The Next Three Traits

175 comics and over 300 famous quotes mix fun relatability with the serious underlying science to give a clearer understanding of what's happening in the moments when tension is felt.

Anxiety makes people think that something should be different than it is, and maintains discomfort (tension) until a desired change happens. Tension happens alongside pleasure (as desire for better) as much as it happens alongside pain (also as desire for better). It's triggered by different inputs, at different strengths, for different people.

This book covers the main classes of tension triggers like identity, individuality, ranking, group harmony, the emotions of others, resource acquisition, food taste, health, safety, purpose, sexual features, and touch, smell, sound, and visual sensations.

On the science side this book proposes that the Limbic System (in the brain) acts like a subjective, emotional sense organ. It proposes that anxiety is best modeled as an allergic reaction. The book starts by defining terms and concepts. It then shows what life is like at the high and low end of the seven basic anxiety spectrums. It then goes through the underlying triggers and mechanisms which explain the gaps between what people think and feel. Comics and quotes come across differently when they happen alongside discussion of the underlying psychology of the speakers.

This book doesn’t pretend that you can become happy-all-the-time. You’re going to get triggered again, and it might be soon. But you can have a plan and develop habits that reduce the frequency and severity of negative triggers, and increase the frequency and severity of loving, enthusiastic, joyful triggers.