Table of Contents
Why Modern Life Can Feel Overwhelming
A Brief Look at Human Evolution and Adaptation
How Our Ancient Brains Meet Modern Stressors
Understanding the “Invisible Predator” of Anxiety and Existential Stress
Recognizing Our Fundamental Human Needs
Ways to Reconnect: Community, Nature, Self-Care, and Gratitude
A typical day for me looks like this: I wake up and immediately reach for my phone. I’m reminded of the current state of our world, its politics, genocides, climate change, and I scroll a little longer to forget it. I recruit my ADHD and anxiety medications in the fight against the ever irresistible temptation of procrastination and easy dopamine hits and think about all the work that needs to be done today, what to wear while doing it, and what I’m going to eat when I’m done with it. I look over at my cat with envy and tell him how good he has it, free from the endless complications of life that we’ve created for ourselves like rent and emotional fulfillment. How did we get here?
Modern humans have only been around for less than 0.01% of Earth’s existence, or around 300,000 years out of 4.6 billion and during our limited time here, we’ve become the most dominant creatures on the planet. But our story starts even before our genesis, with primordial ooze and protein soup. About 4 billion years ago, when our planet was still a volatile expanse of noxious fumes and barren rock, single-celled organisms emerged from acidic pools and began converting the abundance of toxic ammonia and methane around them into oxygen. As these organisms multiplied, the oxygen they produced created a shield around the Earth, our atmosphere’s ozone layer, which protected its surface from the radiation and space debris previously plaguing it and regulated the temperature inside. This phenomenon, called The Great Oxidation Event, set the stage for all living creatures to develop.
Millions of years later, some of those single-celled organisms have grown into complex, multi-cellular animals and crawled onto land with their new arms and legs. They begin walking on two legs, leaving their arms free to craft objects, make fires, exchange items and ideas, express themselves, and hold each other. They have little fur, fangs, and claws to protect them compared to other multi-celled organisms prowling about, so they stick together and help each other survive. This teamwork is so crucial to their survival that it becomes hardwired in their genes, even extending to other naked, weak creatures that aren’t quite like them, but close enough. In this way, Homo sapiens arose from radical collaboration and adoption of new ideas and genetic material that helped them flourish–it’s even possible our cousins, Homo neanderthalensis, were the ones that taught us how to start fires!
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What set Homo sapiens apart from our now extinct Hominid variants was our incredible capacity to adapt. Biologically, modern humans are animals evolved to withstand hot, humid climates, given our abundance of sweat glands and powerful cooling systems, but we can be found in every corner of the planet, desert and tundra alike. The Homo sapiens species came up and exploded during the Pleistocene era of Earth, a 2.6 million year period marked by at least fifty cycles of glacial advance and retreat. In other words, during this time, Earth experienced dramatic shifts in climate as massive ice sheets crept over 30% of the planet’s surface and melted away repeatedly, which resulted in the mass extinction of most life on Earth, like the sabertooth tiger and the wooly mammoth, but not Homo sapiens. To be able to withstand such drastic fluctuations in environments, humans, equipped with our unusually large brains, learned to shape our world to better suit us rather than the other way around. We created protective clothing for harsh climes, domesticated flora and fauna to make sure we couldn’t starve and to physically travel to more temperate environments. We were able to learn about ourselves and our world, assess what we needed to survive, and create the reality that we could thrive in.
As time passed, our creations iterated upon themselves and reality no longer resembled the plains and forests we were used to. New problems arose for use to make sense of and solve, catalyzing the development of culture, religion, money, crime, authority, social strata, two-party systems, Instagram, AR-15s.
As a therapist, I’ve heard many of my clients express how difficult it feels to be alive right now. Whether it’s being buried under a mountain of schoolwork, life exploding from a particularly difficult breakup, feeling existentially unfulfilled by a job that eats up 60 hours of the week, or all of the above, we are living in unprecedented times! Life as we know it has only existed for a few decades, a mere blip in the timeline of Earth; Homo sapiens did not have late-stage Capitalist America in mind when it first stood on two legs. The distress we face in our day-to-day lives can feel life-or-death, and in a way, it is. There is a new predator roaming the Earth that, unlike the coyotes or lions of the past, is intangible, invisible, and inscrutable, but still very much threatens our survival. This predator lurks in every social rejection, every failure at school or work, every warm day in December, every death of a child halfway across the planet, a dread beyond our control that seems impossible to solve.
Although we did not evolve to survive against this specific threat, we are made to adapt, remember? It runs in our veins, like a border collie trapped in an urban high-rise, frantically herding its owners; our instincts are irrepressible even if they are no longer necessary for our current environment. That border collie, although there may not be sheep in a city, requires an outlet for her immense stamina and need for mental stimulation or she will go insane! In other words, sometimes we have instinctual needs that cannot be met through our daily life in modern day society but nevertheless still need to be met. We can tune into feelings of discomfort or distress and interpret them from this evolutionary perspective to uncover these latent needs. Here are some ways we can return to the fields and the sheep we were made for:
Seeking connection. The survival of our species was only made possible by finding community. Our DNA consists of genetic material from many of our hominid precursors, we are literally the product of millions of years of embracing new ideas and new people. Returning to and honoring the importance of connection can help us feel more grounded in this new landscape in which isolation is too easy. Join a book club, talk to a stranger at a cafe, host a movie night with your friends! We are better together, and our ancestors certainly knew it.
Touching grass. Our concrete jungle is unrecognizable from the marshes it arose from. At times, it feels like our ground has always been cement, and the trees and flowers sprinkled across the city are mere decorations–this is not true! Go to a park and remind yourself how the world used to be, green and lush. Feel the soil under your fingers, the winter wind on your cheeks, the same sun from 300,000 years ago warm you up from your core, just as it did our ancestors.
Re-centering survival. Often we are so wrapped up in our lives that our basic needs become neglected. Am I fed? Am I watered? Are there any aches or pains in my body that need to be tended to? Do I have a place or person to return to where I can feel safe and comfortable? What can I do to take care of my physical self? We have successfully tamed our environment, but we cannot tame our fundamental needs.
Practicing gratitude. We cannot go back to the way things were, grasslands unmarred by lashes of tar and spikes of cement, but we can marvel at our ability to create. How lucky that I get to exist at this exact moment, in this exact city, with these exact experiences, so I get to walk two minutes to my favorite taco restaurant and appreciate their incredible oreja tacos and homemade avocado-tomatillo salsa! So many things had to happen just perfectly for all of these elements to collide, and I am eternally grateful. Humans have been finding ways to express their joy and gratitude for eons: through song and dance, worship and prayer to higher powers, through the development of language itself. Put on music, boogie and sing along, get in touch with spirituality, tell a friend you love them, celebrate in any way that feels right to you! It’s rough out here, but it is still good and it deserves to be recognized.
What set Homo sapiens apart from our now extinct Hominid variants was our incredible capacity to adapt. Biologically, modern humans are animals evolved to withstand hot, humid climates, given our abundance of sweat glands and powerful cooling systems, but we can be found in every corner of the planet, desert and tundra alike. The Homo sapiens species came up and exploded during the Pleistocene era of Earth, a 2.6 million year period marked by at least fifty cycles of glacial advance and retreat. In other words, during this time, Earth experienced dramatic shifts in climate as massive ice sheets crept over 30% of the planet’s surface and melted away repeatedly, which resulted in the mass extinction of most life on Earth, like the sabertooth tiger and the wooly mammoth, but not Homo sapiens. To be able to withstand such drastic fluctuations in environments, humans, equipped with our unusually large brains, learned to shape our world to better suit us rather than the other way around. We created protective clothing for harsh climes, domesticated flora and fauna to make sure we couldn’t starve and to physically travel to more temperate environments. We were able to learn about ourselves and our world, assess what we needed to survive, and create the reality that we could thrive in.
As time passed, our creations iterated upon themselves and reality no longer resembled the plains and forests we were used to. New problems arose for use to make sense of and solve, catalyzing the development of culture, religion, money, crime, authority, social strata, two-party systems, Instagram, AR-15s.
As a therapist, I’ve heard many of my clients express how difficult it feels to be alive right now. Whether it’s being buried under a mountain of schoolwork, life exploding from a particularly difficult breakup, feeling existentially unfulfilled by a job that eats up 60 hours of the week, or all of the above, we are living in unprecedented times! Life as we know it has only existed for a few decades, a mere blip in the timeline of Earth; Homo sapiens did not have late-stage Capitalist America in mind when it first stood on two legs. The distress we face in our day-to-day lives can feel life-or-death, and in a way, it is. There is a new predator roaming the Earth that, unlike the coyotes or lions of the past, is intangible, invisible, and inscrutable, but still very much threatens our survival. This predator lurks in every social rejection, every failure at school or work, every warm day in December, every death of a child halfway across the planet, a dread beyond our control that seems impossible to solve.
Although we did not evolve to survive against this specific threat, we are made to adapt, remember? It runs in our veins, like a border collie trapped in an urban high-rise, frantically herding its owners; our instincts are irrepressible even if they are no longer necessary for our current environment. That border collie, although there may not be sheep in a city, requires an outlet for her immense stamina and need for mental stimulation or she will go insane! In other words, sometimes we have instinctual needs that cannot be met through our daily life in modern day society but nevertheless still need to be met. We can tune into feelings of discomfort or distress and interpret them from this evolutionary perspective to uncover these latent needs. Here are some ways we can return to the fields and the sheep we were made for:
Seeking connection. The survival of our species was only made possible by finding community. Our DNA consists of genetic material from many of our hominid precursors, we are literally the product of millions of years of embracing new ideas and new people. Returning to and honoring the importance of connection can help us feel more grounded in this new landscape in which isolation is too easy. Join a book club, talk to a stranger at a cafe, host a movie night with your friends! We are better together, and our ancestors certainly knew it.
Touching grass. Our concrete jungle is unrecognizable from the marshes it arose from. At times, it feels like our ground has always been cement, and the trees and flowers sprinkled across the city are mere decorations–this is not true! Go to a park and remind yourself how the world used to be, green and lush. Feel the soil under your fingers, the winter wind on your cheeks, the same sun from 300,000 years ago warm you up from your core, just as it did our ancestors.
Re-centering survival. Often we are so wrapped up in our lives that our basic needs become neglected. Am I fed? Am I watered? Are there any aches or pains in my body that need to be tended to? Do I have a place or person to return to where I can feel safe and comfortable? What can I do to take care of my physical self? We have successfully tamed our environment, but we cannot tame our fundamental needs.
Practicing gratitude. We cannot go back to the way things were, grasslands unmarred by lashes of tar and spikes of cement, but we can marvel at our ability to create. How lucky that I get to exist at this exact moment, in this exact city, with these exact experiences, so I get to walk two minutes to my favorite taco restaurant and appreciate their incredible oreja tacos and homemade avocado-tomatillo salsa! So many things had to happen just perfectly for all of these elements to collide, and I am eternally grateful. Humans have been finding ways to express their joy and gratitude for eons: through song and dance, worship and prayer to higher powers, through the development of language itself. Put on music, boogie and sing along, get in touch with spirituality, tell a friend you love them, celebrate in any way that feels right to you! It’s rough out here, but it is still good and it deserves to be recognized.
Want more content like this?
Join our mailing list
Want more content like this?
Join our mailing list
Want more content like this?
Join our mailing list
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