Author: marcin wozich

We already know that the body reacts with a real somatic change to a virtual threat. This type of solution works very well for shorter thought processes. The minds of dogs, cats, squirrels, mice, hamsters and monkeys create projections covering short periods: the nearest 5 seconds, the next minute, the next 5 minutes, or a day. The emotional states that arise in the bodies of these organisms are being “used” immediately. The fear that something will come out from behind the tree that a cat is approaching, based on the memory of a previous event, causes immediate behavioral changes (for example, making a larger circle around the tree) and is immediately fading away.

The problem arises when the ability to create complex mental scenarios increases rapidly. As big brain mammals, we create scenarios that concern much longer periods. We think about what we will be doing in 5 minutes, in an hour, in a day, in a week, in a month, in a year, in 5, 10, 20 years. An efficient mind can generate an infinite number of scenarios of events (both nice and very unpleasant) that can happen to us over such long periods. If we now respond to each of these scenarios with a physiological change in the body, we can easily see that this can quickly overload the entire system.

Things can get even worse if you add to it thinking about the past events. For what is the past?

The past is also a thought, which is some kind of scenario that is played out in our minds in the present moment. As in the case of thoughts about the future, we also react to scenarios about past events with a real emotional state that changes the state of the body. If in the past we found ourselves in a situation in which our body had prepared itself to fight or flee, now if we recall the event, that is, recreate it in our mind, our body will be preparing itself to fight or flee again. The stress response will occur in the body and a feeling of stress will appear in the mind.

Remember that our thinking does not only concern our own physical or mental health, but also people close to us, people with whom we are related. In addition, thinking can include completely abstract characters from films, books, etc., and abstract concepts such as society, humanity, planet, etc. Current amount of grey matter in our brains allows us to dwell in virtual reality of thoughts non-stop during the day and for a large part of the night. As a result our bodies are in a state of constant emotional agitation, ready to take action forever .

This may not be a special problem for people who are gifted with positive thinking, whose minds are creating positive scenarios. However, people with a tendency to create darker scenarios find themselves in a rather dreadful situation.

However, we know from our own experience that our reactions to mental stories differ and are not always so dramatic. The same story may cause a whole series of stressful reactions in one moment, and not be particularly exciting at another time. The degree of emotional reaction to a thought depends on the degree of faith in its reality.

Thinking is a mechanism that enables an organism to create a virtual simulation of itself and its environment. It allows it to predict opportunities and threats resulting from its potential interactions with its environment. During the process of thinking the mind creates a series of mental scenarios of its interactions with its environment  and chooses the best one. But how does the mind know which scenario to choose?

It turns out that the so-called somatic markers are the mechanism necessary to choose the right scenario defining the set of actions to be undertaken. A somatic marker is a change in the body (an emotion) that occurs when you mentally act out a scenario.

The concept of somatic markers was first introduced by the Portuguese professor of behavioral neurology Antoni Damasio. In the book “Descartes’ Error”(which basically changed my life), he presents how the existence of somatic markers is essential to undertaking any rational decision. According to the author, the mistake that Descartes made was to assume that the rational mind works in isolation from emotions. Damasio shows that it is the emotion or somatic marker that is necessary for the body to make any decision regarding its well-being.

In simple terms, the mind plays out several possible scenarios and at the same time feels the physiological changes (emotions) that occur in its body. On this basis, it selects the scenario related to the most pleasant or least unpleasant physiological change.

If the virtual body experiences danger in the virtual world, an emotion of stress will arise in the real world, i.e. in the real body.

In the article on stress, we saw that stress is a state of the body’s readiness to take action to avoid danger.

So now we can see that the body reacts with a real somatic change to a virtual threat. In this way, the virtual world becomes the real world from the point of view of the body. The word becomes flesh. Events that are merely simulations cause reactions similar to those that would occur in the body if these events were happening in the real environment of the organism.

Thanks to this mechanism, the body can react much faster to a possible threat. If a mere thought image of a predator prepares the body to act, it will significantly shorten the reaction time when a real predator jumps out for the bushes.

However, this solution works well only when a thought about a threat concerns a very near future (next second, next minute). The situation becomes much more complicated in the case of projections concerning more distant events.

Every living organism strives to maintain the balance of its life processes. The disturbance of these processes, the loss of homeostasis, is immediately compensated by taking specific actions aimed at restoring the state of equilibrium. In fact, life comes down to a very long series of moments of losing and regaining that balance. From this perspective, death is a moment of irreversible loss of balance.

Factors that cause the disturbance of homeostasis (stressors) can appear both in the physical environment of an organism, in its social environment, or inside the very organism itself. These threats may be physical or mental.

In the course of its evolutionary development, organisms have developed an ability to estimate the probability of a specific stressor to occur. At the same time they developed another ability – to plan actions allowing them to avoid the potential harm caused by the stressor. The common name for both these skills is “thinking”.

One of the main differences between different species (apart from the number of legs and their facial expressions) is the degree to which they are able to create virtual models of the reality around them.

Most likely, relatively simple organisms do not create a model of the reality in which they are located, but instantaneously react to a direct stimulus. In the case of more complex creatures, the situation seems to be more complicated. A bird that is choosing its path of flight through the forest, a fox that is chasing a rabbit, or a homo sapiens that is preparing its scrambled eggs in a kitchen, all these organisms need to perform a great deal of calculations on the potential effects of selecting specific series of actions before these actions are actually taken.

The bird, the fox and the human, all generate in their minds virtual projections of the worlds they are in. As part of these projections, they simulate various scenarios of actions, the aim of which is to avoid danger (e.g. oversalting eggs), and on the other hand, to take advantage of the potential opportunities (e.g. swallowing an escaping fly).

Thinking is a form of virtual world which, unlike the real world, does not exist in a physical sense, but is only a projection of the organism’s mind. By means of a thought process, the mind creates virtual variants of future events and, based on previously gained experience, assesses the probability of their occurrence. This enables it to predict the consequences of actions that it is going to undertake in the present.

The ability to remember events and simulate possible variants of the future situations was of colossal importance for the survival of the human species. Thinking has become an amazing tool that has enabled us to eliminate a significant number of stressors from our environment.

However, for having such a highly developed thought process, we have to pay a huge price  – an increased stress level. 

Why is it so? After all, the main advantage of the thought process was the elimination of threats from the environment of an organism. And so it happened, but the role of stressors for modern man has been taken over by mental processes, and more precisely by virtual projections of potential threatening situations. To understand why this happened, let’s examine the relationship between thought and emotions.

Stress is a physical and mental state that occurs as a result of the body’s contact with a factor that poses a potential threat to the balance of its life processes.

Imagine the following situation: suddenly a tiger appears in front of you. Your brain quickly assesses the situation and decides that the situation poses a threat to the survival of the organism. As a result of this assessment the brain causes a number of physiological changes aimed at preparing the muscles for an increased work – the fight or flight response (the sympathetic system is activated and stimulates the adrenal glands to release adrenaline and noradrenaline, causing the pupils to dilate, accelerate heart rate and breathing etc. ). At the same time, other parts of the brain constantly monitor the changes taking place in the body. They register the increased readiness of the body to take actions and transmit the information about this state to consciousness in the form of – a feeling of stress.

A feeling of stress is how the mind feels a readiness of the body to take an action in order to avoid a danger in its environment. In other words a feeling of stress is the way how an emotion of stress feels (if you’re uncertain on the differences between a feeling and an emotion please read the following article: emotions vs feelings)

A stress response plays a very important role in the survival of the body.

If the body has not been generating the stress responses (an emotion of stress) while facing a danger, it would be fairly quickly eliminated by the process of evolution. It would be unable to cope with challenges posed by its environment. In short, it would be eaten before it had any chance to leave an offspring behind. Therefore the purpose of stress reaction is to prepare the body to undertake a specific physical activity in order to avoid a threat.

Nowadays however, (for most of us in the developed countries) the external conditions in which we find ourselves fall short from being perfect. We don’t suffer from cold, we don’t suffer from hunger, there are no hungry predators lurking around. We spend most of our time sitting in comfortable sofas, talking to nice, cultured people, without fear of an unexpected attempt on our lives. The physical environment seems to be free from stressors, factors with which the body would immediately fight. 

It seems that in modern times the main stressors do not come from the outside world*. However, they are born entirely elsewhere. In a virtual world, popularly known as thinking.

*you may rise an argument that this situation has changed in 2020 due to the pandemic but I will still try to refute it in some other text

In everyday language, the terms emotions and feelings often  are used as substitutes. It turns out though, that from the point of view of behavioral neurobiology they describe two different phenomena*. Understanding the difference between these concepts will come in handy in further exploration of mental tension and happiness.

What are emotions

“An emotion consists of a very well orchestrated set of alterations in the body that has, as a general purpose, making life more survivable by taking care of a danger, of taking care of an opportunity, either / or, or something in between. “

Antonio Damasio

An emotion is an implementation of a very complex program of alterations to the bodily states that is triggered when a danger or a potential opportunity in the environment is detected. The purpose of an emotional reaction is to prepare an organism to face a danger that arises in its environment or to take advantage of an opportunity.

Thus, emotions refer to all possible states of the body, the purpose of which is to adapt the organism to changing external conditions. Emotions are a form of movement, movement that manifests itself outside (e.g. movement of the facial muscles in the case of a smile) and movement inside the body, i.e. changes in the work of internal organs (e.g. increased heart rate, stomach contraction, increased bowel movement, etc.) This movement also takes place at the molecular level, for example in the endocrine system (e.g., secretion of norepinephrine by the adrenal glands during a stress response). 

Emotional response programs are stored in the DNA of all species, and do not differ essentially between individuals or even between species. The emotion of joy will be very similar for both a prehistoric caveman and a modern businessman. It will also be the same in principle in a dog, an ape and a human.

However, emotions run outside the scope of consciousness of an organism. As changes in bodily states, they occur on the same level as digestive processes or the work of the circulatory system.

What are feelings?

A feeling is how the mind feels an emotion that has arisen in the body, how it feels a physiological change. A feeling is the way the mind perceives the change in the work of internal organs triggered by an emotional response. A feeling is a mental state taking place in the consciousness of the organism. In short – feelings are conscious emotions.

So, if we feel fear, it means that an emotional reaction has occurred in the body, i.e. a certain sequence of changes in the state of internal organs, changes in the secretion of hormones in the endocrine system, caused by the body recognizing threats in the environment.

If we feel thirsty, it means that a program has been triggered in the body to implement a specific species-beneficial behavior. The tension associated with the emotion of desire will persist as long as the body feels the possibility of acting to release tension.

If we feel calm, it means that the body works in a neutral mode because at the moment it does not detect factors that would pose a threat to its functioning, nor does it recognize opportunities that could positively affect its current state.

The body constantly scans its surroundings for possible threats or potential benefits. He also constantly evaluates these experiences from the point of view of his functioning and on the basis of this assessment he decides whether to trigger a specific emotional reaction or not.

An organism is incredibly complex and constantly experiences an enormous amount of sensations. For this reason, emotional programs are constantly run overlapping and intertwining. The spectrum of emotional states is very wide. At one end of this spectrum one will find bodily states (emotions) that are relaxed and neutral, and on the other end states of readiness to avoid a threat (i.e. tension) or to seize a potential opportunity (tension again).

Now that we have a better understanding of what the feelings and emotions that arise in the mind (and body) are, we can easier understand happiness and stress.

* This distinction and the strong link between feelings and emotions with physiological states was first introduced by Antonio Damasio.