Why do Humans Have So Many Problems?
The answer is that your brain has a mind of its own. It is doing its best to try to keep you safe, but often comes up with the wrong answer. The better you understand why, the better you will do in life. So let’s make some sense of this very human condition.
On the whole, animals do quite well at the job of protecting themselves. Their brain reacts instinctively to things they sense in their environment and from within. Automatically, they respond in ways that have been proven by natural selection to enhance survival of their species. Maladaptive reactions are rewarded by extinction.
As long as change is slow, evolution can keep up, producing new variations to respond to a changing environment. When things change too fast, evolution can fail to adapt. This happened with the catastrophic meteor impact 65 million years ago when fully half of the species on earth were unable to cope with the harsh conditions after the event and died out.
As you have probably guessed, a lot has changed in the 200,000 years since the first members of homo sapiens, our species, appeared. They were well adapted to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, but things have changed. What worked then doesn’t necessarily work now.
In the Victorian era, when the field of psychotherapy was born, the prevailing notion was that human dysfunction came from primal instincts. Those baser drives were seen as coming from some dark recess of the mind, untouched by civilization. Freud called it a “cauldron of seething excitations.” Clearly (to the Victorians) the answer was to suppress our instincts and put rationality in their place. This seemed like an excellent answer at first, but with two world wars and a deep depression, came a dawning awareness that life might require a different approach. By the 1960s, it seemed we would have to develop a more accepting relationship with our instinctive self. That led to different kinds of excess.
At present, we have learned, through extensive experimentation with “just do it,” that no simple approach will do, which brings us to the need to understand more deeply just how our mind/brain can lead us towards dysfunction.
Two preliminaries: 1) Current thinking, influenced by the pharmaceutical industry, is that most problems are biological in origin. This is not true. To the contrary, the vast majority of psychological troubles arise from the brain’s processing of information. There may be a component of biology and genetics, but the powerful help that comes through talk therapy and personal wisdom works by changing information. Therefore, in this brief explanation, we will discuss the information aspects of the mind’s workings. 2) Estimates of the percentage of the brain’s information processing that takes place outside of consciousness vary from 95% to 99%. Historically, we have focused on human consciousness, but it is time to look more closely at the non-conscious part of what our mind/brain does.
Here is a schematic diagram of how the human mind/brain operates to recognize dangers and opportunities and to take appropriate action:
First our mind/brain takes in information from the environment, including internal cues. Next it performs complex calculations comparing inputs to expectations and previous experience. Depending on the meaning assigned to the situation, core emotions are triggered. These are primal emotional circuits that are nearly identical to those of other mammals. They may be, but are not always, represented as feelings in consciousness. Next, an appropriate reaction is calculated, again based on expectations and previous experience. The reaction is one designed to calm negative core emotions or to enhance positive ones. This potential reaction is then driven by motivational circuits towards action. Some reactions are automatic and bypass consciousness, but many of them pass through our conscious awareness, where they can, at least sometimes, be intercepted and modified through conscious thought and free will. That is where psychotherapy and self-help can make a difference. Let’s look at how.
1. The first product of the unconscious mind/brain is thought. These are the “free associations” that Freud saw as indicators of what was going on in the unconscious mind. They are also the “automatic thoughts” of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy. Listening to the thoughts of people in early recovery from addictions shows that these thoughts are often cleverly designed to influence the individual to find his or her way back to the substance. In general, they make use of our full intellect to steer our behavior in the direction our mammalian mind/brain considers best for us. What this means, is, “you shouldn’t always believe what you think.” The key question is, “does this thought lead to actions that are in my best interest?”
2. The second product is feeling. Sometimes these seem to be direct translations of core emotions. For example, think of the fear of public speaking. 200,000 years ago, humans were social beings, and addressing the group was a risky thing to do. If you weren’t the elder, you could easily be banished for saying something unpopular. So the brain evolved to trigger core emotions of fear at the thought of speaking in public. Today, with way too many messages aimed at influencing us every day, speaking up is not only less dangerous, but is often necessary for success. Conditions have changed so that our innate emotional programming often produces feelings of fear that influence us against our best interest. An even deeper example is depression. Here the feeling is thought to be generated for a purpose. Many believe this reaction to adversity is the mind/brain’s evolutionary attempt to shut down in order to conserve resources. One effective type of therapy is to change the feeling by consciously counteracting impulses to withdraw and fighting against pessimistic thoughts.
3. Impulses to act give us a chance to exert control. The more we are aware of impulses before we act on them, the more we may be able to shape our responses more effectively. 200,000 years ago, challenging a sibling or even the elder was necessary for the propagation of the species. New groups needed to be formed and old elders needed to be pushed aside. Now, an impulse to challenge the boss can lead to loss of job and all that goes with it. Fortunately, we can cultivate our awareness of impulses and learn to wait and evaluate before we act.
4. Finally, we are often aware of the reactions of our body. We may notice a pounding heart or hair standing on end. These, in turn, may influence our reactions. Once again, knowing that this is simply our mammalian brain reacting to its perception of what is best for us can give us a chance to evaluate how we might wish to react.
Some of our instinctive reactions are innate. It has been shown that we are born with a degree of fear of snakes. However, much of our species’ ability to adapt comes from our capacity to learn from experience. For example, early experience teaches us to trust, or not to trust. Many maladaptive patterns come from non-verbal learning early in life, representing attempts to adapt to deprivation, abuse, or difficult interactions. Recent science verifies the observations of Franz Alexander who described the “corrective emotional experience.” A modern version would say that pairing of activation of uncomfortable feelings with new, non-threatening experience leads to healthier responses.
Another way that our mind/brain can mislead us is failure to learn. If we are not exposed to healthy models, especially when the situation is evaluated as dangerous, further learning may be blocked, and we may continue to rely on primitive defenses. The tendency to paranoid thinking is an example. At an early stage of psychological development, say around age two, the mind lacks the ability to distinguish whether a feeling comes from outside or inside. Aggressive impulses can represent a threat, and a child may learn to avoid identifying anger as coming from the self and perceive it, instead, as coming from others. If this early pattern is not replaced by a degree of comfort with appropriate anger and aggression, then paranoid tendencies may persist.
The range of human psychological foibles and pathology is enormous. Much of the variety comes from the fact that maladaptive patterns can be “invented” at any point in our slow emotional and cognitive development. The above examples arise from early development of attachment patterns and early responses to threats. Let’s look at some patterns developed later.
Verbally-based ideas can form the basis of unhealthy patterns. One example would be the belief that you have to be perfect to be lovable. This may lead to high performance, but can also be a source of great anxiety.
The conscience doesn’t develop fully till around age three. Once it does, it can internalize unhealthy values as well as healthy ones. A conscience that internalizes the values of an abuser may judge the self to be unworthy. The result is inappropriate shame. Values are hard to change, and shame is one of those feelings having a very strong influence on behavior. It takes sustained effort to overlay such unhealthy values with more appropriate ones.
An even more sophisticated self-preservative but maladaptive reaction is what I call a “guilty quest.” The surface manifestation is perfectly described by Paul Simon: “The nearer your destination, the more you’re slip-slidin’ away.” When our most cherished personal goal repeatedly eludes us, it is time to look for a five-year-old answer to life’s problems, which happened to clash with the child’s conscience. The result is a conscience trying to protect from disaster by defeating the mind’s own solution to an unmet need. Here the treatment is complex, involving both change in values that lead to inappropriate guilt, and re-evaluation of life goals that may not have evolved since early life.
This modern view of why and how humans develop problems and how they can be resolved is based on the Affect Avoidance Model, a theory of psychopathology and therapy that is respectful of all schools and traditions, while providing a unifying framework for explaining how therapy works.
© 2018, Jeffery Smith MD
Jeffery is a qualified Medical Doctor, based in Westchester County, Scarsdale, United States.
With a commitment to mental health, Dr Smith provides services in English and French, including Coaching (Business), Consultation, Psychiatry and Psychotherapy.
Dr Smith has expertise in Addiction, Career Issues, Dissociative Difficulty, Life Transitions, Relationship Problems, Trauma and Young Adult Issues.
Click here to schedule a session with Dr Smith.
Important:
TherapyRoute does not provide medical advice. All content is for informational purposes and cannot replace consulting a healthcare professional. If you face an emergency, please contact a local emergency service. For immediate emotional support, consider contacting a local helpline.
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