Keep Talking Episode 123: Randy Nesse - The Frontier of Evolutionary Psychiatry
Oct 4, 2024
Randy Nesse, a psychiatrist and professor renowned for his work in evolutionary psychiatry, dives into the fascinating intersection of evolution and mental health. He explains how low mood serves as an adaptive response when goals fail and discusses the importance of sometimes giving up those goals for better mental health. Exploring anxiety, he highlights its role in detecting threats. Randy also shares clinical examples where understanding one's emotions through an evolutionary lens can lead to therapeutic breakthroughs.
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Why Low Mood Exists
- Low mood evolved as a system to withdraw effort from failing goals and redirect strategy when persistent effort isn't working.
- Ordinary low mood can escalate into real depression if people keep pursuing hopeless goals despite signals to stop.
Decide Persist Or Quit With Care
- Don't bluntly tell someone to give up; instead listen and weigh reasons to persist versus to stop.
- Use deep, patient conversations to discern whether continued effort or graceful quitting is wiser.
Smoke-Detector Principle For Anxiety
- The smoke-detector principle explains why anxiety systems overshoot: false alarms cost little vs. missing real threats.
- Evolution favors many harmless panic responses because a single missed real threat is catastrophic.
