Jaak Panksepp — blog — Anne Benvenuti

Fear. It’s there, just waiting to get you!

At Halloween in the US, everything we fear gets lumped together with our dead ancestors. A night that once reminded us to recognize that those who have passed before us might still be with us has now become a generalized expression of fear. In our ripe imaginations, peeled grapes become the texture of eyeballs without a head, cold spaghetti might be someone’s dead brain or guts, the sound of rusty hinges makes our skin crawl as we anticipate something dangerous coming for us, and banging doors make us jump out of our skin.

It's amazingly easy to frighten us humans. . . . But the experience of basic fear, the anxious and deeply uncomfortable arousal in our bodies, the intense desire to escape, is something we share with all mammals.

Grief

Grief. This fundamental affect is not easy to name, but you know it when you're in it. Bereft might be the best word to describe it, the sudden panic that drops into a well of sadness, even despair, and it's caused by the loss of an important attachment. The reason why being shunned (as in solitary confinement or the "scarlet letter") is considered the most severe punishment is that this kind of separation pain is a pain like no other. It's the emotional pain that really can kill you.

So let me insert the good news here.

Mammals Suck, and That Makes Oxytocin!

This mamma-baby connection is where oxytocin—the trust hormone—flows at peak levels, creating in both animals (the mom and the baby) the feeling of intense warm attachment. It is the way that the desire for warm attachment becomes part of an individual, staying with her for life and creating the desire and willingness that trust between animals might work. It feels really good to be connected in trust, and that's nature's way of making sure it happens. Yes, this is yet another way in which all mammals, ourselves included, are alike.

Unless we're very, very unlucky, we get lots of oxytocin from day one onward.

Playtime! It's Seriously Important

My dog Lexi is a ten year old Jack Russell terrier who had a rough childhood. Lost in an Indiana blizzard at six months of age, she was brought into rescue with double pneumonia. She spent two months in the hospital before going to a "forever home" that had some human problems with alcohol and violence. Back to rescue. She was a nervous little gal when we brought her home, quick to find a hiding place but also gregarious, liking to mix it up or to cuddle, especially with other dogs. But there was one sure way I could engage her, and that was by playing the imaginary game of hunting my fingers as they acted like mice across the bedspread.

Looking Backwards, Looking Forwards, Looking at my Feet!

How synchronistic is it that, after posting the very post in which I complained about the limitations imposed upon my mind by watching my feet for three solid weeks while I walked the John Muir Trail last summer, I should fail to watch them one recent winter day and have fallen over backwards, breaking ribs in the process? So I have been derailed by broken ribs, and thus sunk deeply into the quiet season of reflection and rest. My body has been somewhat limited and my mind has been free to roam.

I reflected on the year behind me and the year before me, thinking that my intentions have something to do with what happens in a year of life.