Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence

by Dr Anna Lembke

The trick is to stop running away from painful emotions, and instead allow ourselves to tolerate them. When we’re able to do this, our experience takes on a new and unexpectedly rich texture. The pain is still there, but somehow transformed, seeming to encompass a vast landscape of communal suffering, rather than being wholly our own.

It is not our perfection but our willingness to work together to remedy our mistakes that creates the intimacy we crave.