Your Brain on Joy: The Endorphins One.

Ever feel clenched from the neck down and wired from the neck up? We’re wrapping our Your Brain on Joy mini‑series with a deep dive into endorphins—the body’s natural painkillers—and why real relief often looks sweaty, tear‑stained, and gloriously un‑aesthetic. We unpack how endorphins buffer stress, change your experience of pain, and help you keep going when life gets heavy, plus why hustle culture glorifies the chase while overlooking the chemistry of release.

Joy doesn’t always wait for perfect conditions. It often meets you mid‑mess, right after a deep cry or a hard sprint, when your nervous system finally exhales. 
We tie the whole joy system together—dopamine to pursue joy, serotonin to sustain it, oxytocin to share it, and endorphins to survive into it—so you can stop white‑knuckling and start letting joy flow. Ask yourself where you’re holding tension and what release would look like today. If a relief list helps, start with move, laugh, cry, breathe, spice, cold touch. Subscribe, share this with a friend who needs permission to let it out, and leave a review to tell us which endorphin boost you’ll try first.

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Chapters

• 0:01 Welcome And Series Recap
• 0:31 Why Endorphins Matter
• 1:17 What Endorphins Feel Like
• 2:33 Messy Joy And Release
• 3:45 Crying, Laughing, And Letting Go
• 5:14 Beyond Aesthetics: Relief Over Perfection
• 6:19 Joy In Hard Seasons
• 7:15 The Prescription For Overwhelm
• 7:42 Practical Ways To Boost Endorphins
• 9:10 Rest, Comparison, And Compassion
• 10:40 Full‑Circle Joy System
• 11:27 Reflection Prompts And Closing

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:01

You've made it to the Choose Joy Podcast. Here we make a conscious effort to choose.

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This is your brain. This is joy. This is your brain on joy.

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Hello and welcome back, Joyful Babes, to the Choose Joy Podcast. If this is your first time here, I'm your host Chelsea. And if you've been listening through this mini-series, I just want to say thank you. You guys are simply incredible. So this has been our Your Brain on Joy series, where we've been exploring the four major feel-good neurotransmitters and treating them like prescriptions for the soul. So first we talked about dopamine, the motivation drug, then serotonin, which was the mood stabilizer, and last week we talked about oxytocin, the connection supplement. Today we are closing this all off with endorphins. Okay, so this episode is for anyone who's been holding it together, who's been pushing through, who's tired. I'm tired, you're tired, he's tired, she's tired, we all tired, okay? And we need the permission to release. So let's get into it. What are endorphins? I like to think of endorphins as the body's natural painkillers. So they exist to help you survive, okay? They reduce pain, they buffer stress, and they help you get through the hard things in life. Dopamine says go. And serotonin says be at peace. Oxytocin we learned last week tells us that we're not alone. Well, endorphins say you can make it through this. Endorphins are all about survival and not perfection. And it doesn't come from having it all together, it comes from being in it. I'm talking about in it. Okay. They show up when you're pushing your body, when you're releasing emotion, um, when you're laughing so hard that you cry and you're crying so hard that you breathe again. Yeah, that's endorphins. A most relatable example of that feeling is when you do a strenuous workout, and that like boost of energy that you get, and the world is great, and everything's just at peace, and you just see the sun again, and the light is at the end of the tunnel, and you just you just feel in all the things that is endorphins. And endorphin joy isn't polish, it's messy, it's sweaty, it's tear-stained, and that matters because a lot of us think that joy only counts when it looks calm or aesthetically pleasing or healed, but sometimes joy just looks like relief in whatever messy way that might be. And a lot of us avoid endorphins or are endorphin deprived per se because we suppress our emotions, we avoid movement, we intextualize pain and we numb instead of releasing. We tell ourselves, I'll cry later, I don't have time to work it out, or I'm fine, I'll deal with it eventually. Not even recognizing that our body is keeping the score. Joy cannot flow in a body that's consistently drained and clenched. Because if something's clamped up, what can flow from it? Endorphins and emotional release. Crying releases the endorphins, not a cute single tier kind of deal. I'm talking about that deep cry, chest heavy, wheezing. I'm talking about letting it out because crying is not weakness, it's chemistry. And I had to learn that for myself because if you ask anybody that knows me, as much as I smile and laugh, oh baby, I can cry. I can shed some tears, baby. And as I'm getting older, I'm realizing that that is not a weakness all the time, that is a strength because I can let it go, honey. Believe me, my body can let it go. Okay. It is chemistry. Laughter does the exact same thing. So does screaming in your car or dancing alone in your kitchen or moving your body after a hard day. Endorphins remind us that release is a part of healing. And when we battle this with the hustle culture we've been talking about, we already said that it glorifies dopamine, wellness culture, it glorifies the serotonin in that soft life era, right? It craves oxytocin. Well, endorphins sometimes get overlooked because endorphins actually require effort, they require movement, they require expression and feeling. Um, your endorphins don't care about the aesthetics, they care about relief. And this quickly reminds me of me running track. So I ran track in middle school and um I ran track in high school. I think when I transitioned from middle school to high school, like the eighth grade, eighth grade, I kind of felt it too. Really more so freshman year, I really cared about my aesthetic. Like I cared about how I looked. I was also transitioning into a new school during that season. So I really cared, and that's kind of hard when you're an athlete and you care about looks, especially you running. Like, baby, you are not gonna be cute running. If you're cute or trying to be cute while you're running, baby, you you ain't trying to run, you ain't trying to be fast, you ain't trying to race. And that was exactly me quite a few times in my short-lived career. However, endorphins are often in the season that you experience joy during hard seasons, okay? I'm talking about that laugh in the middle of grief, endorphins, that burst of energy that you have after a long cry, endorphins. Um, that moment during a workout where your mind finally just quiets. That is endorphins. Joy doesn't always wait until life is perfect, and sometimes it meets you right in the middle of your mess. And that is the funniest thing about life. Because if I were to see endorphins as a prescription, um I would say take when overwhelmed, take when stressed, um, or emotionally constipated, uh, best absorbed through movement, laughter, and release. Do not suppress. Side effects may include emotional clarity, stress relief, unexpected joy, a lighter nervous system. Endorphins don't fix your problems, but they do help your body carry them because it's a lot. We put a lot on ourselves and a lot on our bodies. Um, and sometimes we don't. Sometimes we're not accountable enough to take on that responsibility so that we're actually feeling the way. But endorphins help you get over that hill, they help your body carry it, they help you carry it all. Uh, so let's get to how to naturally boost our endorphins, right? Because through all of these, one, two, three, and now four, I want to provide ways that we can include this into our day-to-day life. So, and it's very simple. Um, and some of these have overlapped with the other neurotransmitters that we've talked about previously. So, obviously, movement. And this ain't like the cutesy movement that we were talking about with um serotonin or even oxytocin. I'm talking about push yourself to the limit. Get it out there. I mean, when's the last time that you just broke out into a full sprint? Okay, hit a 40. What's your 40 time? Clock it. Okay, laughter, laugh. We talked about that the last series because it also produces oxytocin. But laugh, y'all. Cry. Cry if you need to. But I can't stand to okay. I I ain't gonna go there. I ain't I ain't gonna I ain't gonna go there. Okay, music. Speaking of which, music, which I do hope to release a playlist in the next coming coming days. Let me know if y'all want that. Um, I was thinking like a playlist that just encompanies or encompasses all four um neurotransmitters because I was gonna separate them and do like a playlist for each. Y'all let me know. Y'all let me know in the comments, y'all text, y'all um send your opinions, send your ideas, what y'all want to hear. Anyway, stay focused. Deep breathing. Deep breathing always helps, always works. In the past episodes, uh, my mom has talked about it, I think, when she was on deep breathing and a cold surface. Panic, touch a cold surface, touch a counter, touch a table, touch a cold surface, breathe, breathe. Um what else? Spicy foods. Surprisingly enough, funny enough, interestingly enough, spicy foods actually can boost your endorphins. So yeah, grab them hot Cheetos. I don't know. Or like phu, you know, something healthier. Okay. All in all, the release can come in a lot of different forms. And let's just talk about uh endorphins and self-comparison for a second, because you don't need to earn relief, you don't need to justify your rest, and you don't need to explain your emotions all the time. Your endorphins are your body's way of saying, I got you. Joy grows in a body that feels supported, not punished. Okay, calm down, like give yourself a freaking break. And this is just how this series comes full circle because it is the end of our mini-series. Dopamine taught us how to pursue joy, right? Serotonin taught us how to sustain joy and to keep it. Oxytocin taught us how to share it, and endorphins finally teach us how to survive into joy because joy isn't one chemical, it's a system, it's a whole process and a continuing cycle. That's why you're still listening to me because there's so much to talk about when it comes to this thing called joy. So, reflective moment. Where are you holding tension? Ask yourself where am I holding tension? Where does my body need to release? What does my body need to release? Right? When is the last time I moved? When is the last time I laughed? When is the last time I cried freely? Maybe joy isn't something that we need to figure out. Maybe joy isn't something that we need to find. Maybe it's just something that we need to let out because joy is something that we all have. No matter how small or big or how apparent or hidden, is something that we all encompass. So let it out because joy is not a personality trait, it's not a privilege, it's biology. We've made it to the end. Thank you for listening. Thank you for trusting this series. Remember to choose dopamine, choose serotonin, choose oxytocin, choose endorphins, okay? Choose to release, and as always, choose joy. Duh.