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Hook:

• Your emotions aren’t good or bad in a general sense, they are good or bad depending on the situation you’re in.
• Whether it’s…
• Anger, jealousy, anxiety, depression
• Happiness, gratitude, excitement
• All emotions serve the purpose of helping your genes survive
• So the key isn’t to remove your negative emotions, but to realise how useful they are in certain situations (and how they’re for your genes and not you)
• And to feel them at the right time, for the right reason and for the right duration
• Any longer than that and that’s when mental illness starts to sprout
• For example…
• Feeling jealous at your partner at the right time can prevent infidelity and keep your genes going. Too much jealousy can spoil a good relationship.
• Feeling depressed because you know deep down your efforts toward something won’t pay off, helps you avoid wasting time. Feeling depressed all the time though = problem.
• Like a car parked in a dangerous neighbourhood, if your alarm of anxiety goes off every now and then = good. If the alarm goes off even in safe neighbourhoods = bad.
• A big of anger in response to danger = defend yourself. Too much anger and you’re slamming the accelerator and brake at the same time.
• A bit of happiness = extra effort will pay off. Too much happiness = stagnation.
• A bit of gratitude = you care for what you have. Too much gratitude and you become complacent.
• A bit of excitement = your efforts can pay off. Too much excitement = wasted energy.

This might sound obvious or brand new:

• but you haven’t been taught this due to modern problems with psychiatry…
• If you’re a doctor or mental health professional and someone comes to you with a problem
• You search for the root cause
• However psychiatry takes symptoms such as low mood or anxiety and assumes they’re the problems instead of searching for why this person feels these things
• Instead they assume these symptoms are the product of a broken brain because the symptoms are so distressing

So by the end of this video:

• you’ll finally be able to end this war with your emotions
• And step into a fresh perspective and become more emotionally intelligent
• Coz in this world it’s hard to tell
• Stoic or soy boy?

Within the next few minutes we’re going to adopt an evolutionary psychology perspective and to cover:

• What emotions are
• How they relate to goals
• How negative emotions can be useful
• Low mood and the art of giving up
• 5 ways to look at emotions differently

But the main thing I want you to keep close throughout this video:

1.) Your emotions are for your genes, not you.

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What is an emotion?

Emotions = are specialised states that have evolved to help people cope with challenges that have occurred repeatedly over time.

• Key word = evolved (they weren’t designed)

Toward or away from something:

• We use “positive/negative” to describe going toward or away from something that will either benefit or harm your genes
• Essentially, emotions help us pursue opportunity and avoid threats

Analogy of emotions :

- think of them like the different musical tones on a electric keyboard

- you can play classical tones, salsa or jazz

- and they all differ from each other but in some ways are similar

- like anger, hate, love, joy, fear, sadness

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Taking an evolutionary approach to emotions = becoming an engineer:

• is the severity of the symptoms proportional to the situation?
• instead of seeing an emotion as good, you view it based on whether it's advancing the interests of your genes at the cost of you or not
• Because it’s typical to look at things in terms of their function
• So you ask: “what’s the function of anxiety or low mood” in a general sense
• But you won’t get an answer
• And if you don’t get an answer then you’re asking the wrong question
• The right question is "in what situations do low mood and high mood give selective advantages?"
• So making wiser emotional decisions = rising above seeing them as good or bad in a general sense
• But also realising = your emotions can be good for your genes, but not for you

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This is where we get into how emotions are for our genes and not us…

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For your genes, not you.

What this means is…

- natural selection couldn't give a crap about your happiness

- the goal of life isn't to be happy

- it's to survive

Let’s deep dive into the example of jealousy…

- a destructive emotion

- in the 1960s the hippies tried to remove it by promoting free love

- but didn't work

- none of those communes survived

- trying to suppress it = it grows like a weed

- David Buss (expert on evolution and jealousy) reported 13% of all homicides are committed by a spouse

Why did natural selection keep such an emotion?:

• Imagine two men,
• one with a tendency for jealousy when he senses his partner is straying,
• another is mellow with whatever goes down.
• Which one would have more children?
• The mellow one might well have a happier life, but his partner would be at a higher than average risk of becoming pregnant by someone else.
• That would make her infertile during the pregnancy and for several years more if she breastfeeds the baby.
• So men who lack jealousy tend to have fewer children than men whose jealousy - obnoxious, dangerous, and aversive as it is to all parties and society - makes such pregnancies less likely.
• If only emotions always benefited us. Alas, they were shaped to benefit our genes." (50)

We’ll cover some more examples like depression and anxiety later…

So the approach we’re taking of emotions now is:

• Moving away from positive or negative psychology
• (That gets all the attention because it’s easy to say = we want to move towards pleasure and away from pain)
• And towards a diagonal psychological approach
• Where excesses and deficiencies of both positive/negative emotions are taken into account

But remember what we said earlier?:

• That you want to feel the right emotion, at the right time, for the right duration
• Well the opposite of this is a major problem…
• responding too quick, slow, too enduring or to the wrong cues
• e.g. slow temper = bad (holding grudges)
• too quick = also bad
• you want anger at the right time, at the right intensity and the right duration

For example:

• In the face of threats or losses, anxiety and sadness are useful, but happy relaxation is worse than useless.
• When opportunities emerge, desire and enthusiasm are useful, but worry and sadness are harmful.

So…

• The most optimised individual (MOI)
• Is the person who can feel a range of emotions in response to certain situations

BUT!!!!!

• Of course situations can be confusing and it’s not always clear if you should pursue or avoid
• For example:
• What if you get offered a job in a company with opposing political views?
• What if you find out your friends partner is cheating on him?
• What if you arrive in a new country and feel depressed?

This is where we get into how emotions relate to goals…

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Emotions and goals

We humans try to get things:

- power, sex, resources, to avoid danger and loss

• And each goal striving situation will spark different emotions

- opportunity = enthusiasm

- success = joy

- threat = anxiety

- loss = sadness

- Plato said there were 4 categories of emotions; hope, fear, joy, sadness

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Hope is at the root of depression:

• we know that when you set a goal and are working towards it well you feel fine
• blockages to those goals = anger and aggression
• then further blockages = low mood and despondency
• further reckoning of task impossibility = depression and withdrawal
• until you give up the goal and shift of course

Carsten Wrosch Canadian psychologist

• followed up studies with parents trying to get their kids help with cancer
• parents who were most set on their goals experienced more depression
• those with better ability to goal shift experienced less depression
• Mention rugged flexibility and book recommendation = master of change

But the word “goal” is an inadequate term:

• it doesn't describe the diversity of human pursuits
• some goals are long term (raising kids)
• some are instant (trying to convince convo partner your joke wasn't offensive)
• goal = anything that someone is trying to get, find, become, lose, escape or avoid.
• other terms that describe more emotional nuance = mission, life task, enterprise, aim, purpose, objective, pursuit of personal meaning

So to really simplify all of this:

• Emotions are turned on or off by reward and punishment in pursuit of goals
• Social goal = make friend
• Embarrassment after a party = don't do that again
• Feeling joyful after a party = do that again
• And of course we can project into the future and work towards long term goals for a pay off that’ll benefit our genes

So this offers you a great insight into understanding other people and yourself…

• Because hopefully you’ve noticed we’re not generalising in this video about emotions
• We’re emphasising their situational importance
• So too with goals…

Human diverseness (62):

- not all emotional responses are evoked by the same things

- to understand why an event sparks different emotions for different people you'd have to understand that individual's values, goals, projects and strategies.

Appraisals:

- emotions arise due to the appraisals you make about the personal significance of information

- e.g. pink spot on a pregnancy test = despair for a teenager and joy for a woman who's been trying for years

We all value different things, so people are always going to think you’re wrong:

• An evolutionary view of emotions isn’t rigid
• Instead it encourages giving close attention to the hopes, dreams, fears, and manifold peculiarities of diverse individuals.
• Highlight the read people like a book graphs
• Mention: this is why most people’s advice sucks - because they’re looking at your subjective situation through their goals
• Also this is key when getting into a relationship with someone; you want your values to be aligned otherwise you won’t be aligned

So now let’s cover the final few points: and really

understand how negative emotions can be useful…

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How negative emotions can be useful

In this section we’re going to use:

• Anxiety
• Agoraphobia
• And depression as examples

Of course the main framing:

• Emotions are for your genes, not you
• Utility of emotions depends on the situation you’re in

• Tell the brief story of the smoke alarm going off the other day.

The best analogy for negative emotions is smoke alarms:

• we appreciate them going off every once in a while due to what they protect us from in a worst case
• having a sensitive car alarm in a high crime neighbourhood = a good idea
• having that car alarm in a safe neighbourhood = a nuisance
• “Whoever has learned to be anxious in the right way has learned the ultimate." - Søren Kierkegaard

Why do we have useless emotions like too much anxiety?

- it's a cost effective question

- think about it, you're in the African desert and you see a river up ahead

- but then you hear a rustling in the bushes

- it could be a monkey

- but it could also be a lion

- how can you tell? well how loud is it?

- assume fleeing panic = 100 calories

- but not fleeing = 100,000 which is what the lion will enjoy if it eats you

- do the math

- cost of not fleeing if lion is present = 1000x greater than a panic attack

- running like hell when you hear the sound = good idea considering there's a 1/1000 chance it could be a lion

- meaning, 999 times out of 1000 you'll flee unnecessarily

- but fleeing 1 time out of 1000 will save your life

GAD:

- Anxiety is twice more likely in women

- which most people depict women out to be the problem

- but considering the life a woman lives, anxiety makes sense

exposure therapy:

- works by "creating new inhibitory impulses from the frontal lobes that descend and prevent anxiety signals from getting to consciousness." (83)

Fear is learned:

- most common fears aren't innate

- Susan Mineka and colleagues in 1970s

- young lab raised monkeys reach casually across a toy snake to get a treat

- however, watching a single video of another monkey withdrawing in fright from the same toy snake created an enduring fear

- watching another monkey withdrawing in fear from a flower created no similar fear

- brain is prepped to learn fear from some cues more than others

- natural selection doing its cost effective job = we learn fears from other people

- e.g. mum who's afraid of spiders, restrooms, people etc.

Agoraphobia & panic attacks (78):

- fear of open and enclosed spaces alone

- "Imagine you are a hunter-gatherer who narrowly escaped a lion yesterday. What would be smart to do today? Stay in camp if you can. If you must go out, don't go far and don't go alone. Avoid wide-open spaces and enclosed spaces, where you would be especially vulnerable to a predator. If any sign of danger arises, flee to home and safety as fast as you can. As the behavioral ecologists Steven Lima and Lawrence Dill put it, "few failures... are as unforgiving as failure to avoid a predator; being killed greatly decreases future fitness."

- most agoraphobics haven't experienced a life threatening risk

- so their panic attacks are false alarms in an otherwise useful system

- your panic attacks are just trying to help you avoid a life threatening situation, much like the smoke alarm going off when the toast burns

- "The body adjusts the sensitivity of the anxiety system depending on how dangerous the environment is. Several months without panic attacks make the system less sensitive, so future attacks are less likely, even after medication is stopped." (79)

Now let’s finalise the video by covering the utility of low mood and depression…

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Low mood

What we’ve covered so far is:

• Emotions are for our genes, not us
• They help us move towards opportunities and away from threats or losses
• But the main thing has been: mood shifts based on our goals

The technical terms for opportunity and loss are:

• Propitious and unpropitious situations
• And when you understand this, your life will change, so listen up…

Mood shifts based on propitiousness (95):

• mood shifts based on our goals
• propitious situation = favourable one in which a small investment gives a reliably big pay off
• herd of bison coming down the valley = high mood sparks the pursuit of opportunity, selling cars in a boom year with extra effort will pay off
• unpropitious situation = efforts are likely to be waster, no bison sighted for months = waste of energy to look for them, economic crises = extra effort = wasted
• “Individuals whose mood rises in propitious situations can take full advantage of opportunities. Individuals whose mood goes down in unpropitious situations can avoid risks and wasted effort and can shift to different strategies or different goals. The capacity to vary mood with changes in propitiousness gives a selective advantage." 95
• High mood = short lived opportunities
• Low mood = temporary situations in short term bad times
• bison everyday?
• relax, chill
• bison rarely = GO GO GO
• Times are good and likely = no need for extra effort

NOW CAN YOU SEE HOW YOU’RE NOT MEANT TO BE HAPPY ALL OF THE TIME!

• Perhaps mention why has the world gone manifestation mad?

High mood:

- Barabara Erickson of uni of Michigan

- said high mood promotes ability to broaden and build

- more creativity

- broaden world view

- big pay offs

- e.g. early in a relationship

Mood in general:

- physiologists measure what organs are for by cutting them out and seeing what symptoms arise in the body

- but you can't do that with mood

- overall, mood variability is what keeps your behaviour in check

- always having high mood = big wins and big losses

Variations in mood reflect progress toward a goal:

- most people's baseline mood is pretty stable

- and shifts in mood don't reflect what a person has but progress towards their goal

- fast progress = high mood

- slow progress = low mood

- e.g. mood doesn't reflect what people have, think of the rich people who are depressed and despondent (107)

- "People strive to get things, expecting happiness, but it doesn't work for long. Mood is only modestly influenced by what a person has and only briefly influenced by success or failure. Baseline mood is remarkably stable for most people, and variations reflect mainly the rate of progress toward a goal." (107)

Low motivation:

- so overall, feeling low mood and pain in response to an unachievable goal helps you escape a bad situation and avoid wasting effort being overly optimistic in the future

- your growth is linked to your ability to discard hope and move on

- e.g. you walk for hours to find a hunting spot, first arrival there's no animals showing. You should stay for a bit, but not days, when should you move on?

- concorde effect = continuing to sink effort into an otherwise hopeless cause

This highlights life's 3 decisions:

• how much energy to expend?
• how fast? at what pace?
• when should you quit?
• e.g. picking berries
• Your life is a sequence of such decisions on varying time scales
• should i continue working on this project or not?
• so why does mood variation exist at all? why not just walk around numb?
• BECAUSE OF THE SITUATIONAL FITNESS!

EXAMPLE 1:

- imagine the scenario

- you're a young lad in school

- you hate school

- but your girlfriend says she'll break up with you if you quit

- but you love her

- soon she'll move out to another town

- you're convinced it'll work out because of the love

- but you feel depressed and low mood

- the dilemma = you hate school and know deep down your relationship won't work out, so your depression = give up!

Remember the better question…

• what is the function of low mood
• but that's the wrong question
• better = "in what situations do low mood and high mood give selective advantages?"
• prevents you from doing socially harmful things and wasting energy

EXAMPLE 2:

Vervet monkeys:

- British psychiatrist John Price

- showed chickens lose a fight and descend in the pecking order to act submissive, reducing further attacks

- Vervet monkeys live in small groups with male and females

- alpha male gets all the matings and has bright blue testicles

- if he loses a fight with another male he huddles into a ball, rocks, withdraws and acts depressed until his testicles turn a dusky grey

- this is involuntary yielding

- better to signal you're not a threat than to get attacked again

- (91)

- he worked with Leon Sloman and Russell Gardner to apply these findings to the clinic

- found people show depressive symptoms after failure or loss in competition

- low mood = normal response to losing

- depression = continuing useless status striving (failure to yield)

- you recover when you give up an unwinnable competition

EXAMPLE 3:

Deceiving down:

- anthropologist John Hartung

- being subordinate to someone with lesser abilities is devastating

- natural response = show your stuff but you'll be perceived as a threat leading to attack or expulsion

- deceive down = you conceal your abilities

- convince yourself you are less worthy than you are

- self-sabotaging Freud mentioned (castration anxiety)

Implications:

- most people dumb down their abilities to maintain their relationships - especially women

- never outshine the master

Status loss:

- signalling yielding prevents further attacks from those with more power

- But depression doesn't always result in yielding

- you might give up, or seek new alliances

- so research needs to be done to find what exactly causes depressive symptoms

So when should you  quit something?:

- when you're expending more calories in exchange for the payoffs you're getting

- sometimes tenacity pays off

- but most of the time it doesn't...

- "Low mood is not always an emanation from a disordered brain; it can be a normal response to pursuing an unreachable goal." (101)

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A few final notes on depression…

Throughout this video:

• We’ve covered a few perspectives with a few different examples
• But the main thing I want you to take away is, when feeling a difficult emotion, ask yourself:
• Given what I now know about how mood shifts based on the situation I am in and how emotions are for my survival and not my happiness, is this emotion I’m feeling helpful for the situation I’m in? (Rather than just seeing it as positive or negative)

Because when feeling depressed, it’s much easier to say:

• “I clearly feel this way due to a chemical imbalance” rather than realising:
• “I feel depressed because I got a new job which has doubled my salary but now means I had to give up on my dream of being a graphic designer.”

What is normal depends on the situation:

- blood pressure above 170 is abnormal at rest but normal during exercise

- same with mood

- depends on the situation

And remember, you can evaluate whether the emotional response is helpful based on how regulation systems can fail:

• baseline is too low
• baseline is too high
• response is deficient
• response is excessive
• response is aroused by inappropriate cues
• response is independent of cues

For example…

• You have to become your own psychologist and realise when you might be in one of the above

E.g.:

• Depression response is excessive:
• causes you to cut off everyone go home and not leave your room - no one checks on you = no one cares about you
• ancestors = would eventually need to get food causing them to socialise and get exercise - spiralling upwards

And remember you want the right emotion at the right time for the right duration:

• Some benefits of depression:
• Emmy Gut swedish psychoanalyst - book productive and unproductive depression; its functions and failures
• highlights how important it can be to withdraw and consider avenues to pick the best course of action
• that taken too far of course keeps you in downward spiralling loops

Benjamin Hart 1980s

- coined the term 'sickness behaviour'

- when you feel like doing nothing when ill or depressed

- makes sense

- you protect yourself from predators when not up to the task

- and conserve energy to fight infection

- but why have a system that causes self loathing and feeling so inadequacy? (depression)

Rumination as good or bad:

- some studies have shown it disposes you to depression

- others show it frees up interest from action and outer life to dedicate more mental energy to solve problems with thought

- but most experts agree that rumination rarely solves social problems

Low mood = psychic pain

Depression = chronic psychic pain

- depression = caused by the situation, view of the situation and the brain

- analogy = walking through a bog

- the more you walk the more it'll be knee high before you reach higher ground

- but you'll have to do that to advance

- that's how life feels sometimes

- therapy = cultivating the courage to take the first step

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6 says of dealing with emotions

Emotions aren’t the problem:

• It’s what you do with them that’s the problem

Analogy:

• Unprocessed emotions are like undigested bits of food
• They can sit in your intestines and cause further problems
  

Beth Kurland

Shift your vantage point:

• You Don’t Have to Change to Change Everything (2024) - book

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1.) The anchor view

• Grab hold of a metaphorical anchor
• Something that gives you stability and safety to watch the storm pass
• Find an environment that reflects peace to you
• Cuddle up into a blanket, go out to your favourite spot in nature

2.) The child view

• Like an innately curious child you turn towards it
• Wondering how the emotion might want you to be with it
• You don’t intellectualise your emotions but you embody them

How:

• Notice and name
• Notice the sensations you feel in the present
• I feel a tightness in my stomach, I feel heat around my head, a sad feeling in my heart
• Become aware, don’t be eaten up by

3.) The audience view

• Rather than being the actor caught on stage
• Become the audience watching with care and attention
• Observe the thoughts surrounding your emotions
• As if the actor is showing one thing with their body and narrating their experience as well

How:

• Distinguish between the raw emotion and what your mind is attaching to it

• There is sadness, and I am aware of thoughts telling me that I should be over this by now.
• There is loss, and my mind is telling me that I’ll never find anyone else who cares about me.
• There is heartbreak, and I’m having the thought that this relationship ended because I’m not good enough.

• This helps you snap out of emotional reasoning
• Helping you see your thoughts are just interpretations, not the facts

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4.) The compassionate parent view

• When an emotion is seen by and heard by another person, emotional alchemy occurs
• You adopt the role of parent towards yourself

How:

• If a dear friend, or someone else I care about deeply, were feeling this sadness, how would I be with them? What kinds of comforting words or gestures might I offer? For example, words of comfort might include: ‘It’s understandable what you’re feeling, this is difficult,’ ‘All your feelings are welcome,’ or ‘I’m with you.’ A gesture of comfort might involve putting one’s hand over one’s heart.
• If this sadness could talk to me, what would it say? And how might I listen with care?
• If my sadness was a small child, how would it want me to be with it? (Would it want me just to listen, to be present, to put an arm around it, or something else?)

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5.) The mirror view

• Negativity bias when we see ourselves in the mirror
• So don’t take the ‘hole’ view, take the ‘whole’ view of all your qualities
• Don’t try to make this emotion go away, call up its opposite to sit next to it - emotional alchemy

• What was a previous time in your life when you went through something difficult and felt sadness?
• What helped you get through that?
• What inner qualities or resources did you call upon to help you through?
• What inner quality, if it were more present right now, might help you in your sadness (eg, acceptance, courage, care, tenacity, self-kindness, etc)? Call to mind a time you experienced that quality – or imagine stepping into the shoes of someone who embodies that quality – and think about how it would feel for that quality to sit side-by-side with your sadness.
• What might this sadness show you about your own humanness and your capacity to care deeply?

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6.) The ocean view

• Often you think you’re the separate wave
• But you’re not
• You’re connected to something larger and deeper - the whole ocean
• Help others with their burden

How:

• Who might you reach out to in your sadness, so that you don’t feel so alone?
• What might you do that makes you feel part of a larger whole? Spend some time with family members or friends? Go to a community event? Attend a religious gathering? Visit a park where others are gathered? Something else?
• In what ways do you already contribute to the lives of others – such as through your work, your role in your family, the way you support your friends, etc? Can you recognise and honour this?

•Is there anything else you might do that gives you a sense of meaning and purpose outside of yourself, even in the midst of difficult emotions?

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