Claire's Revenge

Have you ever met a famous person? I have met perhaps the most famous—Stephen Hawking. I was working at a physics institute where he was a guest speaker, and it was my job to tell him about the facilities there. The other staff members had been abuzz about his arrival for weeks—and why not? He was arguably the smartest person on the planet! He even spoke to me through his voice modulator!! But the craziest part about my meeting him was that I did not feel nervous. I was certainly excited and honored, but I retained my composure because I had a job to do. Then recently, I met a few actors from a TV show that I love, and I lost my ability to speak. I could not formulate complete sentences, my heart was thumping in my ears, and I felt a little light headed. I knew these were just people who happened to act for a living, and yet somehow I could barely function in their presence. So how the bleep does a TV actor make me more nervous than Stephen Hawking? Because my logical brain is not in control of my emotions. Claire is.

Perhaps you have read about Claire. She’s my inner cave girl, and she is in charge of my instincts. As humans, we have been living in caves a whole lot longer than we have been living in houses, but many things we do are still rooted in our prehistoric pasts. You may know about “fight or flight.” It is the nickname for the scientifically accepted fear response that is triggered when animals and people get scared. It is caused by a rush of adrenaline that used to help us back when we could have been attacked by a saber-tooth tiger at any moment. That surge of energy allowed us to either defend ourselves or run faster than we normally could, which helped keep us alive. But this response is not something we can consciously control. In fact, all of our emotions are instinctual—and at the moment I met those TV actors, Claire had put my emotions into overdrive. Certainly no offense intended to the late, great Professor Hawking, but he could not have defended me against a rampaging mammoth . . . however, Claire believed that those actors could have. While I felt privileged to meet one of the smartest people who ever lived, Claire had me elated to be near people who could potentially save my life.

            Yet Claire does not want me completely dependent on others for my safety. There will be many times when I am alone on the savanna—or in a parking lot—and she needs me ready and alert in my own right. She does this by keeping me in a state of equilibrium; not too “up” and not too “down.” So while being around those actors was super-exciting, Claire did not want me to be too up for long . . . so as a result, Claire made me cry—uncontrollably for 2 hours—to bring me back to “normal.” Thanks, Claire! And what if I am distracted because I am too down? She uses boredom in an attempt to motivate me. While most people think of being bored as more of a state than an emotion, its original purpose was to make the average cave-dweller feel antsy or edgy . . . like they should be doing something else (change a routine and NOT get eaten by something hungry that had been stalking them for a while) or do something MORE (collect wood for fires to help prepare their tribe to survive the next winter.) Altering our behavior as a result of boredom can make us feel better, or awake and ready for action—just like our inner cave-dwellers want.

            But what about our other emotions? How does Claire use sadness, anxiety, happiness and anger to help me navigate daily life? Technically, emotions reflect our current status of progress toward a goal . . . but let’s just see how these feelings could have guided Claire on her quest to kill a meerket for dinner: It’s foggy on the morning she starts her hunt, so she may feel anxious because her limited visibility threatens her ability to reach her goal. If she throws her spear and misses her would-be dinner, she gets angry because she failed to achieve her goal. If she temporarily believes all the meerkats are not available to be hunted, she is sad because her goal will never be reached. She then might feel panic or fear that she will be unable to provide for her tribe and acquires the energy to travel to where the meerkats are. And if she kills one, she is happy because she has reached her goal. She and other members of her tribe get to eat, and therefore survive. But Claire lives moment to moment. She does not have many long-term goals like most modern humans. She was not built to cope with perpetually wishing she could reach a goal. Claire either reaches her goals or she dies, which makes dealing with Claire pretty challenging sometimes.
          
           In general, Claire does not like to be ignored. If she is making me feel bored, for example, she is telling me it is time to switch one of my goals. But what if I, as a fan, am unwilling to change my goal of connecting with a performer I admire? I might feel anxious that my goal is difficult to reach. I may be sad that my goal is unattainable. I could be feeling down for so long that I start to become depressed, which would make it even harder for me to goal-switch. I could get stuck in a cycle of longing and loneliness that no authentic performer would wish upon a fan. And if I add social media to the mix, I could spend a lot of time trying to connect with my performer anyway, despite Claire's best efforts.

Up Next: My cave girl habits are at odds with my modern lifestyle in “I'm Just a Caveman.”

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References

Anderson, S.M. & Chen S. (2002).  The Relational Self: An Interpersonal Social-Cognitive Theory. Psychological Review vol 109, No 4, 619-645. http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.409.2705&rep=rep1&type=pdf

Bench, S.W. & Lench, H.C. (2013). On the Function of Boredom. Behavioral Sciences 3(3), 459-472. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4217586/

Bergland, C. (2018). Human Evolution may have Amped up our Fight-or-Flight Urges. Psychology Today: The Athlete’s Way https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-athletes-way/201804/human-evolution-may-have-amped-our-fight-or-flight-urges

Hobson, N. (2017). Anxiety makes us Perform Better. Psychology Today: Ritual and the Brain. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/ritual-and-the-brain/201709/anxiety-makes-us-perform-better

Humara, M. (2001) The Relationship between Anxiety and Performance: A Cognitive-Behavioral Perspective. Athletic Insight. http://www.athleticinsight.com/Vol1Iss2/Cognitive_Behavioral_Anxiety.htm

Pierre, J. (2018). Why do we Cry? Exploring the Psychology of Emotional Tears. Psychology Today: Psych Unseen. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/psych-unseen/201804/why-do-we-cry-exploring-the-psychology-emotional-tears

Wilson, D.S. (2009). Evolutionary Psychology and the Public Media: Rekindling the Romance. Huffington Post. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-sloan-wilson/evolutionary-psychology-a_b_220545.html

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