The TikTok algorithm recently blessed me with this amazing video about dopamine menus. I loved it. It got me thinking about all the conversations I've heard our members (and people in our debrief series) have about how we can support staff and help them with self-care. Camp directors I'm talking to want to prepare staff for when things get tough, when they feel burnout, when they need a break, when the mid-summer slump hits, and all the other not fun moments of camp. I think that's really important to do, and it's really hard.
Lists of self-care activities are a great start, and they can be overwhelming in the moment. Maybe I only have 5 minutes, and I look at my list, and it takes me 5 minutes to find something I can do in 5 minutes. My 5 minutes are then gone. OR I look at this big long list, and it seems just as overwhelming as everything else I have going on. THAT's where dopamine menus come in and make things a little easier.
Before we dive in — I want to acknowledge that I'm definitely not the first OR the most qualified to write about dopamine menus BUT I am going to give it a try with a camp lens. We put together some great examples during our coffee talk (thanks, CampBrain, for sponsoring it!) at our last TSCS retreat, so I'm sharing an overview, some of those examples, and how I think this could work at camp.
If you just want the staff training session and handout/template, you can skip the rest.
Dopamine menus were popularized by Jessica McCabe of How to ADHD and Eric Tivers of ADHD reWired.
Now that we've got that attributed, here's the way I understand them: Dopamine menus are lists of activities that help release dopamine, which usually makes people happier and more motivated. There are tons of ways to get dopamine, but deciding what to do to get a dopamine hit can be overwhelming. Dopamine menus list things out by the amount of time they take, so it makes it really easy to say, "I've got 15 minutes, I can do xyz."
Here are the different "courses" and some examples of each:
I think it's worth it to set 30ish (maybe 45?) minutes aside at staff training to give people the chance to make their own dopamine menus. We have a staff training session written up here you can use.
Beyond the staff training session, I think we can refer back to dopamine menus during camp. To be clear, I don't think that dopamine menus are the cure to burnout, camp being hard, mental health issues, etc. BUT I do think they can give us some common language to encourage and understand each other.
What I mean by this is that if a staff member comes to us and says they're feeling overwhelmed and need a break, we can ask something like, "Do you need a starter or a main?" This tells us how much time someone needs AND serves a reminder that they can take action to feel better (if they're feeling ready for that). Some other ways I think we could use this:
I'd LOVE to hear! Comment or email me.
We had this conversation at a TSCS Retreat. We'd love to have you at the next one!