I overreact to everything. What's wrong with me?

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Lately, I can't tell what the hell is going on doc. What's going on?

You have come to accept why science explains it: it's just the way the human brain is wired to think, at its most basic level.

There are two basic ways in which we are basically designed to think, as humans.

Primal, and logical.

Primal thinking is emotional and instinctive. This is the more powerful part of our being.

The primal brain judges life based on impressions and instincts, it is inherently biased and quick to judge, and it speaks to us via feelings, urges and drives, which are very difficult to resist when they are strong. Think love, anger, jealousy, sympathy, insecurity, and desire.

The logical brain looks for facts, doesn't make assumptions, and thinks things through more slowly and with greater effort. Information from the senses takes longer to arrive, and longer to process, in the logical brain: it is a newer and more complex part (the neocortex, namely).

The primal brain, uninhibited, leaves us awash with emotions, which in turn and urge us to believe and act impulsively and with certainty. This is an evolved state of the human condition, similar as it is to most complex animals, having survived as we have done for tens of thousands of years in an environment where we didn't have the chance to gather the full facts, full of lurking threats and opportunities which demanded rapid action. It was a zero-sum game back then: less about sharing, delaying and reasoning than it was about winning, taking, and conquering.

It's no wonder then that we are more ready to jump on our emotional train than to think things through more logically.

Life in the civilised world has progressed to a more humane way of being. This is also an evolved state, but it is not as completely evolved as the primal system. It evolved much later. Logic, truth, compassion and other higher faculties have helped us to thrive as a species when we truly differentiate ourselves from other animals: to see information in context rather than the immediate situation, to cooperate, conserve, think ahead, imagine, create, and improvise. These qualities expand our toolkit of survival, and make us more human, but they are not as readily available to us: they are slower and require more conscious attention. We are primates, with evolving human qualities.