Shankar Vedantam

Athletes might try to break some long-held record.

Entrepreneurs might try to build a successful business.

But if those means to achieve recognition are closed off to us, some of us turn to more drastic measures.

In August 2005, a huge storm hit the Gulf Coast of the United States.

Hurricane Katrina, of course, caused devastating flooding and widespread destruction across Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama.

In the aftermath of the disaster, people had many basic needs.

They needed shelter, they needed food, but they also needed to feel like they weren't abandoned.

Talk about this idea that after a mass disaster, a huge problem, as a collective, we can feel like we need to matter.

You know, a few years ago, we had former U.S.

Surgeon General Vivek Murthy talking to us on Hidden Brain, and he was describing a time when he visited Flint, Michigan, and this was shortly after people there suffered from a major contamination in the water supply.

And one thing I remember he told me was that people were desperate, but not just for their water supply to be fixed, but for the sense that the world was not moving on, that the world actually stopped to notice what was happening, to say, we recognize and we empathize with what you're going through.

Above and beyond what we need to survive in a biological sense, human beings need to feel valued and special.

When we are in trouble or in pain, in particular, it's important to feel that we are not alone, that what happens to us matters to other people.

When we come back, the urge to feel seen and heard and cared about, and the consequences of feeling like we are not.

You're listening to Hidden Brain.

I'm Shankar Vedantam.

This is Hidden Brain.

I'm Shankar Vedantam.

Gordon Flett is a psychologist at York University in Canada.

He studies the psychological conditions that people need in order to thrive.