Good Reasons for Bad Feelings
Insights from the Frontier of Evolutionary Psychiatry
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Narrated by:
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Arthur Morey
About this listen
A founder of the field of evolutionary medicine uses his decades of experience as a psychiatrist to provide a much-needed new framework for making sense of mental illness.
With his classic book Why We Get Sick, Dr. Randolph Nesse helped to establish the field of evolutionary medicine. Now, he returns with an audiobook that transforms our understanding of mental disorders by exploring a fundamentally new question. Instead of asking why certain people suffer from mental illness, Nesse asks why natural selection has left us all with fragile minds.
Drawing on revealing stories from his own clinical practice and insights from evolutionary biology, Nesse shows how negative emotions are useful in certain situations, yet can become excessive. Anxiety protects us from harm in the face of danger, but false alarms are inevitable. Low mood prevents us from wasting effort in pursuit of unreachable goals, but it often escalates into pathological depression. Other mental disorders, such as addiction and anorexia, result from the mismatch between modern environments and our ancient human past. And there are good evolutionary reasons for sexual disorders and for why genes for schizophrenia persist. Taken together, these and many more insights help to explain the pervasiveness of human suffering and show us new paths for relieving it by understanding individuals as individuals.
Includes a Bonus PDF of charts and visuals.
Cover art © The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, 2018.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2019 Randolph M. Nesse (P)2019 Penguin AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
"A fascinating study of the evolutionary roots of mental illness.” --The Economist, "The Best Books of 2019
“All psychiatrists and patients who find themselves having occasional ‘bad feelings’ about our current understanding of mental illness will have many ‘good reasons’ to consult this book. I do fully expect that someday nearly all psychiatry will be identified as evolutionary psychiatry. If so, Randolph Nesse’s book should be seen as the field’s founding document.” --The Wall Street Journal
“If you’re curious about why humans seem stuck with emotional suffering, Good Reasons for Bad Feelings provides thoughtful evolutionary commentary. Nesse looks at emotions, addictions, and mental afflictions every which way and, to his credit, does not pretend to have all the answers. The ones he offers and the questions he raises about their likelihood make for highly interesting and enlightening reading.” --New York Journal of Books
“If your idea of self-care skews less spiritual and more scientific, Nesse’s new book on why humans are so vulnerable to a variety of mental disorders is a must. In this new work, he covers both why some people get sick, as well as why natural selection left us all so vulnerable to developing mental illness. Topics covered include changes in our environment impact us, how anxiety and low mood sometimes help our genes and how social anxiety is nearly universal.” --Forbes
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- Kick Any Habit, Manage Any Addiction: Your Self-Treatment Guide to Alcohol, Drugs, Eating Disorders, Gambling, Hoarding, Smoking, Sex, and Porn
- By: Christopher Kennedy Lawford
- Narrated by: Seth Michael Donsky
- Length: 13 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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From New York Times bestselling author of Symptoms of Withdrawal and Moments of Clarity Christopher Kennedy Lawford comes a book that will save lives. For most of his early life, Christopher Kennedy Lawford battled life-threatening drug and alcohol addictions. Now in recovery for more than 25 years, he works to effect change and raise global awareness of addiction in nonprofit, private, and government circles, serving as the goodwill ambassador for drug dependence treatment and care for the United Nations.
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I didn't know I was a workaholic
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The Expectation Effect
- How Your Mindset Can Change Your World
- By: David Robson
- Narrated by: John Sackville
- Length: 8 hrs and 45 mins
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Melding neuroscience with narrative, science journalist David Robson takes lstenersi on a deep dive into the many life zones the expectation effect permeates. We see how people who believe stress is beneficial become more creative when placed under strain. We see how associating aging with wisdom can add seven plus years to your life. People say seeing is believing but, over and over, Robson proves that the converse is truer: Believing is seeing.
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Every leader and teacher must read!
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By: David Robson
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The Psychopath Inside
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The memoir of a neuroscientist whose research led him to a bizarre personal discovery, James Fallon had spent an entire career studying how our brains affect our behavior when his research suddenly turned personal. While studying brain scans of several family members, he discovered that one perfectly matched a pattern he’d found in the brains of serial killers. This meant one of two things: Either his family’s scans had been mixed up with those of felons or someone in his family was a psychopath.
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Entertaining story with some quick neuroscience
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By: James Fallon
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Emotional Intelligence
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- Narrated by: Barrett Whitener
- Length: 13 hrs and 32 mins
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It is the tenth anniversary since the first publication of Daniel Goleman's groundbreaking bestseller, Emotional Intelligence, which maps the territory where IQ meets EQ, where we apply what we know to how we live. Spending over a year on the New York Times bestseller list, Emotional Intelligence provided the evidence for what many successful people already knew: being smart isn't just a matter of mastering facts; it's a matter of mastering your own emotions and understanding the emotions of the people around you.
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Good info, hard to listen sometimes
- By Stephanie on 04-16-03
By: Daniel Goleman
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Crazy Like Us
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- By: Ethan Watters
- Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor
- Length: 8 hrs and 57 mins
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America has been the world leader in generating new mental health treatments and modern theories of the human psyche. We export our psychopharmaceuticals packaged with the certainty that our biomedical knowledge will relieve the suffering and stigma of mental illness. We categorize disorders, thereby defining mental illness and health, and then parade these seemingly scientific certainties in front of the world.
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He is a reporter...
- By Briana on 05-07-18
By: Ethan Watters
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Manufacturing Depression
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- By: Gary Greenberg
- Narrated by: Kirby Heyborne
- Length: 14 hrs and 10 mins
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Am I happy enough? This has been a pivotal question since America's inception. "Am I not happy enough because I am depressed?" is a more recent version. Psychotherapist Gary Greenberg shows how depression has been manufactured---not as an illness but as an idea about our suffering, its source, and its relief. He challenges us to look at depression in a new way.
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Modern Gonzo Tour de Force
- By S. Frank on 11-12-11
By: Gary Greenberg
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Transcendence
- Healing and Transformation Through Transcendental Meditation
- By: Norman E. Rosenthal
- Narrated by: Gildart Jackson
- Length: 8 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Norman E. Rosenthal, M.D., a 20-year researcher at the National Institute of Mental Health and the celebrated psychiatrist who pioneered the study and treatment of Season Affective Disorder (SAD), brings us the most important work on Transcendental Meditation since the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's Science of Being and Art of Living - and one of our generation's most significant books on achieving greater physical and mental health and wellness.
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Inspirational yet "Informercional"
- By James on 05-24-13
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Counterclockwise
- Mindful Health and the Power of Possibility
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If we could turn back the clock psychologically, could we also turn it back physically? For more than 30 years, award-winning social psychologist Ellen Langer has studied this provocative question, and now has a conclusive answer: opening our minds to what's possible, instead of clinging to accepted notions about what's not, can lead to better health at any age.
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Surprisingly disappointing
- By Stephen on 06-23-09
By: Ellen J. Langer
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Born for Love
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From birth, when babies' fingers instinctively cling to those of adults, their bodies and brains seek an intimate connection - a bond made possible by empathy, the remarkable ability to love and to share the feelings of others. In this unforgettable book, award-winning science journalist Maia Szalavitz and renowned child psychiatrist Bruce D. Perry explain how empathy develops, why it is essential both to human happiness and for a functional society, and how it is threatened in a modern world.
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Born for Love is a Rallying Call for Caring and Cry for Help
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By: Bruce D. Perry, and others
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The Biology of Desire
- Why Addiction Is Not a Disease
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The psychiatric establishment and rehab industry in the Western world have branded addiction a brain disease based on evidence that brains change with drug use. But in The Biology of Desire, cognitive neuroscientist and former addict Marc Lewis makes a convincing case that addiction is not a disease and shows why the disease model has become an obstacle to healing. Lewis reveals addiction as an unintended consequence of the brain doing what it's supposed to do - seek pleasure and relief - in a world that's not cooperating.
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An important addition to understanding addiction.
- By Jeff M on 02-28-16
By: Marc Lewis PhD
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The Longevity Project
- Surprising Discoveries for Health and Long Life from the Landmark Eight-Decade Study
- By: Howard S. Friedman, Leslie R. Martin
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 8 hrs and 26 mins
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For years we have been told to make lists and obsessively monitor when we’re angry, what we eat, how much we worry, and how often we go to the gym. So why isn’t everyone healthy? Now based on the most extensive study of long life ever conducted The Longevity Project reveals what really matters across the long run—the personality traits, relationships, experiences, and career paths that naturally keep you vital.
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Good info to know about
- By Thomas on 11-10-11
By: Howard S. Friedman, and others
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The Marshmallow Test
- Mastering Self-Control
- By: Walter Mischel
- Narrated by: Alan Alda
- Length: 7 hrs and 54 mins
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In The Marshmallow Test, Mischel explains how self-control can be mastered and applied to challenges in everyday life - from weight control to quitting smoking, overcoming heartbreak, making major decisions, and planning for retirement. With profound implications for the choices we make in parenting, education, public policy and self-care, The Marshmallow Test will change the way you think about who we are and what we can be.
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Great performance, but lacking in content
- By Hilary - San Francisco on 09-27-14
By: Walter Mischel
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Rewire
- Change Your Brain to Break Bad Habits, Overcome Addictions, Conquer Self-Destructive Behavior
- By: Richard O'Connor Ph.D.
- Narrated by: Fred Stella
- Length: 10 hrs and 18 mins
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Performance
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We humans tend to get in our own way time and time again - whether it comes to not speaking up for ourselves, going back to bad romantic partners, our umpteenth diet, or engaging in any of a range of bad habits we just can’t seem to shake. In Rewire, renowned psychotherapist Richard O’Connor, PhD, reveals why our bad habits die so hard. We have two brains - one a thoughtful, conscious, deliberative self, and the other an automatic self that does most of the work without our attention.
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Meh
- By Grateful on 12-31-14
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What listeners say about Good Reasons for Bad Feelings
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Cliente Amazon
- 07-01-21
Ricapitolazione scorrevole ed approfondita.
Ricapitolazione scorrevole ed approfondita. Fornisce le basi per capire i disturbi mentali partendo da premesse teoretiche scientifiche.
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- david
- 08-07-19
great ideas
Wow. this is very confirming and validating. i'll listen again. for me it had considerable depth in fields that only a few yrs ago didn't exist.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Micah D
- 05-27-19
A Very Good, if Imperfect, Book
Nesse does a nice job of surveying an impossibly complex mental landscape. And he succeeds in making the ideas interesting and accessible. Truly, the book is an accomplishment. His tone is encouraging, and he approaches professions and theories with an inclusive openness. Unfortunately, that openness breaks down to unboundedness at times. His oddly strident defense of debunked psychoanalytic theory (including a shrill protest of a "purge") did not fit well in a book that claims a position on "the frontier." Similarly out of place were the heroic-insight clinical vignettes; these sophomoric tales almost certainly were forced in per editorial insistence to add human interest. The weaknesses can be forgiven, given the size of the challenge and the genuine value of this effort. Nesse's book is a provocative resource for psychiatric residents, clinical psych interns, and anyone wanting to shake up the way they think about mental health and illness.
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8 people found this helpful
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- Elisabeth
- 03-19-21
A must read for everyone
If you live anywhere on the Mediterranean coast, you'll feel it in your skin even deeper
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- David P. Wingert
- 05-16-24
Very good resource.
The author goes to great effort to try to provide a balanced view. Much of what he writes deserves to be heard and studied. The explanation, in evolution, leaves room for other causes, e.g., a designer or God, that reaches the same end.
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- Mykul
- 11-12-24
Great approach
very thought provoking. highly recommend for anyone who thinks about humans. worth the time
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- Brett B.
- 06-04-19
Hands down a must read!! HIGHLY recommend
I listened to this book on audible and it is hands down one of the best books I have ever listened to (or read)! I purchased this audiobook thinking I would learn a thing or two about mental disorders but rather learned a million things about life / humankind in general.
It is refreshing to learn that there are logical (evolutionary) reasons for our feelings, emotions, etc. I never thought about this. Even though I have no background in psychiatry nor am I involved in the medical field this book was easy to understand and follow.
I'm glad I found this book and have been recommending it to all of my friends (and now the amazon universe) to improve their lives. I read another comment mentioning this as a must read and I couldn't agree more. The author truly thinks deeply about these issues and its astonishing that he can fit all of these thoughts into 1 book. I'm very thankful.
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5 people found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 05-22-20
Thoughtful and methodical - dryness is the price
I said it all in the title but 15 words are required here. Last two.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Michal
- 12-06-19
Fantastic
Fantastic book, inspiring and engaging and curious!! The performance is wonderful and. a pleasure to listen !!
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- David
- 09-23-20
Highly insightful work by a researcher who has thorough knowledge of the field
Dr. Nesse Did a marvelous job of communicating some complex ideas in a manner that helps someone without a thorough grounding in mental illness or in evolutionary biology, to understand where mental illness might come from. There are numerous insights in the book that are useful to anyone with a brain, or anyone who interacts with anyone with a brain.
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