我们进化是为了生存，也是为了感受痛苦

我们进化是为了生存，也是为了感受痛苦

不健康的世界中痛苦的力量。

关键点

痛苦的情绪是为了在这个混乱的世界中生存而采取的适应措施。

我们的痛苦本身并不是问题，而是提醒我们注意问题。

在我们学习缓解心理健康症状的策略之前，我们需要倾听它们发出的信号。

人们来找我寻求帮助，以解决他们的抑郁、焦虑、饮食失调、成瘾或其他任何无法充分描述我们为什么会感到痛苦的标签。这些诊断具有自己的生命力，我们试图治疗“抑郁症”，而不是解决它所发出的问题。但是，如果我们面临的抑郁、焦虑和各种心理健康问题并不是真正的问题呢？如果它们是帮助我们发现或解决真正问题的信号呢？

到 40 岁时，我们当中有一半的人会被诊断出患有精神疾病，五分之一的人每年都会经历一次活跃发作。[1]如果我们中有这么多人正在经历这些精神健康问题，那么很难将所有问题都视为“混乱”。也许这并不是说我们的身体或思想出了问题，而是我们的身体或思想出了问题：也许这些症状是为了在这个混乱的世界中生存而做出的出色适应。

进化心理学家认为，我们进化是为了生存，而不是为了快乐或平静。情绪低落、愤怒、羞耻、焦虑、内疚、悲伤——这些都是有助于我们应对特定环境挑战的反应。当我们受到威胁时，敏感的保护功能会发出警报或短路，这并不是设计缺陷。这是设计成功。

“进化论的核心观点是，如果我们发现某些行为我们不喜欢，或者会给自己或他人带来痛苦，我们不应该自动假设‘机器’出了问题。”德比大学研究进化心理学的保罗·吉尔伯特 (Paul Gilbert) 教授说。 [ 2]相反，他建议我们问：“这些行为在什么样的社会背景下普遍存在？它们发挥了什么作用？”

安全总比后悔好

亚利桑那州立大学进化与医学中心创始主任、精神病学家 Randolph Nesse 的职业生涯始于一家焦虑症诊所的主任。他开始问自己，为什么人们在实际上非常安全的情况下会出现如此多的恐慌症？[3]然后他遇到了烟雾探测器理论。“我开始意识到，即使有危险的可能性，警报响起也是必不可少的。当威胁不确定时，误报是值得的，”Nesse 说。安全总比后悔好。“我们希望确保在每次火灾发生时都能得到警告。”

这一切都归结于伤害的经济学。当我们环境中发生伤害的概率大于焦虑的成本时，体验焦虑是有益的，即使这意味着在杂货店里发生不必要的恐慌。“我终于明白了，系统被设定为有许多、许多正常的误报，”内斯说。

内斯说，这并不像每种情绪反应都有特定功能那么简单。他说，这些反应具有适应我们独特环境挑战的功能。我们通过改变烟雾报警器的灵敏度来适应我们周围感知到的威胁，或者适应我们从祖先的环境中学到的经验教训。如果外面潜伏着很多危险，那么每次离开家时感到焦虑对你的生存至关重要，这样你就可以更加警惕并做好保护自己的准备。

活动家兼佛教牧师喇嘛罗德·欧文斯（Lama Rod Owens）在《爱与愤怒：通过愤怒获得解放的道路》[4]中写道，焦虑如何帮助他作为一名黑人在美国生存下来，抵御危险：

当 Trayvon Martin 被谋杀时，我不再穿黑色连帽衫。当 Tamir Rice 被谋杀时，我想到如何放弃我的双手，这样我就不会被误认为抓着任何东西。当 Renisha McBride 被谋杀时，我发誓再也不敲陌生人的门了。当 Sandra Bland 和 Walter Scott 被谋杀时，我变得高度警惕，遵守每一条该死的驾驶法规。当 Eric Garner 被窒息而死时，我意识到我们都被窒息了。在 Akai Gurley 被杀后，我试图弄清楚如何发出声音，这样就不会有人对我感到惊讶。在 Freddie Gray 被谋杀后，我想肯定有办法不再是黑人。在 Charles Kinsey 被枪杀后，我开始质疑，如果警察无论如何都会出现并开枪打死我，我为什么要帮助任何人。

焦虑不是软弱的表现。它是一种适应，让我们更强大，能够在危险的世界中生存。同样，摆脱焦虑也不是个人的胜利；这是一种特权。这意味着你和你的祖先都很幸运地生活在安全的环境中，拥有身体和情感上的安全。

情绪低落的礼物

当我们生活在战争的残酷和心碎中、气候的崩溃、新冠病毒、系统性不平等和种族主义中时——我还可以继续说下去——我们的情绪崩溃也就不足为奇了。但如果情绪低落也是一种有益的适应呢？

内斯说，当我们所处环境中的危害风险大于回报时，我们的身体就会进入情绪低落的冬眠模式。想象一下你正在钓鱼，并捕到了很多鳟鱼。在这种高效的情况下，我们天生就应该感到快乐，以激励我们继续前进。但是，随着鱼的数量开始减少，我们开始感到不快乐。内斯解释说，这是早期迹象，表明回报不再值得我们冒着被狮子、老虎和熊吃掉的风险去冒险。如果我们坚持下去，仍然没有鱼，那么我们就会开始感到情绪进一步下降，这会向我们发出信号，让我们回到安全的洞穴，狂看 Netflix，等到鱼回来。情绪低落不是个人的失败或弱点，而是表明我们环境的回报大于离开床的风险。它帮助我们在黑暗时刻节省精力。

资料来源：cottonbro studio/Pexels

当我们的低落情绪信号随着冬眠而出现时，内塞建议我们问问自己：我们是否需要改变环境，或者找到一个更有回报或更安全的新环境，无论是新的地点、生活方式、关系还是工作？或者，我们可以等到下个季节鱼儿回来，比如冬天、生病、受伤或新冠疫情限制浪潮？需要发生什么样的系统性变化，才能让更多人生活在回报大于威胁的环境中？我们不应该只关注感觉更好，而需要倾听低落情绪向我们发出的信号，并将其作为改变的动力。

羞耻和内疚的力量

请参阅我上一篇博客文章，详细讨论羞耻和内疚的好处。但简而言之，内疚表明我们的行为（或对他人行为的默许） 造成了伤害，并促使我们修复这种情况。例如，承认我们的特权时产生的健康内疚感促使我们修复我们维护的制度，这些制度以伤害他人为代价使我们受益。

羞耻感提醒我们，如果我们向特定群体完全展示自己，我们可能会遭到拒绝，这迫使我们隐藏自己可能遭到拒绝的那部分，或者寻找一个更安全的社区，在那里我们可以做真实的自己。羞耻感与我们的价值无关；它只是表明我们周围的人正在拒绝我们（或过去曾经拒绝过我们）。问题不在于你；而在于他们。

如果你不生气，说明你没有注意

愤怒是对抗不公平、侵犯和需求受阻的必要反应。它是我们动员行动对抗不公正的最有效工具。社会变革的最大障碍不是激烈的反对，而是冷漠。

当我们的身体和大脑察觉到微妙的暗示，表明我们的界限被跨越时，怨恨警报就会响亮而清晰地响起，甚至在我们来得及反思情况之前。怨恨大喊：坚持健康的界限，否则就要站出来反对不公正！

事实上，愤怒和怨恨可能是我们的超能力，它让我们有能力对他人表达更多的同情。同情和同理心的先决条件是健康的界限——定义什么是可以的，什么是不可以的，布琳·布朗在《坚强崛起》中说道。最富有同情心的人是那些拥有最健康界限的人，布朗继续说道，因为怨恨会让他们知道这些界限何时消失。

我们需要怨恨来帮助我们维护我们的界限，就像我们需要所有其他形式的愤怒来为一个健康的世界而战一样。

这不是你，而是世界

越南佛教僧侣、和平活动家一行禅师曾以莲花为例，指出泥土中才能长出最美丽的花朵。我们的情绪警报，如愤怒、焦虑、情绪低落、内疚和羞愧，都是帮助我们生存和解决问题的重要信号。

因此，在学习缓解心理健康症状的策略之前，我们需要仔细聆听它们发出的信号。我们的痛苦不是问题。它提醒我们注意问题，这个亲爱的朋友告诉我们需要听到的真相，而不是我们想要的安慰。消除这些警报并不能让痛苦消失，它只会把它变成更响亮的信号，比如我们身体上的疾病或我们头脑中的心理健康障碍。

马丁·路德·金博士在 1956 年的演讲中提到了“创造性的失调”，他赞扬了阿拉巴马州蒙哥马利市 5 万名陷入困境的黑人美国人抵制公交车的种族隔离所取得的胜利。

“我们社会制度中有些东西我很自豪能够适应，我也呼吁你们也适应。”他说，“拯救我们这个世界的重任就掌握在适应不良的人手中。”

参考

[1]加拿大心理健康协会。关于精神疾病的速览。2021 年 7 月，https://cmha.ca/brochure/fast-facts-about-mental-illness/

[2] Gilbert, P.《疯狂生活》：第二版修订版。Annwyn House：英国。2019 年

[3] Nesse, R. 进化精神病学。2022 年 3 月 31 日。http：https: //hstalks.com/t/4946/evolutionary-psychiatry/ ? biosci。

[4]欧文斯，拉玛·罗德（2020 年）。《爱与愤怒：通过愤怒获得解放的道路》。北大西洋图书公司，加利福尼亚州伯克利市。

ANXIETY

We've Evolved to Survive, and to Feel Miserable

The power of distress in an unhealthy world.

Updated January 4, 2024 |  Reviewed by Abigail Fagan

THE BASICS

What Is Anxiety?

Take our Generalized Anxiety Disorder Test

Find a therapist to overcome anxiety

KEY POINTS

Painful emotions are adaptions to survive a disordered world.

Our distress is not the problem. It alerts us to problems.

Before we learn strategies to soothe our mental health symptoms, we need to listen to what they’re signalling.

People come to see me for help with their depression, anxiety, eating disorder, addiction, or any other label that fails to adequately describe why we hurt. These diagnoses take on a life of their own, where we try to treat “the depression” instead of addressing the problem it’s signalling. But what if depression, anxiety, and the mixture of mental health problems we face aren’t the actual problem? What if they are signals to help us see or solve the real problem?

One in two of us will be diagnosed with a mental health condition by the age of 40, with one in five experiencing an active episode each year.[1] It’s hard to view all our mental health challenges as “disordered” if so many of us are experiencing them. Perhaps it’s not that something’s gone wrong in our bodies or minds, but that something’s gone right: Maybe these symptoms are brilliant adaptions to survive a disordered world.

Evolutionary psychologists teach that we’ve evolved to survive, and not to be happy or calm. Low mood, anger, shame, anxiety, guilt, grief—these are all helpful responses to help us meet the challenges of our specific environments. Having sensitive protective functions that sound alarms or short-circuit when we’re threatened isn’t a design flaw. It’s a design success.

“The key view in evolutionary theory is that if we find behaviors that we do not like or cause suffering to self or others, we should not automatically assume that something has gone wrong ‘in the machine,’” says Paul Gilbert, a professor at the University of Derby, who researches evolutionary psychology.[2] Rather, he suggests we ask, “In what social contexts are these behaviors prevalent? What functions are they serving?”

It's Better to Be Safe Than Sorry

Psychiatrist Randolph Nesse, Founding Director of the Center for Evolution and Medicine at Arizona State University, began his career directing an anxiety disorders clinic. He found began asking himself, why are people having so many panic attacks in situations that are actually quite safe?[3] Then he came across the smoke detector theory. “I started realizing that it’s essential for alarms to go off, even if there’s just a chance of danger. When the threat is uncertain, false alarms are worth it,” Nesse says. It’s better to be safe than sorry. “We want to ensure we get warned about every single fire.”

It all comes down to the economics of harm. When the probability of harm in our environment is greater than the cost of anxiety, it’s helpful to experience anxiety, even if that means having an unnecessary panic attack in the grocery store. “I finally understood that the system is set to have many, many normal false alarms,” says Nesse.

It’s not as simple as each emotional response having a specific function, says Nesse. These responses have functions adapted to meet the challenges of our unique environments, he says. We adapt by changing the sensitivity of our smoke alarms to match the perceived threats around us, or to the lessons learned from the environments of our ancestors. If there’s a lot of danger lurking outside, it’s essential to your survival to have anxiety every time you leave the house, so you can be more hypervigilant and prepared to protect yourself.

Lama Rod Owens, activist and Buddhist Minister, describes how anxiety helps him survive the dangers of living as a Black man in the U.S., writing in Love and Rage: The Path of Liberation Through Anger[4]:

When Trayvon Martin was murdered, I stopped wearing black hoodies. When Tamir Rice was murdered, I thought about how to give up my hands so I wouldn’t be mistaken for holding on to anything. When Renisha McBride was murdered, I vowed never to knock on any stranger’s door again. When Sandra Bland and Walter Scott were murdered, I became hypervigilant about following every f*cking driving law. When Eric Garner was choked to death, I realized that we all had been choking. After Akai Gurley was killed, I tried to figure out how to always make noise so no one would ever be surprised by me. After Freddie Gray was murdered, I thought there was surely a way not to be Black any longer. After Charles Kinsey was shot, I began questioning why would I help anyone if the cops would simply show up and shoot me anyway.

Anxiety isn’t a sign of weakness. It’s an adaptation to make us stronger to survive a dangerous world. Similarly, being free from anxiety is not a personal triumph; it’s a privilege. It means both you and your ancestors had the luck of living in secure environments, blessed with both physical and emotional safety.

The Gifts of Low Mood

When we're living in times of the heartbreak and brutality of wars, the collapse of our climate, Covid, systemic inequities and racism — I could go on — it's no surprise that our moods crash. But what if low mood, too, is a helpful adaptation?

Our body goes into the hibernation mode of low mood when the risk of harm in our environments outweighs the rewards, says Nesse. Imagine you are fishing and catching plenty of trout. We’re designed to feel happy to motivate us to keep going in this highly productive situation. But then, as the fish start to dwindle, we begin to feel unhappy. This is the early sign that the rewards are no longer worth the risk of all the potential lions and tigers and bears that may eat us if we keep fishing, Nesse explains. If we persist, and still no fish, then we begin to feel a further drop in a mood that signals to us to go back to the safety of our caves, binge-watch Netflix, and wait until the fish come back. Low mood is not a personal failure or weakness, it’s a sign that our environment’s rewards don’t outweigh the risks of leaving our beds. It helps us conserve energy during dark times.

Source: cottonbro studio/Pexels

When our low mood signal arises with the pull of hibernation, Nesse suggests asking ourselves: Do we need to change our environment or find a new one that’s more rewarding or safe, whether a new location, way of living, relationship, or job? Or is this a situation we can wait out until the next season brings back the fish, such as during winter, a bout of illness, injury, or wave of Covid restrictions? What kind of systemic change needs to happen for more of us to live in environments where the rewards outweigh the threats? Rather than focusing on simply feeling better, we need to listen to what low mood is signalling to us and use it as fuel for change.

The Power of Shame and Guilt

See my last blog post for a full discussion on the benefits of shame and guilt. But in short, guilt signals that our actions (or silent complicity in the actions of others) caused harm and pushes us to repair the situation. For example, the healthy guilt that arises when acknowledging our privilege moves us to repair the systems we uphold that are benefitting us at the expense of harming others.

Shame warns us that we may be rejected if we were to fully show ourselves to a specific group of people, pushing us to hide the part of ourselves that may be rejected or find a safer community where we can be our authentic selves. Shame has nothing to do with our worthiness; it simply indicates that the people around us are rejecting (or have been in the past). It’s not you that’s the problem; it’s them.

If You’re Not Angry, You’re Not Paying Attention

Anger is a necessary response to fight inequities, violations, and having our needs blocked. It’s our most effective tool to mobilize action against injustice. The biggest obstacle to social change is not heated opposition, but apathy.

When our body and brain pick up subtle cues that our boundaries are being crossed, the resentment alarm shouts out loud and clear before we even have time to reflect on the situation. Resentment yells: ASSERT HEALTHY BOUNDARIES or STAND UP FOR INJUSTICE!

Source: Life Matters/Pexels

In fact, anger and resentment might be our super-power to give us the capacity to extend more compassion towards others. The prerequisite for compassion and empathy is healthy boundaries—defining what’s okay and not okay, says Brené Brown, in Rising Strong. The most compassionate people out there are the ones who have the healthiest boundaries, Brown continues, because resentment will let them know when those boundaries are missing.

We need resentment to help us maintain our boundaries, just as much as we need all the other flavours of anger to fight for a healthy world.

It’s Not You; It’s the World

Out of the mud grows the most beautiful flower, Vietnamese Buddhist monk and peace activist, Thich Nhat Hanh teaches of the lotus. Our emotional alarms, like anger, anxiety, low mood, guilt, and shame, are all important signals to help us survive and solve problems.

So before we learn strategies to soothe our mental health symptoms, we need to listen closely to what they’re signalling. Our distress is not the problem. It alerts us to problems, that dear friend who tells us the truths we need to hear, rather than the reassurances we desire. Silencing these alarms doesn’t make the distress go away, it just transforms it into louder signals, like sickness in our bodies or mental health disorders in our minds.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke of “creative maladjustment” in his 1956 speech commending the victory of 50,000 appropriately distressed Black Americans in Montgomery, Alabama, who boycotted the racial segregation of buses.

“There are some things in our social system that I’m proud to be maladjusted to, and I call upon you to be maladjusted too,” he says. “The salvation of our world lies in the hands of the maladjusted.”

References

[1] Canadian Mental Health Association. Fast Facts about Mental Illness. July, 2021, https://cmha.ca/brochure/fast-facts-about-mental-illness/

[2] Gilbert, P. Living Like Crazy: 2nd Revised Ed. Annwyn House: UK. 2019

[3] Nesse, R. Evolutionary Psychiatry. Mar 31, 2022. http: https://hstalks.com/t/4946/evolutionary-psychiatry/?biosci.

[4] Owens, Lama Rod (2020). Love and Rage: The Path of Liberation Through Anger. North Atlantic Books, Berkeley, California.