When the best nights feel like nothing

In summer, I often see myself getting so excited about all the fun that is coming in the next few months. My weekends are often fully booked. I know the days will be longer, giving me that little bit of extra energy to make plans after work. The first few summer nights and events often feel magically sweet, with an effect lasting for days.

But sometimes, mid-summer, I have this experience where everything just doesn't seem to hit that sweet spot anymore. Maybe you’ve experienced this too: a moment where everything objectively seems ‘right’: your friends are around, the music is good, the crowd is beautiful. Yet everything feels flat. 

In these moments, I used to feel like I needed to fix something. Was it me that just needed to be more fun? More social? Was I lacking something? Or was it something I should chase in the outside world: should I change the dancefloor, go to an after, find the magic somewhere else? Maybe tomorrow?

I feel like we rarely talk about these moments. We’re so used to sharing our highs. Whether this is in the moment itself, or the week after when we debrief a weekend with friends or scroll through our feed. It is like everyone else is enjoying themselves, all of the time. This could feed the idea that the solution for feeling flat, is to look for more stimulation and fun. As when you feel you have too little of something, it would make sense that if you keep adding things, you would eventually feel good, right?  

Yet, adding more stimulation might actually be the problem. Taking a step back might be the right thing to do. This might sound counterintuitive at first, but will make more sense if we look at what might actually cause ‘feeling flat’ while you expect to feel joy. 

Feeling flat explained 

Feeling flat could be described as feeling little or less satisfaction from a stimuli that usually gives you joy or pleasure. It’s important to distinguish feeling flat from feeling depressed, which often involves feelings of hopelessness and sadness and can impair our day-to-day life significantly if this feeling persists for a longer period of time. Feeling flat, in this article, refers to the experience during or after an event, where you would expect to feel good, but feel rather neutral, a bit numb or hollow. 

Too much of the good stuff can still be too much  

One explanation for feeling flat, is that your brain has had too much of the same good thing in a row. Maybe you have had many back-to-back weekends with events, without a proper break. Research suggests that dopamine, a neurochemical involved in our brain's reward system, might play a role in this process. When we keep exposing ourselves to pleasurable stimuli, music, social connection, art without sufficient pause, our brain temporarily adapts. We become less sensitive to the things that usually give us joy, and we need more and more stimulation to feel the same level of reward1. Not just to experience a high, but sometimes even just to feel normal. This could explain that after many back-to-back weekends, even the best party might feel flat.

While this theory could explain a lot, we have to be careful with drawing strong conclusions and keep in mind that many other neurochemicals and factors can influence how and what we feel. For example, feeling flat could also be a sign of too much stress, too little sleep or nutrition.

This is also why I would be careful with the increasingly popular trend of ‘dopamine fasting’, where people remove themselves from all kinds of ‘rewarding stimuli or activities’ with the aim to reset their brain, quit bad habits, feel more motivated and  productive. While some experience positive effects of this ‘fast’, it is important to understand that not all claims being made about dopamine and dopamine fasts are always correct or based on (enough) scientific evidence. Moreover, a rigorous dopamine ‘diet’ could even have a negative effect on your mental and physical health.2 Therefore, it is good to be cautious and not just follow any popular advise that is out there.

So while I wouldn’t advise you to go on an extreme dopamine diet, I would encourage you to bring some variety and contrast into your summer. Compare it to a big birthday dinner: to enjoy all the good food, you want to be a little bit hungry before you arrive. That appetite will make the food taste so much better. I think it is the same for events, festivals and social activities. If we don’t give ourselves the time to digest all the fun we had in one moment, there might be little space left to really enjoy the next experience.

Don’t hold back, but be smart instead 

Learning more about what our brain actually needs to experience fun, helped me to relate differently to the moments between events. They're not something to run away from or to always fill with more stimulation. These moments of ‘emptiness’ or lower stimulation are actually the foundation for the joy you want to experience in the next event.

Especially in our scene, the challenge might be to find these moments of downtime during the upcoming months. Having an abundance of events and activities to participate in, is in my opinion rather something to celebrate than to see as a problem. My message is certainly not to hold back on all the fun this summer. Please, dive deep and swim in it and make the most of it. 

The purpose of this article is rather to give you a gentle reminder of why rest is so essential. Not just for recovery, but also as part of the fun. As well, I hope that if you catch yourself feeling flat at any point this summer, you will not blame yourself but allow yourself to do what you actually need. Even when doing less instead of more feels new, uneasy or even a bit scary. 

One more thing I’d like to stress, is that downtime doesn’t need to look the same for everyone. Below I share some ideas for gentle downtime activities. Pick what feels good and most of all: enjoy your summer! 

• Go into nature: nature has a restorative effect on our nervous system and especially in summer there are plenty of options to enjoy its beauty. Think of a stroll during your lunch break, a picnic in the park or spending time at the beach. 
• Leave your headphone at home: listening to music while commuting or running errands might be your default (at least for me it was!) and silence might feel weird at first. But introducing some quiet breaks might help you to enjoy the next set or playlist even more. 
• Cook something from scratch: Find a recipe, get your groceries, and cook without screens or playlists in the background. Cooking is one of the things that allow me to be fully engaged in one thing at a time. Of course, the best part is to taste and share the result afterwards. 
• Plan an evening or weekend day without a plan: you have probably heard this tip before, yet I know it is often hard to create moments where we don’t have to follow a to-do list or agenda. Making room for a few hours without agenda where you can just be and do what feels good in that moment could be a little gift to yourself. 
• Create something: Write, journal, draw, paint, sing, make music. Not with the intent to make something good or beautiful, but as a form of play. 
• Spend time together outside of events too: instead of meeting your friends during events only, think of spending time together during the quieter moments too. Think of a brunch, a hike, a museum trip or just a conversation with full attention for each other. 

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