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Updated 1 year ago,April 3, 2024
Flowers after days of the silent treatment.
Crocodile tears after weeks of brutal insults.
An unexpected extravagant gift after a rage attack.
A sudden moment of tenderness after hours of critical remarks.
What do these all have in common?
We relish the joy of a hard-earned reward that much more.
This same phenomenon (albeit much more simplistically) is displayed in the behavior of gamblers at slot machines.
They are in physical and mental pain.
Like a mouse on a treadmill, they are obsessively ruminating on what theyve lost.
Aaron Anderson
And they are craving reunion with their rejecting belovedaddiction.Dr.
Dopamine actually flows much more readily when the rewards are intermittent, e.g.
Clinical psychologist Dr. Joe Carver calls this phenomenon the small kindness perception.
He had a rough childhood!
However, Carver is clear that these are excuses and diversions, not signs of redemption.
These intermittent periods of kindness rarely last.
Abusers can deliberately harm you just to seemingly come to your rescue.
Learning to identify and track the pattern can help to disrupt the vicious cycle before it begins again.
