Abuse & Neglect F_ck Up the Brain's Reward Functions, Killing Motivation

I’ve been deep-diving into solutions for my lack of motivation. It comes down to this: I have absolutely ZERO anticipation of a reward! I barely know what a good outcome feels like. I mean, I DO– but there’s a curious lack of feeling in this area of my life. Luckily, I’m too poor, too practical, and too risk-adverse to become a criminal or an addict. I can go without feeling good– Lady knows I have for most of my life. It’s what I’m used to, after all!

But right now, I have a list of things I HAVE to do, and my inability to get to it often enough is thwarting longer-term plans.

I wrote my therapist about my frustration about this. I need some answers! I need to DO something to help myself! She mentioned one area that I could address: helping my brain’s anticipation-of-reward system. It’s a thing that’s pretty new and hot in psychological brain studies. TONS of research like this:

https://psychology.sdsu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Yang-2021-Contributions-of-childhood-abuse-and.pdf

Essentially, chronic extreme stress (abuse and neglect) in childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood leads to issues with the brain’s reward system. Motivation comes from dopamine releasing at the right times to incentivize you to do what’s good for you. When that gets fucked up, you get people who don’t feel like getting off their ass to help themselves.

I’ve already found that Vitamin D, magnesium, and B complex make a significant difference, and I take L-Tyrosine every other day or so, and that’s been incredibly helpful! My brain was SO deprived of the dopamine precursor substance that the first time I took tyrosine it made me noticeably high for several hours. (Now that I take it regularly, I don’t get that effect.)

There are several other things I could check out, and I think Theanine will be the next supplement to try. There’s a lot of crap out there that doesn’t do anything– especially for generally healthy people. But I’m not a generally healthy adult, now, am I? I’ve found that the mood supplements with good science behind them are extremely helpful, and they don’t take weeks and weeks to know if they work or not. You know within a week at most, and usually within 2 days.

It’s also led to some interesting conversations with my student. She’s got extreme abuse and some neglect from her childhood and her brain system is pretty messed up. But she’s pursuing health quite doggedly and using what she learns to help her fitness clients (who fight motivation issues all the time as a matter of course) in the process. Which is nice, because I get the skinny (so to speak!) on what other people find useful in this whole motivation process.

But yeah– I gotta get on top of this. I feel like my life is slipping away without my meeting my goals. I don’t have a long list– I want to write some books and have some great conversations… maybe start a pagan trad. That’s it! I do that and I can just lay back and exist quite contentedly for the rest of my life with little to regret and much to be proud of.