Our bodies are incredibly sophisticated. However, they are designed for survival, not well-being (yikes!). Now the good news: for us, biology is not destiny, thanks to our incredible minds (yay!).
In fact, our ability to work with our minds is our super-power. The quality of our awareness (spoiler alert for Part II of this post) has the potential to fill our lives with immense joy and love.
Since knowledge is power, let’s start from the beginning. How are we designed for survival and not necessarily well-being?
Evolution only cares that we live long enough to reproduce. It doesn’t care if we collapse from stress by the time we are in our 20s.
That is because evolution ensures our short-term survival by making us over-estimate danger, just in case. We are more likely to survive if we think there is a bear behind every bush, than if we miss even the one potential bear. In other words, evolution has encoded the “better safe than sorry” motto in our very DNA.
To add insult to injury, evolution also makes us react to emotional injuries just as if we were about to be eaten by a bear. Both scenarios feel equally lethal to us.
Why?
In times passed, it was much more likely that we would survive if we were welcomed into a social group. Our opportunities for reproduction were even better if we were at the top of the group’s hierarchy. This means that anything threatening our emotional integrity or social status was also bad news for our bodily integrity and potential progeny.
As it goes, our threat-detection system in our brain has not changed a bit. Rejections and put downs feel like physical injuries (and in fact our bodies react to them in similar ways).
What does that mean in practice? When we feel emotionally or physically threatened (oh, and we, human beings, also have the capacity to bring the past and future into the present, so I should say: whenever we even imagine or remember feeling emotionally or physically threatened), the fear-center in our brain deploys one of three strategies:
1. If it thinks you can win, it makes you fight
2. If it thinks you can’t win, but you can outrun the danger, it makes you flee
3. If it thinks you can’t do either, it makes you freeze
Our fight/flight/freeze reactions can (and very often do) manifest emotionally and verbally (not simply physically). We can fight by uncontrollably ruminating or verbally attacking. We can flee by avoiding emotions, places, relationships, and conversations. And we can freeze by checking out (mentally and emotionally).
Our automatic fight/flight/freeze reactions also temporarily shut down our ability to feel empathy and connect to others, as well as to think clearly. There is no room for love, joy or perspective-taking while we are self-protecting; it’s just a time to act.
Once upon a time, these were meant to be short-lived reactions that kept us safe and boosted our resilience, just like a good workout. Unfortunately, stressors threatening our emotional, and at times physical, integrity are so pervasive that there is hardly enough time for our bodies to come back to baseline before they try to protect us from the next stressor. That is especially so for those of us who work for social justice, are a mental/health provider, or otherwise live “on the front line”.
And that’s all before considering the fact that we might also embody one of the many identities not fully welcomed by our troubled social context, and that we might face the very real risk of encountering a modern “bear” because of it.
Chronic exposure to stress hormones contributes to a cascade of health issues. Not to mention the unhappiness we inevitably experience in the process.
Ok, back to the good news: biology is not destiny!
Love and joy are also our birthright and encoded in our DNA. We can reclaim ownership of our minds and use it to experience the sweetness of life.
In fact, love and joy are what fuels our best selves and therefore our best work. Especially when we are committed to making the world a better place for everyone.
How do we claim the happiness that is ours for the taking? I will share a way out of the maze of our automatic reactions in Part II of this post.