Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Emotion Control: Fighting Evolution

Emotions often get a bad rap. Nowadays, we often live in a cutthroat, competitive world where emotions are a sign of weakness. Although it is useful in many business and professional contexts to remain objective and unemotional, it is not natural. Emotions evolved to help us survive.

What would happen if our ancestors did not care what people thought of them? Suppose that a caveman or cavewoman did not care about anyone but himself or herself. When faced with rejection, what would have happened if their gut reaction was, “I don’t care what others think…it’s no big deal”? People with a cold and unfeeling approach to life did not reproduce very easily. And when they did reproduce, their offspring were likely to die off early. With few exceptions, human feelings and behaviors developed because they were useful and helped humans adapt. It is useful to feel hurt when we are rejected by friends and loved ones. It provides a signal that we should change and try to get along. The self-centered person who does not feel does not survive.
As strange as it may seem, disappointment and even depression is useful. Depression signals that something has gone wrong. Although it is necessary to persist in the face of adversity, it is a waste of time and resources to work for a lost cause. Ruminating about failure is not adaptive, but neither is an unrealistic optimistic attitude that will lead to failure in the end. Disappointment in moderation is a useful signal to let go of unrealistic plans and to move on.

Similarly, fear and anxiety may feel bad, but these emotions protect us from doing stupid things. You only need to touch a hot stove once before you learn not to touch it again. Emotions, such as fear and anxiety, developed to help us survive, and even though they are unpleasant at times, they often protect us from mistakes that may harm us physically or emotionally.

Fear is a reaction to an immediate threat to our physical safety or self-esteem, while anxiety warns us of impending doom. When you see a wild animal in the woods, you have the natural inclination to either fight it or run away to safety. Anxiety is related to fear, but it is the perception that one is about to face a threat to his or her well being, in contrast to an immediate threat. You feel anxiety when doom is pending and possibly inevitable.

People who can’t learn from their mistakes have trouble living as successful members of society. Consider the juvenile delinquent who cannot learn from his or her mistakes. People with antisocial personality disorder often have trouble learning from their mistakes because they have trouble experiencing fear. Their physiology is not responsive to punishment. When their parents scolded them, they felt nothing. When their teachers sent them to the principal’s office they did not get the message that yielding to authority and following rules is adaptive at times. What happens later when challenged by authority figures? Well, such individuals may have no trouble hitting a police officer or even hurting one, and these people are likely to do some serious time in prison. Sure, the person with antisocial personality disorder is cold, callous and able to manipulate gullible unsuspecting victims, but in the long run, they rarely contribute to society.

There is some scientific evidence that some fears are passed on genetically and are biologically wired. Although some cases of fears are unique to some people, such as a fear of cotton balls, most fears had adaptive value from an evolutionary point of view. It was adaptive for early humans to fear heights, for example. Without the benefits of modern medicine, an early caveman could fall to his death even from a relatively low height. The humans who did not have this fear died off long ago, while the survivors that feared heights live on to this day. Research studies have shown that people's most common fears (or phobias to use a psychiatric term) tend to concern heights, snakes, and blood, which were common threats to humans' ancient ancestors. Perhaps the familiar fears we see today are variants of the threats of prehistoric times. A fear of bridges is a variant of a fear of heights, for example.

It is useful to acknowledge that emotions are biologically based and products of evolution. It’s natural to feel afraid, sad, or hurt in specific situations. Evolutionary psychologist Dr. David Buss suggests that acknowledging the evolutionary processes that lie behind our emotions is useful. It is useful to realize that we may react in a biological and natural, emotional way under certain circumstances. Such emotions may be gut reactions that are natural, but get in the way. It may be useful to just think, “this is just a gut reaction; I’m not going to over-think it.”

At first glance, it may seem that emotions are impossible to change, since they were the result of evolution. It may take some effort, but it is possible to fight the forces of biology and evolution. First, it is useful to just acknowledge that many emotional responses are biologically programmed and have adaptive value. Appreciate that humans are not robots. Emotions are natural responses than make us human. Don’t view emotions as a sign of weakness.

Second, it is important to identify why we experience the emotions we experience. Each emotion corresponds to the situation in which we find ourselves. When we are taking an unnecessary risk, for example, it is adaptive to feel a little scared. Our intuition tells us that we may get hurt and we better watch out. Emotions provide important signals.

Third, it is vital to have a clearly defined plan for controlling emotions, such as monitoring our thoughts and changing the internal dialog we have with ourselves. One strategy is to take a “mindfulness” approach. You can pretend that your thoughts are just random and have no meaning. After all, they may be adaptive in most situations, but not in a situation where it is useful to stay calm and rational. When you are trying to take an unnecessary risk in which you may actually get hurt, you need to control the natural fear response, and instead, stay calm and logical. A simple way to control emotions is to just think, “The emotion I feel is just a prehistoric biological response. It was useful for my ancestors but is not useful right at the specific moment.” It may not be that easy, but it is a start. Sometimes, you can just concentrate on the moment and try to forget about whether the outcome will be good or bad, just focus on the process of what you are doing. When you are driving your car across a bridge, for example, it is not useful to think about how high you are, or whether they bridge may fall. It is better to just focus on driving your car. Focus on the moment, the process of driving.

People differ in their ability to control their emotions. Some people are more susceptible to biological programming than others, but it is useful to acknowledge that emotions are biologically driven and that it may be necessary to override a natural process of emotional expression that has evolved over thousands of years.