Like what biological function thinks it’s helpful to want to die? It’s a visceral reaction so it has to be a kind of biological intuition.
I’ve got it so bad off of something that is seemingly not worth this reaction. But I can’t shake it anyway. But if this sense is biological, then it can cascade beyond reason like an allergic reaction.
I went to a board game night with some folks who are mostly acquaintances. I show up and a group is already starting to figure out a game and it looked like the easiest group to join. This game is bad. I was chill. My teammate was chill. The people we were playing with were chill. But this game was so bad I can’t shake the fact that despite everyone having made the best of it, this was not a good social interaction. And I just feel bad. More bad than I should feel. It’s just painful.
The game was Jurassic Park Danger! And maybe I just need to tell someone. I’m not going to do anything. I don’t need a wellness check. But I can’t shake this feeling like death would be ok and maybe for the best.
What is it about bad social interactions that make us feel like death is preferable?
Humans evolved to be social. Hunters and gatherers relied on each other for survival. Ostracism literally meant death. It’s so ingrained in our DNA that a social fuck up triggers this thought that we might as well end ourselves and get it over with. The good news is that in modern times you can always find another social group if needed.
This is the answer, I think. However, as far as I understand it, we can get outsized reactions that are not evolutionary sensible. This oversensitivity can be just a random trait that might not be helpful at all in the current environment (or any other previous environment). It can also just be a psychology response to a traumatic event for example. Humans are quite complex.
Yep, the emotional reaction is unhelpful. Autistic people face this constantly.
I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily totally unhelpful. I have extreme emotions and would get frustrated about it, but I recently learned to look at them a bit differently. Emotions are like data. They are signaling something to us. In this case, they signaled something that OP analyzed and then wanted to talk about. Negative emotions tell us that something doesn’t line up right and we need to look at why.
Some of us unfortunately just have the intensity of that dial turned up to 11. Makes for some hairy scenarios sometimes lol.