Optimal Human Experience with Dr Joseph Diruzzo

Ep. 15 - Dopamine And The Chemistry of Fulfillment

• Dr. Joseph Diruzzo (aka "Dr. Joe") • Season 1 • Episode 15

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Unlock the mysteries of your mind and emotions during this enthralling exploration of neurohormones during Episode 15 of the Optimal Human Experience Podcast. Ever wonder how simple pleasures like a home-cooked meal or the satisfaction of building something with your own hands can trigger such joy? We dive into the science behind serotonin, dopamine, oxytocin, and endorphins, with a special focus on dopamine's influence on our daily quest for happiness and fulfillment. From discussing the thin line between passion and addiction in gamers to the nostalgia of my grandmother's cooking and my father's craftsmanship, we reveal how dopamine shapes our lives. Additionally, we revisit the technique of anchoring, demonstrating how we can steer our emotions towards more rewarding states, all in the pursuit of the Optimal Human Experience™.

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Announcer:

This is the Optimal Human Experience Podcast with Dr Joseph DiRuzzo. To learn more, visit OptimalHumanExperiencecom. And now. Dr Joseph DiRuzzo and the Optimal Human Experience Podcast.

Paul Andrew:

Welcome to episode 15 of the Optimal Human Experience Podcast with Dr Joseph DiRuzzo. I'm Paul, andrew, and today, what are we going to talk about, joe?

Dr Joe:

We're going to talk about neurohormones serotonin, adopamine, oxytocin, and endorphins and kephalins.

Paul Andrew:

I was just about to say that, I was just thinking that Easy for you to say.

Dr Joe:

You know, these are big things in the news these days. People are depressed and they take drugs that are called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. Yes, and what that does is it concentrates serotonin in the inner synaptic cleft, and if you don't have proper balance, if you don't have the Optimal Human Experience, the people walk around and they look so sad. So I was thinking about these neurohormones and I decided let's do a presentation on each and every one of them, one at a time, and let's talk about dopamine today, and it has to do with rewards, satisfaction, motivation and dopamine. If the system is not working optimally, people have problems. Apparently, it's easy to get addicted to your own dopamine. People who play computer games are constantly looking for a way to make the bells ring and the buzzers go off, and so they can have a reward.

Paul Andrew:

Do you know, crush that candy, crush that candy, crush it.

Dr Joe:

Crush it and they get a reward, and then they go back for more, and they go back for more, and they go back for more. And you know, in rats they figured out how to put an electrode in a rat's brain in such a way that if it touched a lever it got a little electricity into the pleasure center in the brain. So you see that, with kids sitting in front of their computers for hour after hour after hour. So I thought, you know, there's possible that I had a disturbance in my dopamine system. So I just thought about all right, so how could we rectify the dopamine system? Well, first of all we would have to elicit a response that hopefully would have to do with dopamine secretion. So I thought about it. I came up with three experiences that I had, but they were for somebody else.

Dr Joe:

My little Italian grandmother used to roll out dough and she would make it just the right thickness and she would slice that dough into noodles and she would cook the noodles, and then she cleaned the house and she just absolutely loved being in the kitchen. The kitchen was her domain. She loved it. She made all kinds of wonderful food and that was like a dopamine palace for her. She loved it, and my mother. She used to love to make ceramics. In the sixties there was a period of time when making ceramics was a fad and she got a kiln and she fired, she made, poured clay into molds and made cookie jars and salt and pepper shakers. I was probably eight or 10 years old at the time and I remember the reward that she got, the reward that she got. She did this for a reward.

Dr Joe:

My father was a bit of an engineer and he was a carpenter and there was a creek that ran behind our house and the creek had eroded the bed, the creek bed on one side, and so he got a bunch of railroad ties. Railroad ties are big, thick pieces of lumber. He made a bank, he back filled it in with rock and dirt and he just had a wonderful time exercising his dopamine circuit. So I thought about various things and I came up with a few for myself. These are individual and I decided to anchor those. Now let me let's talk a little bit about anchoring. Okay, just just just to review.

Paul Andrew:

So the your, your thought process here is hey, there are all these kids out here, dopamine and adults doing these video things on their computers, their phones, seeking this dopamine hit after dopamine, hit after dopamine hit. You looked into yourself and thought because I can't imagine you sitting and playing a video game for any length of time no, I don't do that, homie, homie, don't play that. No, so so so you're thinking all right, but there's something here. And looking for, what you found were examples from other people's lives that you had experienced them, getting extreme satisfaction. And that's what the dopamine comes from completing something or doing something that provides extreme satisfaction. Is that the idea?

Dr Joe:

It's satisfaction, it's motivation, it's feelings of success and if you're if you're good at modeling, you can look at a person who's experiencing a given internal emotional state and you can hallucinate. How would I feel if I was this person? How would I feel if I was this person experiencing this in this way? What would it be like for me?

Paul Andrew:

to experience that. So essentially every action movie, that's what the action movie is doing. Is you're thinking, oh, if I were Spider-Man, I would squirt the web onto that building and swing through? So you're imagining that this is you.

Dr Joe:

And that sells more movies. I mean the comment most men lead lives of quiet desperation until they watch Spider-Man and then, or Thor, they become Thor. So yeah, you have a library in your endocrine system of all these various neurohormones and you can elicit them and bring them out. But let's talk a little bit about anchoring. One time John Gender said to me, one of the founders of NLP. He said you can achieve almost any behavioral gain with anchoring, kinesthetic anchoring he was talking about. So when Pavlov had the dogs in the laboratory and he put food in front of them and they salivated and he rang a bell in the background, his timing was just right. The dogs were in full salivation mode. Then when he rang the bell, they pop right back into full salivation mode. So in order to do a proper anchor Pavlovian stimulus response reflects arc you have to, number one, elicit the response. I got a feeling of satisfaction thinking about my little Italian grandmother. I got a feeling of satisfaction thinking about my mom and a feeling of satisfaction and what they were experiencing. That's eliciting the response. The stronger the you elicit the response, the better you're going to have in terms of success. The second thing is you have to insert a discrete stimulus. In Pavlov's laboratory it was the ringing of the bell. And then the third thing is you have to replicate the stimulus precisely to get the response. So Pavlov held the bell three feet away and four feet off the floor and he rang the bell from exactly the same direction and the dogs. Then that would constitute a good anchor and you can use that. You can use the ringing of the bell.

Dr Joe:

One of the best things that I use and help people with is I say get ready to hold your thumb, get ready to squeeze your thumb. The thumb has got a huge representation neurologically in the brain. So I'll say get a feeling of being happy. Once they get into that feeling of being happy, I have them squeeze their thumb and hold it and then I say let your thumb go before you get out of the feeling of happiness. Why, you want the timing to be right. You want them to get into the feeling of happiness. Squeeze their thumb, let that squeeze go before they get out of the feeling, so that you have a discrete identifier. So all right. So get a feeling of a time when you felt motivated, successful. You know you've been playing video games and you won.

Paul Andrew:

I crushed the candy. I crushed the candy.

Dr Joe:

And you get that feeling, squeeze your thumb and let go. You have identified, you make you would make a diagram of a plateau before, during and then after, and make sure you squeeze your thumb while you're fully in that emotional state. Okay, all right. And then the for dopamine. It's feelings of motivation, satisfaction. It's a very powerful hormone. Serotonin is more about happiness and dopamine is more about accomplishment and success.

Dr Joe:

So what I did for myself and I've had people say to me you're never satisfied, you're never satisfied. Well, you can take that as a compliment, but you can also take it as a less than optimal functioning of the dopamine circuit. So I got a good anchor for dopamine and then I put my head down and I put my arms up near my face I assumed the prenatal pattern took a deep breath, let it out and fired off the anchor for dopamine secretion. And I can tell you it just gives me a tremendous feeling of satisfaction. But it seemed to take an edge off of my personality.

Dr Joe:

I have in the past always been striving, striving, striving, striving, striving, tremendous motivation, but I did not ever really have a sense of success. I've had people say to me well, you should do so and so, and I'd say, well, I'm not quite ready yet, and they say you're the most accomplished person we know in this category, but I didn't have an adequate feeling of success. Now I believe that with this technique I have developed a more optimal function of my dopamine circuit so that I can feel success. I can feel satisfaction, I can feel motivation and it's a good, healthy feeling. It's I'm feeling dopamine and I'm feeling it all in a good way. Does that make sense to you?

Paul Andrew:

Yeah, and so and so the process was you set for each of the situations that you remembered, your grandmother with the homemade, handmade, hand cut spaghetti your mother with, and she went sounds like she went full bore with this. I mean she had her own kiln. She had all of the stuff and she's doing all of this stuff at home and this is her source of extreme happiness. So she saw this, she made she made great big cookie jars.

Dr Joe:

You know they were probably a foot tall and 12 inches across. She made Christmas trees that you could put a light inside and it had little holes and you put little plastic stars in the holes. I mean she made a prior tuck, salt and pepper shakers, all kinds of stuff. It was about 1965, I'd say or 1960 ish. It was a fan and women went crazy over it. They opened ceramic shops and she was right in there doing ceramic.

Paul Andrew:

She loved it, she loved it, you saw this, and so you. You brought this emotional state back, and at the peak of that emotional state, you were using the thumb as an anchor for setting the anchor on these.

Dr Joe:

Yes, same thing with them.

Paul Andrew:

Same thing with your father. So you have these three separate instances that brought this extreme sense of satisfaction and reward.

Dr Joe:

And then you said you went into the prenatal position in the prenatal state and, like, just imagined yourself Floating gently in the, in the, in the, in the amniotic fluid, and I fired off the anchor and my experiences I have just it, it, it healed. It was a healing, and I don't usually use that word. My mother had, you know, a terrible sense of not being satisfied. But here's a question for you. Imagine a person is prenatal little embryo floating in the amniotic fluid and they are not receiving enough glucose. Their mother has gotten distracted, she's not eating, she's watching TV or she's making ceramics.

Paul Andrew:

She's made whatever, whatever.

Dr Joe:

And and so this little embryo sends a signal up the in, up the umbilical cord, says Mom, send me some glucose, send me some to eat.

Paul Andrew:

Hey.

Dr Joe:

Ma, what happens if this, if the, if she is paying attention to something else, and that cry for a little nutrition is goes unheeded? Well, somebody's not too happy. Well, that lead us to a sense of frustration. How about if there is not enough Oxygen in the blood? It's the less than the optimal level, and a little signal is sent up the umbilical cord. Mom, take a deep breath, move around a little bit. I've got blood stagnation down here in. The cry for a little more oxygen goes unheeded. Would that person tend to develop a set point for dopamine? That was less than optimal.

Paul Andrew:

Okay. So what you're saying is there are set points for well really we were discussing earlier really for just about anything, but especially emotional states or even physical state, there's some set point. That's the. That's where you're building from. So the embryo wants some. Hey, ma, send me some glucose. And she's busy Making her ceramics and doesn't eat, and and the baby's like okay, I'm not too happy here.

Dr Joe:

What happens to the reward. You know the baby attempted to do something and did not receive a reward. That will tend to establish a set point, and if it occurs in blood glucose and it occurs in blood oxygen levels, that seems to me to be an ideal situation to develop a disturbance in the dopamine system.

Paul Andrew:

It makes perfect sense. Okay, we're about halfway through about 15 minutes in this. If you like what you're hearing, you want to learn more, please visit Optimalh uman experience. com. That's optimal human experience. com. There's videos on there. You'll see the latest course offerings, all of that kind of stuff. I, however, right now want to get rewarded by getting back into this discussion about dopamine, because Now it seems like what you did with your process, with your memories of your mother and your grandmother and your father and other things you've done, that you'd felt a sense of satisfaction by using the prenatal technique, imagining yourself floating in the amniotic fluid, firing off those anchors. It shifted your current experience. Did I hear that right?

Dr Joe:

It is the darndest thing. You know, we talk about set points. But you have a person who's 65 years old and I'll say to them you know what's your biggest problem? They'll say I feeling feelings of inadequacy, or I don't feel I'm adequately Rewarded, or I'm always dissatisfied. And I'll say, all right, well, it's probably something having to do with your prenatal experience. Put your head down and let's see if we can retrieve a prenatal memory. And of course they go no, that was 60 years ago, that was, that was a lie. I've forgotten all of it. I can't remember that. I'll say, all right, well, put your head down and try it anyways. And they go well, all right, but this is crazy, it's not gonna work. I know it's not gonna work. The mini.

Dr Joe:

And they, the minute they put their head down and lowered their head so that their eyes go below the horizon, they'll go oh, my mother doesn't want the pregnancy and she's in denial and she's not thinking about me and it's in it. And that is a set point for report. Deprivation sickness. Report deprivation syndrome. They develop the complex generalization inside of the deepest Levels of the nervous system, way down in the reptilian brain the thalamus, the hypothalamus, the brain stem, the lenticular nucleus, the amygdala, all of those phylogenetic, ancient, ancient, ancient Neurological structures, and they'll get the complex generalization that I'm not wanted. And and if the mother is really in denial about being pregnant, they'll get they'll. That is their set point. They will go through life feeling like they're not wanted.

Dr Joe:

So one of the easiest ways to deal with this Is to reset that set point Mm-hmm. And one of the ways I'll do it is I'll say tell me, I'm not supposed to be here. That's one of the common ones Mm-hmm, I'm not supposed to be here. And they'll say, oh, I'm not supposed to be it. They'll cry. People will cry, especially if they're really into the emotions that they were experiencing way back During that, that period of their life, the prenatal period, and they'll say I'm not supposed to be here. And I'll say say it three times, right, to convince your mechanism. They'll say I'm not supposed to be here, I'm not supposed to be here, I'm not supposed to be here. And then I say Say, but as long as I'm here, I'm going to have a wonderful time. And they'll say a Big sigh will come out as they blow off carbon dioxide and the sympathetic and the Parasympathetic nervous systems begin to normalize and they'll say as long as I'm here, I'm going to have a wonderful time. I'm not supposed to be here, but as long as I'm here I'm going to have a wonderful time.

Dr Joe:

And for many, many, many people, that is a turning point, that is a pivotal moment and they begin to accept their, their humanity, the fact that they're here, that they're alive, that they have a wonderful life or an opportunity To have a wonderful life. And for many people you know people talk about Healing. They're right and this is a form of healing and it's consistent, reliable. It is in my experience, if I do my job right, mother nature and their body will go into a healing mode and They'll. They will shake and shiver for a couple minutes and when they come out of it, they're a different person I. So we have some marvelous tools this prenatal re-imprinting is only one of them but understanding pavlovian stimulus response reflexes and utilizing anchors deliberately to reeducate your nervous system so that you become more likely to experience the optimal human experience. You have good friends, you go after things and you get them, you're rewarded, you have status, you have freedom, self-expression, you have resources, you have all good things, you have a balance in your life, the optimal human experience.

Paul Andrew:

And you have to conclude that resetting, adjusting that set point for dopamine response, for example, doing that naturally from that beginning state, even though it's imagined, even though it's 60, 70 years later, or 20 or 30 or however long it's been since the person was prenatal, it's got to be better than crushing the candy on the phone.

Dr Joe:

You know, when all else fails, take thorazine. You know it won't feel better, you just won't feel as bad. But, what comes up over and over again in my mind is the memory of that biker guy who had all leather and anything. We did a prenatal session and then after he said, can I give you a hug? That was the last thing I expected.

Dr Joe:

Yeah that was the amazing thing about the prenatal technique is the memories. Whenever we have the opportunity to confirm or deny a memory, invariably I'll send people. I'll say who would know what your mother was going through at this time in her life when you were prenatal? And they'll say, well, my aunt or my uncle or my neighbor, and they'll go and talk to them and they'll come back and they will usually be shaken right to their core, right to their toenails. They'll say that is actually. I had a psychologist say to me this is not a metaphor, this is not a parable, a simile, a story, and as if this is actually what happened during this person's prenatal experience. And, remarkable as it is, the material, the information is in there and you can identify and elicit these prenatal memories and you can alter the complex generalizations of physiology and you end up with the more happiness and more joy, more satisfaction in your life, the optimal human experience.

Paul Andrew:

Well, and I can, I've said this before you did a session with one of my daughters and she related something that was going on and recounted an argument that I hadn't thought of and what I think. She was around 18 or 19 at the time. I hadn't thought of it in 18, 19 years, but it was an argument that her mother and I had when she was prenatal, around two, three months old, maybe four, two, three months old. I remembered the argument because she recounted some of the specific things that were said. I'm thinking. I'm thinking, hold on a minute, you weren't there. Oh yeah, I guess you were there and it was, you know. Yet another shocking, shocking example of okay, I guess there is maybe something to this stuff here.

Dr Joe:

If we take as a formal dogma the prenatal concept, you know, a sperm meets an unfertilized egg. They come together, make a fertilized ovum that divides into two cells, four cells, eight cells, 16 cells, and when it reaches the 32 cell stage it's called a blastula. The blastula begins to spread out toward what will be the head and what will be the feet and immediately forms the neural plate. The first differentiated tissue of the human body is nervous tissue. At that point personality structure begins to be laid down as a series of simple Pavlovian stimulus response reflexes, and all of the problems that we have later on in life, without exception, are the end result of maladaptive reflexes established in the prenatal period under conditions of maternal or fetal distress. And that is roughly the truth. It seems like we have some kind of extremely primitive pre-conscious consciousness even before the formation of the neural plate.

Dr Joe:

And there's a tremendous amount of research that needs to be done, but the bottom line is that the prenatal period and the early childhood, the prenatal period and the early childhood development, are most, most influence. They really establish the direction, the trajectory for your life. So prenatal re-imprinting uber-olus.

Paul Andrew:

Well, when you think about it, you've got these cells that you started out with. One cell and it's dividing, and each of those cells have these cell receptor sites that are looking for something to dock in there. Okay, neurotransmitters, come on. Come on. Come on. You want the happy ones or you want the sad ones? Well, what do we got?

Announcer:

Well, mom, and dad are fighting.

Paul Andrew:

Yeah, what's there? So there and it's not just the negative things that are plugged in at that point. I mean, with the Wonder Baby program that you developed, it's very possible to create a situation where the baby, the embryo, has installed the good neurotransmitters, the happy feelings, as opposed to I am no one I remember that. Oh, I remember that. Oh, my gosh.

Dr Joe:

So we have a wonderful set of tools and I invite people to use them and learn and have fun and redesign your life, reconfigure your life, make your life the best that you can make it, make it the optimal human experience for you.

Paul Andrew:

Yeah, and just from personal experience I go back to that initial situation where the presentation I went to the guys next to me he's wheezing, sounds like he just came out of the coal mines in West Virginia with black lung disease and you did a little meditation with him and and on my mother, he stops wheezing, he stops wheezing.

Dr Joe:

So you know all of these set points. What goes on inside of the bones when some people become osteoporotic and get osteoporosis, other people don't? What happens when people have kidney failure early in life and other people don't? How many of these internal set points are there and right for all these different systems, all the different systems for all the different systems. This is ongoing research that we need to do.

Paul Andrew:

Well, and you know, people poo poo anecdotal evidence, but when it's your anecdote, it can't get much more personal than that. And so if it works for you, then hey, god bless.

Dr Joe:

You know I haven't had many people who were suicidally depressed. I mean I've had not a huge number, but every, every one of them, without exception. I'll have them. I will anchor the feeling, have them put their head down and they will say my mother and father don't want this pregnancy. And the complex generalization is things would be better for everybody if I wasn't here. And then it's so consistent. And the amazing thing is, once you change that complex generalization, if they get done crying and I don't blame them the least they come out of this prenatal experience and they're a different human being with a different neuro-psychiatric history, and then they're free to live their life without the haunting suicidal depression and always in the back, it just goes away.

Paul Andrew:

Yeah, yeah, fascinating, and it by gosh. It just makes sense. All right, that's that's it for episode 15 of the optimal human experience podcast with Dr Joseph DiRuzzo. Live in the flesh. I'm Paul Andrew, and we'll see you next time.

Dr Joe:

Next time is going to be serotonin serotonin on the tarmac happiness, happiness, harmony.

Announcer:

This has been the optimal human experience podcast with Dr Joseph DiRuzzo. For the latest videos and courses, visit optimalhumanexperiencecom. Join us next time for the optimal human experience podcast with Dr Joseph DiRuzzo. Okay.

Paul Andrew:

Hey, um, oh, you know what? You didn't talk about your sister in the beat, the precursor stuff.

Dr Joe:

We'll catch you next time.

Paul Andrew:

We'll catch you next time, okay.

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Dr Joseph Diruzzo

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Paul Andrew

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