I have always been interested in human behavior. In university, I majored in sociology, which is the study of human society, or, more simply, group life. I find the complex interplay between specific mental illnesses, individual personality, and external circumstances intriguing. And I’m always fascinated by how human beings, despite how sophisticated and evolved we think we are, return to our animal Instincts when under duress.
When I was in treatment, a violent summer storm took a more dramatic turn when a tornado touched down nearby and was headed in our direction. Tornado watches and warnings are common, but weather predictions are never perfectly accurate, and often it seems that things aren’t as bad as everyone feared. On this night, though, with the rain blowing sideways in a roaring wind, and the churning sky a greenish grey, it seemed that the warnings might actually come true. We were ordered down to the basement and we went, like obedient children.
What followed was a display of behavior that would have greatly amused evolutionary psychologists. The men decided as a collective that a tornado was, in fact, not coming at all. They proceeded to either play pool and act totally casual, or proclaim their total dubiousness about the whole situation by going outside (yes, outside) and having a smoke while discussing the fact that the color of the sky CLEARLY indicated the absence of said tornado. One even announced that he was sweating (in the cold basement) and took his shirt off, prancing around like a peacock, flexing his muscles at Mother Nature.
And what did the women do? You can’t make this stuff up. The first thing we did was go upstairs to our rooms and grab the comforters off our beds. Comforters are important in tornados, you see. They block the wind and the rain and protect dozens of people from enormous objects flying through the air at high speeds. Next, we called our husbands to ensure that our children were fine. Mama must check on the children. Always, always check on the children. Finally, I commanded the physically weakest member of the house, a fellow still in acute withdrawal from opiates, to sit on the couch beside me, and I proceeded to tuck my comforter around him, ensuring that he be warm.
All of this was totally unconscious, and totally automatic. Even in the throes of addiction, and withdrawal, some of us with dual diagnoses of mental illnesses, we reverted to our Primal Instincts, instincts common to each sex.
Another enduring example of this in my own life is the intense and immediate protective instincts that my husband and father have for their wives, and for their children. Both men are highly educated, with doctorates in sociology and medieval literature, respectively. Both men are logical thinkers and highly cerebral. But threaten their women, or their children, and they become gorillas.
My brother once called my parents after midnight, on a bus home from downtown Ottawa, and asked them to meet him at the bus station. Some passengers had been drinking, and gotten into a fight. One of them was brandishing a knife. My brother, then grown to his full height of 6’2″, and perfectly capable of defending himself, was nervous. All my father heard was that one of his babies might be in danger. He was in his sixties by that time, but meet my brother he did. With a baseball bat in one hand, and a club in the other. Thankfully, he didn’t need to use them. But in a flash, all his intellect went out the window, and he turned into a lion, prepared to defend his young cub at all costs.
My husband is the same way. The change in him is even more shocking to see, because unlike my father, who can be fairly formidable and forceful, my husband is a soft-spoken, quiet dear of a man, as gentle as they come. And yet, if he even gets a hint that my daughter or I are threatened, he transforms. Once, when I was pregnant, a guy pushing a long line of grocery carts narrowly avoided hitting my belly. Before I could even blink, my husband was raging, thrashing aggressively at the oblivious employee. I literally had to hold him back. Our ob-gyn told us later that men’s hormones change when their women are pregnant, and that his behavior was consistent with those changes. Women, already somewhat more vulnerable than men, are more vulnerable still when they are pregnant. And of course, there was this tiny fetus deep in my belly, our growing baby girl. Both of us were put in danger, and he lashed out.
In the end, of course, we are not animals, and society would be lawless and bloody if we all, mothers included, indulged our most primal instincts to violently defend our families and our homes. We humans are gifted with a frontal cortex which, when working properly, tempers these unbridled instincts with reason, and judgement, and thankfully, with restraint. But it is interesting how, with all of our technology, our processed food, our mental health tribulations, we haven’t necessarily strayed so far as we might think from our primitive roots and our distant ancestors and perhaps, in some ways, the essence of our humanity.
