Dr. Michael Gervais

And we're the team.

And we came back empty-handed.

The elders of the tribe would say something like, you know, Hala, you know, Mike, we're counting on you.

There's going to be some hungry kids in our tribe because you didn't bring back this stuff.

What happened?

And you'd say, it wasn't me, it was Mike.

Or you'd say, look, okay, we understand.

Okay, all right, give us another shot.

We understand what we did.

And the elders say, okay, you got another shot.

We're backing you.

So we go out and if we come back empty-handed again,

We're relegated.

And being relegated socially 200,000 years ago was a near-death sentence because you and I try to figure out the wild world of the wildebeest and the warring tribes and rain and heat.

It's too much.

We need each other.

So our brain is tuned to listen for our name.

It's tuned to what are they saying or thinking.

And we're playing this game, this radical game of not being rejected, of avoiding rejection.

So it's this fear of rejection that is just underneath the surface.