Good Reasons for Bad Feelings: Insights from the Frontier of Evolutionary Psychiatry

by Randolph M. Nesse

Part of an answer is that natural selection shaped emotions such as anxiety, low mood, and grief because they are useful. More of an answer comes from recognizing that our suffering often benefits our genes. Sometimes painful emotions are normal but unnecessary because the costs of not having the emotion could be huge. There are also good evolutionary reasons why we have desires we cannot fulfill, impulses we cannot control, and relationships full of conflict. Perhaps most profound of all, however, evolution explains the origins of our amazing capacities for love and goodness and why they carry the price of grief, guilt, and, thank goodness, caring inordinately about what others think about us.

The Greek philosopher Epicurus recognized the conundrum 2,400 years ago; a slight adaptation of David Hume’s terse summary is widely quoted: “Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then He is not omnipotent. Is He able, but not willing? Then He is malevolent. Is He both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is He neither able nor willing? Then why call Him God?”27

Understanding the origins of love and morality is a crucial foundation for understanding social anxiety and grief and the deep relationships they make possible.