Feelings
👉 Seeking and fear are basic drives that compel us in opposite directions; to either work towards a reward or avoid something painful.
Seeking and fear are two fundamental drives.
Seeking describes the movement towards reward.
It feels like a general state of arousal - the anticipation of pleasure or joy - that motivates us to overcome challenges and hardship so we can attain future reward.
Seeking drives us towards meeting our basic needs – looking for food, water and shelter.
When these needs are met, seeking drives us towards more complex needs. Two worth mentioning are lust and care:
➡️ Sexual Lust motivates seeking sex and procreation. Procreation, of course, is our mechanism for securing survival beyond ourselves – a form of safety – while sex itself is a core component of belonging and formation of the family unit.
➡️ Care motivates longer term feelings of love, belonging, and wanting to take care of others. It motivates us to understand others, empathize with them, and behave in ways that promote connection and mutual benefit. The failure to achieve care leads to a sense of loneliness, and threat to care (someone in a caring relationship leaving) leads to separation distress.
The opposite of seeking is fear – movement away from pain.
Fear motivates us to avoid experiences that cause pain and punishment. Fear helps us stay safe by avoiding bodily or emotional harm. When the cause of fear is known we usually just call it fear (e.g. fear of heights), but when it’s unknown or diffuse, we often refer to that as anxiety.
🤔 Reflection of the Day:
When was the last time you were intentionally seeking something? What reward were you going after?
When was the last time you felt fear? What was the punishment you were avoiding?