We are Seekers — Neuroscience

I came across a Neuroscience research article that gave me answers to very important questions including some that I never asked.

Link to the research abstract is below. I found it a bit technical and it wasn’t an easy read for me. Affective neuroscience of the emotional BrainMind: evolutionary perspectives and implications for understanding depression — PMC (nih.gov). But I loved it.

Below is what I extracted from the research and some ruminations:

As a background, our emotions are controlled in 3 ways:

1. Primary Process: Instinctive and given by mother nature.
2. Secondary Process: Through life conditioning, learning and memory
3. Tertiary Process: Cognition based. Where our ruminations play a role and is deliberate and thoughtful

All 3 have their own importance. This research focuses on the Primary Process and attributes it’s misfunctioning to be a cause of depression. Now what are these primary process emotion systems (also called ancient or primordial). There are 7 > SEEKING, RAGE, FEAR, LUST, CARE, GRIEF, and PLAY. Few of them are generally talked about but others are not so much.

Interesting part starts here. Of these seven, SEEKING is the most powerful instinct and is central to the Primary Process. This is what moves us to explore our environment to meet our known and unknown needs. That is what makes us curious, expect an outcome and enjoy the search and not necessarily the outcome. When we say that it is the journey and not the destination, there is actually science behind it. SEEKING system gives our life an abundance of motivational and psychological energy for life or in short, libido or mojo or in other words keep us alive (not just physically but the way we should be) …

Unfortunately, when some of the negative emotions (FEAR, RAGE and GRIEF) are aroused in us, they can suppress our SEEKING emotion. Unsurprisingly, all these emotions are interlinked. And that’s one point I really want us to think about and take away from this research. If we are aware of the presence of these emotions and their importance and try to balance it so that we try to get more of the positive ones and bring in the negative ones only when we need them, we could make so much more out of life. FEAR, RAGE and GRIEF are important but only when they help us to avoid something undesirable. But if we let them dominate, then the SEEKING will hide somewhere and per the research could be a cause of depression. I am neither a doctor nor a neuroscientist and this is just based on my reading on the topic and watching Jaak Panksepp’s (the author) videos.

I feel that in the modern world, for many of us, the SEEKING emotion process has become weaker and is suppressed, primarily by FEAR. We do not activate SEEKING as much as we are supposed to or were made to over the evolutionary period. The FEAR emotion could be triggered by the societal pressure, conformity, meet the general idea of success. Because we carry the FEAR of failure to do so. It probably also gets affected by the Secondary Process or the unwanted social training we get all our lives to live and behave in a certain way. They prevent us from getting out of comfort zone, try new hobbies, new food, new places, new friends, career, clothes, types of books and so many more new things that can enrich our lives and can make it so much more interesting.

I got very excited by reading the article as I believe (and hope) that I unknowingly triggered my SEEKING emotion as I was feeling very uncomfortable being dominated by my FEAR emotion. It started with a feeling that something was missing. A routine life when everything goes as per the previous day and if you look back at your week, month or even a year, you cannot differentiate one day from another. Like everyone else, although my SEEKING instinct was still alive, it probably was sleeping and dying slowly. I unknowingly shook out of it. I didn’t know what it was. Maybe I was just getting uncomfortable with the comfort zone. And after reading this research I realize it was the SEEKING monster which wanted to wake up. Still not fully awake but hopefully it will be.

If you have ever had a pet dog and you took it out for a walk or if you observe dogs being walked, you will see that there are two kinds. One that are very well trained and will follow the master and just fulfill their own natural needs (poop, pee, walk exercise) and go back. Then there are other ones like Barnie, who are not well trained and do what they want. Sniffing everywhere, looking for food, looking for mate, looking for friends and don’t know what not. Oh yes, they look for people who will give them attention and affection. Such dogs are nuisance for the owners but fun for others to look at. Passersby are happy to play with them and these look like the happiest dogs. Because they are. They are not suppressing their SEEKING emotion. They are not trained to. Training is the secondary process emotions that might be preventing the trained dogs to follow a pattern. Training could be FEAR based even if it is positive reinforcement (I am thinking of fear of losing their masters love). I realize I am oversimplifying, and I am sure there can be a combination of the two i.e., well trained and free-spirited dogs too. I hope so.

My only question is whether we keep the SEEKING behavior alive and let it be the key driver in our lives or we like to play safe and have a misbalanced equation. Playing safe sounds positive but is caused by FEAR. We all know/talk/read about the benefits of risk taking etc. But it is all focused on the end result. How the research is different is that it says that SEEKING is within us and is the most important and central point of all Primary Process emotions. FEAR and ANGER were to be used in special situations when we had to save our lives or resources. Not in our day to day lives. We should be out there exploring. Obviously, I am not suggesting that we spend the rest of our lives in a forest. We can still be in our cities or towns or villages and be exploratory. Trying new things, being curious. A lot of times we will not even know what we are SEEKING. We just need to follow our heart (read instinct). How do we know? I guess it is the feeling of uneasiness within us. Telling us that we ought to do something different, make a change, explore and figure out. It is not about what we want. I believe it is about exploring, experiencing, enriching and then finding out what is out there. So many times, we say ‘I wish I could be free of the daily rut’ but we never do that for the sake of FEAR, one or another. I am propagating it here while knowing that it is not easy and I myself need to cross a few FEAR lines. But I know that whenever I have taken a SEEKING decision, I have never regretted the journey and the exploration stage at least. The result may not have always been very exciting but the regret of not doing it or the wondering of ‘what if’ would probably be worse. It always brings back the mojo, the enthusiasm and the psychological energy to live life to the fullest. Without it living could be fun but may not be fulfilling.

We could look back and think of all the exploratory things that we did that would tick the SEEKING box and whether the research makes sense. It does to me. And what the research doesn’t say is that the outcome of SEEKING behavior would make you more enriched with all those new experiences. It is just some food for thought. And just a reminder of a system that we were born with genetically like every other mammal on the planet. All other mammals use it to live their life to the fullest, but we get stuck with the wrong emotions because of what we learnt after we came to the world. Time to unlearn and go back to the basics…