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Dopamine Attachment

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Dopamine Attachment

Dopamine Attachment refers to the neurological programming and attachment that occurs when dopamine is released in the brain in response to the anticipation and/or experience of pleasure and relief.[1] [2]

Related LP Terms

Related Terms

Notes

Dopamine is an attachment chemical. Dopamine helps the brain "attach" to things likely to lead to survival, and avoid things likely to lead to destruction. As Psychologist David J. Ley says, dopamine release is “like a little red flag to your brain, saying ‘hey, pay attention, this is about to feel good, and you want to remember this, so you can do it again.’” [3]

Dopamine attachment is implicated in the development of "addictions," or what we call Toxic Attachments. Dopamine attachment in response to Toxic Socialization is the root cause of "addiction" (i.e. Toxic Attachment (Sosteric & Ratkovic, 2019).

Dopamine attachments may be inactive, active, or broken.

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Footnotes

  1. David J. Ley, No, Dopamine Is Not Addictive, 2017, Psychology Today, Available: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/women-who-stray/201701/no-dopamine-is-not-addictive, January 6 2017.
  2. Wolfram Schultz, “Dopamine Reward Prediction-Error Signalling: A Two-Component Response,” Nature Reviews Neuroscience 17, no. 3 (2016): 183–95, doi:10.1038/nrn.2015.26; Ethan S. Bromberg-Martin, Masayuki Matsumoto, and Okihide Hikosaka, “Dopamine in Motivational Control: Rewarding, Aversive, and Alerting,” Neuron 68, no. 5 (2010): 815–34, doi:10.1016/j.neuron.2010.11.022
  3. David J. Ley, No, Dopamine Is Not Addictive, 2017, Psychology Today, Available: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/women-who-stray/201701/no-dopamine-is-not-addictive, January 6 2017.