On disorders and fear of being alone

Consider what we call "disorders" - many of them, of course, are genuinely maladaptive. But some appear only contextually maladaptive and perhaps even beneficial in other contextual circumstances.

Consider, for example, the fear of being alone (autophobia) - frequently classified as a disorder. Of course, there are symptoms (or traits) that may be maladaptive, particularly in modern society - i.e. that negatively affect the person who has it, and that the person may need relief from these.

But consider that for much of the last 5 or 10 million years of our evolutionary history, our way of life was probably largely relatively approximately something between modern hunter-gatherer societies, and the way the chimps in the documentary Rise of the Warrior Apes lived (and still live) - frequently in dangerous conflict with neighboring tribes. Likewise our last common ancestor with the chimps.

In these societies in which our ancestors lived, finding yourself lost and alone from your tribe likely often meant death - either from lack of food, or being eaten by predators, or from attacks from neighboring competing tribes.

If you're e.g. a chimp in the jungle (or our last common ancestor with the chimps), you should feel anxious if you find yourself alone, because someone or something wants to kill you and you'd best find your tribe again as quickly as possible - coded into our genes are the (in effect) "memories" of millions of years of natural selection from actual threats lurking nearby in the shadows. It's not meant to be rational, it's just genetic coding to help keep you alive, where those who experienced no anxiety were probably more likely to die.

In these contexts, a "fear of being alone" would in fact be adaptive, that is, it would help you survive - having an instinctual urge to remain close to your tribe, under the protection of the group, and not get lost.

But all of a sudden, in the blink of an eye (in evolutionary timescale terms), we have modern civilization ... maybe a few thousand years, which is nothing ... our genes haven't had time to catch up.

Also, there's no guarantee we won't return again to living in such societies, e.g. if we regress technologically - and then those people with this (contextually-labelled) "disorder" would be more likely to survive.

If a chimp in Rise of the Warrior Apes finds themselves alone, and feels anxious, we certainly wouldn't say they have a "disorder" making them feel anxious - because death is literally lurking nearby in the shadows, and they are vulnerable alone.

Is this really a "disorder"? I don't know. The answer to that may also vary from individual to individual, too. Also, all our modern ruminations are 'approximations and abstractions' of an extremely complex body and brain with trillions of cells and molecules, much of which is still not mapped or understood.

This is a complex and lengthy topic; this is just briefly touching on this.

But if you have autophobia, cut yourself some slack. We're also social animals.