Easter.

Jaak describes seven innate systems or drives present in all of us:

SEEKING (anticipation, desire)
RAGE (frustration, indignation)
FEAR (pain, threat, foreboding)
PANIC/LOSS (separation distress, social loss, grief, loneliness)
PLAY (carefree play, joy)
MATING (sex—who and when)
CARE (nurture)

Though emotions are hardwired in the autonomic nervous system - see the work of Porges - these seven systems listed above (always written in capitals) describe more complexity.

Panksepp describes SEEKING as the most important, the emotion that creates a sense of self, but anyway! The reason why all this intrigues me is the use of D2 blockers to block dopamine (at a set of receptors known as D2). Dopamine causes SEEKING, and SEEKING is all about interest, joy, finding, looking, engagement with the world. Too much of that, as in if you take various class one drugs....leads to psychosis in some people. So people with psychosis are proscribed dopamine blockers...

Meanwhile, service user is still possessed of certain arbitrary mistaken beliefs, but the D2 blockers mean he doesn't have any energy to act on them. From our point of view, not having to deal with the consequences of his actions is a relief.

I prefer to live without FEAR.

Yet my dopamine system creates my question, where is the other way out of crazy, paranoia? Because it seems to me, messing around with a person's dopamine system is only justified when that person is dangerous. A chemical castration of the mind is a big step. I'm never going to be happy about medication.

At some point I am going to sit with all the information I've gathered over this last year. No idea what to do with it - yet. So far, all I've gained is knowledge that I'm pretty good at what Panksepp calls affective regulation. But why?

What lessons did I get that created this?