Curb your anxiety: The surprising expert tips on how to ease mental suffering

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Australian evolutionary psychologist John Hannan has a new approach to mental health problems that chimes with his clients. He says “sitting with”, rather than batting away…

Are you sitting uncomfortably? Good. You can now start working on your brain, specifically the troubling anxiety, depression or PTSD that’s throwing up symptoms that seem out of whack with reality. Australian evolutionary psychologist John Hannan has a new approach to mental health problems that chimes with his clients. He says “sitting with”, rather than batting away difficult feelings opens a pathway to communication with your “emotional” brain that can lead to greater understanding and hopefully relief.

Hannan quotes the US National Institute of Mental Health saying one in five of us is expected to suffer a diagnosable mental illness in any one year, and that suggests an astonishing failure rate for an organ that’s the “most evolutionarily successful and complex object in the known universe”.

But what if these so-called mental malfunctions were actually normal responses to the circumstances, albeit a response via an emotional brain that still thinks it’s living in a tribal village back when humans had only recently started walking upright?

Hannan’s working theory is explained in a new book, Your Normal Mind: Evolution’s Hidden Logic of Suffering … And What to Do About It. He argues your emotional brain is not at all concerned with whether you’re suffering or unhappy – the only thing that matters is the survival of your genetic line.

“We retain things from six million years ago,” he tells the Listener. “We’ve added things in that period of time, but even so, we’re still emotionally in that hunter-gathering, tribal way of thinking.”

When Hannan explores his theory with clients, there are often tears of relief at learning they’re not “going crazy”. He has been using this “evolutionary validation” approach for at least a decade. “I reliably get to the point where the client recognises their brain is responding normally given its underlying imperative of genetic survival. It is a pivotal moment that provides dramatic relief.”

Hannan builds on the work of American…

Evolutiona…

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