Jane Stevens posted a descriptive blurb about this title, How Your Survival Instinct Is Killing You, back in January, and I thought, “Why the heck not?” After all, I read everything I can get my hands on, searching for that magic elixir that will fix the feeling that I’ve called by many names over the years: Despair. Fear. Hole in the soul. Nameless dread. Whatever you want to call it, some of you with a high ACE score might know what I’m talking about. (I also experienced a very traumatic event last spring, adding fuel to this always smoldering fire.)

To be sure, I’ve found relief in many therapies, from CBT to somatic techniques to mindful meditation and so on. But that feeling never really goes away, but rather lurks silently in the background, waiting for a flicker of fear to bring it roaring back to life. Of course, this is the survival instinct that springs into action when it perceives threat, and it is this that is the subject of Marc Schoen’s book.

Schoen, clinical professor of medicine at UCLA, explains that though the survival instinct exists to protect us, it can lead to all kinds of maladaptive behaviors when it runs amok—because it’s so painful! Schoen writes:

“Over time our maladaptive habits become less and less effective. They can feel like they are warding off the awakening of the survival instinct, but they are incredibly deceptive. We may think we are controlling the threat, but in reality we are giving up more and more ground to it as it spreads like wildfire within us, usurping the control and resources we have left. In more extreme cases, we are fleeced of our inner resources, and catapulted into a state of feeling out of control. We are left face-to-face with the survival instinct, with little at our disposal to manage it. It is at this point we have hit bottom and have fallen into a state of what I call Conditioned Powerlessness. We become virtually immobilized by the survival instinct, which can become the genesis of major mental and physical illness.”

In many treatments today, the goal is to remove discomfort. Schoen’s approach is different: Instead of trying to extinguish the limbic response to fear—or using temporary fixes to bury it—we should retrain our survival instinct and bring it more in line with the cerebral brain.

To do this, Schoen writes that we can train our brain to tolerate discomfort and that “just as brain mass can strengthen with meditation, limbic structures, such as the amygdale, hypothalamus, and hippocampus, are also capable of adapting to changes that allow them to function in a less absolute manner.”

From a practical standpoint, this helps us learn to experience the world from the standpoint of duality: that we can feel fear or discomfort at the same time that we feel relaxation, peacefulness, and as I've found, even happiness.

Schoen outlines very specific exercises to help this process along. I dove right in and within a couple of days the relief was palpable, not only in relation to recent painful events in my life, but also to my overall ability to handle fear and discomfort more effectively. For me, Schoen’s “discomfort training” has been priceless. Thank you, Jane, for posting this book.