Survival Mode and Evolutionary Mismatch

In his blog, Dr. John Montgomery initially writes from an historical perspective to give the reader familiarity with "survival mode" and "evolutionary mismatch." Most of us already have some knowledge of these words of art.

Montgomery then brings into his discussion the influence of social isolation:

One of our key design principles is that we’re built to be triggered into survival mode whenever our survival is perceived to be at significant risk. Survival mode, however, isn’t only an overt state of fear, or the primal terror of being torn apart by a jaguar or grizzly bear. Whenever we feel any kind of pain or emotional distress – whether it’s self-pity, for example, or guilt, or shame – we’re thrown, operationally, into a state of survival mode. Indeed, the biological reason that unpleasant emotions become triggered within us in the first place is to alert us that our survival may be at risk, and to motivate appropriate action to address that risk. When we have intense feelings of emotional pain during a breakup, for example, the feeling is telling us that a relationship that’s very important to us may soon be lost, and the pain is biologically designed, in a broad sense, to motivate behavior that may help us to preserve the relationship if we possibly can.

But while our relationships today are, of course, critical to our well-being, the overwhelming, gut-wrenching, survival-mode pain we can feel when our intimate relationships are threatened only truly makes sense in the context of our hunter-gatherer past. A human being, especially one without sophisticated tools or weaponry, is very unlikely to survive alone in the wilderness for long, and so our hunter-gatherer ancestors absolutely and categorically relied on their relationships for their survival. Because of this evolutionary heritage, we are all designed to treat our close relationships as if they were of potentially life-or-death significance.

The extraordinarily high levels of social isolation found today provide perhaps the most important current example of evolutionary mismatch. When people feel that they lack supportive, loving relationships, when they feel lonely for extended periods, the consequences can be devastating. Social isolation has been shown to have effects on physical health that are comparable to not exercising or even to smoking cigarettes, and loneliness is also a major risk factor for most psychological syndromes, including severe depression. For hunter-gatherers, lacking close relationships or being socially isolated within the group is truly life-threatening. Food shortages due to a drought, for example, may force the band – not out of callousness, but simply out of survival necessity – to shed one or more band members so that the rest of the band has enough food to survive. The fewer strong attachments any specific hunter-gatherer has to the other people in the band, the greater the chance he or she will be abandoned by the band, and consequently, in all likelihood, left alone to die in the wilderness. The intense feelings of emotional pain lonely people often experience are a consequence of this evolutionary heritage – those feelings are a signal that complete abandonment may be imminent, and that survival is very much at issue.

But the catch is that in modern life, being alone more than one might like is rarely a serious survival threat. It may not feel good to consistently have nothing to do on a Saturday night, but that on its own is almost never a sign that your life is at serious risk. Because of our hunter-gatherer past, however, being alone too much often triggers a survival-mode state in us that, like all survival-mode states, creates stress and releases stress hormones throughout our bodies and brains. And chronically high stress levels seem to be largely responsible for the physical and psychological health issues that lonely people are at higher risk for. So the cruel irony is that, although being socially isolated is rarely an actual survival threat in modern, industrialized cultures, the state of being lonely does trigger stress and survival-mode states because of our hunter-gatherer past, and so being socially isolated does often end up creating a survival risk – but mainly because of chronically elevated stress levels driven by unnecessary and inappropriate survival-mode states. The brain is, in effect, tricked – typically unconsciously – into unnecessary states of survival mode, such as fear of abandonment, not because of actual survival-threatening circumstances, but because our brains confuse our evolutionary past with our modern circumstances. Every modern life is lived in the teeth of massive evolutionary mismatch, and the typical result is that we have far, far more survival mode in our lives than is healthy for us.

What makes Dr. Montgomery's article significant to me follows:

My colleague Todd Ritchey and I have suggested that an additional dynamic operating in nearly all of us can also profoundly reinforce unnecessary survival-mode states. A great deal of evidence from neuroscience studies suggests that the stress hormones released by survival-mode states like fear or anxiety have many of the same effects in the brain as addictive drugs like cocaine or methamphetamine. It’s been known for decades, for example, that an integral part of the stress response is the release of endorphin, which many studies have shown is the primary “pleasure” chemical in the brain – that is, whenever we feel pleasure or euphoria, the pleasurable feeling appears to be due largely to the release of endorphin within our brains. But because endorphin release is also involved in the stress response, any sort of stress or pain will also release endorphin into our brains. What Todd Ritchey and I have suggested is that while stress and pain are typically not consciously perceived as being pleasant, nearly all of us receive unconscious biochemical rewards from our pain and emotional distress, and nearly all of us consequently develop literal biochemical addictions to at least some of our painful, distressing, out-of-balance, survival-mode states.
When people with clinical depression, for example, are told to think of sad or painful thoughts, such as the memory of a painful breakup, brain-imaging studies have shown that endorphin is instantly released into their brains. One of the hallmark features of depression is being stuck on a treadmill of painful thoughts and emotions: feelings of regret and shame about the past, for example, or hopelessness about the future. Each of these painful thoughts that arise from the depressed state, we have suggested, provides an unconscious biochemical reward in the brain, and thus the state of depression can become reinforced by a biochemical addiction to the distressing emotions that accompany those painful thoughts. http://www.psychologytoday.com/print/112545

What do you think? Is depression reinforced by unconscious biochemical rewards? I do not know if this hypothesis will be proven viable. Even so, it may explain why change has been so difficult for me.

Interesting article di mel and I don't have an answer for your last questions but its interesting to ponder. I don't smoke, drink and never touched illegal drugs. I also eat well and exercise basically doing all the right things....but been through intense stress and hope this won't be my downfall. I want to live as long as I can to see my girls have children hopefully. What kept me going was operating on survival but not as its mentioned in the article. Mine came from sheer determination of not letting 2 toxic people ruin my life.

I look back at my older brothers life and how he spend so many years not utilizing the potential I saw in him. I don't want to feel this way about my own life.

Dear Di Meliora,
Goodmorning!
Very interesting post.
I would respond by saying yes.
My reason for this would be we are humans and humans are creatures of habit.
This is done in a state of being consious/unconsious of our actions.
It does not matter if the action or behavior is healthy or not unfortunately.
Doing the same thing or staying in the same state of mind gives us a false sense of safety which is addictive.
We can choose to change our habits, behaviors, and our brains pathology.
Deviation of the way we think and create a new normal thought process out of depression and anxiety. This may cause that primal fight/flight response to kick in.
Which makes chronic depression/anxiety so hard to overcome & isolation reinforces this habit.
This is my personal layperson opinion I am not a doctor.
Start with simple changes like parking in a different paking slot, shop at a different market. Rearange things in the home like kitchen cabinets. Changing your routine may open the door to changing how we emotionally respond to our thoughts and feelings. Evolution is to change. To be aware of our habits with the willingness to engage in the world with different views takes time. Gentle changes one day at a time.
May all come to a safe place in life and in owns own mind.

Interesting article. Thanks for sharing.

I agree that negative emotions can be self-reinforcing, but I don't really know the mechanism. This endorphin theory sounds as good as any.

I wonder if endorphin is released with depression as a natural response to pain? I've heard a theory that that's why people cut. Endorphins are released in response to the physical pain which also helps with the psychic pain.

Based on my own life experiences, I agree totally with the findings put forth in both parts of your post.

I suffer from social isolation and depression. I am really disliked in the community despite the volunteer work I have done. I am not good at building coalitions with others. So, when I put in my two cents, even if they have been requested, I am viewed as an outsider and a problem. They can't wait to get rid of me and I have been banished for standing up against inappropriate behavior of others. My social anxiety has gotten so bad that now, at times, I am unable to speak back when people say rude things directly to my face. I just freeze like an animal with an approaching car's headlights in their eyes. I walk around somber most of the time and that further turns off others and makes me an outcast. However, it prevents others from interacting with me and, from an unconscious standpoint, it protects someone like me with a history of poor social results.

As a sufferer of C-PTSD, I have asked myself hundreds of times - Why is my mind doing this to me? A lot of my problems were the instinctive ways that I responded to things; problems that CBT could not help because I was responding instinctively. I guess my C-PTSD thoughts are meant to release endorphins. However, the effects are not helpful; they are just inappropriate and, ultimately, hurtful. I do not know how to control my instinctive responses. It does not help to ignore them or to just let them pass - they just keep on coming back.

I wish you well, unhappyguy.

A few years may make or break where they're going with this. Interesting though. Isolating and defining a mechanism seems to be the next step...I have no clue how these folks do their work. Fingers crossed for the future. I wonder if it's endorphins or maybe an endorphin-like chemical that originates the same way but with diff. properties perhaps. Maybe something alters the makeup of this endorphin...perhaps it's a mimic and something entirely different. How to find that out??? Oh well...back to the comic books...

wow.. so this is my future.. I guess isolation is a personal decision. So our downfall is our fault ...which to a degree is better than others wiping us out. Both cases, it is painful existence..

Don't bite me for my opinion and thoughts, thank you. Honesty is pure. Biting me sucks for how I feel.....

I think this is "one" way we can interpret our need and even acceptance of isolation. While what is discussed here could be true, we may also seek isolation as another way to thrive as well. It is not uncommon for early man to go out on their own and though they may have been rejected from the "group" that rejection doesn't necessarily mean, the end of survival. It could also mean an opportunity to thrive in a different way.

So these endorphines could be there to address the situation of either rejection or loss through some kind of trajedy to the group. So, in other words, if a group was destroyed leaving a survivor, these endorphines may be there to encourage the survivor to be "ok" in isolation until he/she can locate another group to connect with and again thrive and procreate.

So, what is discussed above is one way of looking at it, however, I believe there are more reasons than just what is discussed above.

Thank you for posting this di meliora, it is definitely something to ponder. I just want to make sure that people who truely struggle don't self blame and keep working on learning and growing inspite of being challenged. I think that it is important, we had to do that in early man as well.

Open Eyes

Like most things human, I think the effects of isolation and/or loneliness must fall on a continuum. I do think that there are those humans who are the sentinels of the bunch - the natural loners. Evolutionarily speaking, those would serve as the lookouts for the group. The scouts. Or those who, for whatever reason, do not get the payoff from social interaction.

I do not think this is aberrant or even harmful to those individuals. Not all seek or desire the tribe so to speak.

I do not agree with the author's contention that there is an addiction-like quality to negative thinking. In fact, just the opposite I believe to be true. The relief from that stressor is far far far more powerful than the experience of stress. Also, the release of endorphins only mitigates the effects of stress - or there would be fewer negative effects of stress. With time, stressors become centralized and the endorphin response blunted. It just doesn't ring true to me.

I think humans are hard-wired to feel better, not worse. We seek relief because we can't provide it endogenously.

He who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god. ~Aristotle

Your situation felt so familiar I had to reply...I am so sorry that this has happened to U. As yet I have found no relief from this experience and no hope for a cure.

Very interesting as usual. Makes me feel a lot better about my solitary weekend. I'm an outlier!

I am an interloper.

In other words, you are only human.