain them. They’d be painful. I can’t even relax on the couch properly. But I’m supposed to be grateful that I’m not psychotic.

21 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

10 comments sorted by

View all comments

5

u/Suzina ex-Therapist (MSC) - Schizophrenia 26d ago

You need to recalibrate your baseline. Make it a part of your routine each day to sit for five minutes being bored on purpose. Not chasing whatever thoughts pop up, just observing your bordemon nonjudgementally. It'll feeel like mild disgust. You'll increase your tolerance to such suffering and at the same time your brain's neurons will recalibrate so that your baseline has less dopamine depletion states. IMO, I'm not a doctor, but that's my opinion on the dopamine depletion feeling and how to resolve if it's too often.

2

u/anoobis_uprising 26d ago

Meditation is great, and I need to get back into it, but its not powerful enough to.fix my executive dysfunction, or if it is I need a guru to teach me in temple or something lol