I think "content" is the English word the author is looking for - the first definition I see on Google from Oxford is "in a state of peaceful happiness" which seems like the intended long-term meaning - "a state", not a moment, and "peaceful", not surprise-driven. Beyond that, I'm a bit lost by where this is going - like the segue into confidence and building confidence by e.g. learning about roof building techniques…
> In order to cure my depression, I did the evolutionary psychology thing hard-core: I got married and had children. I dropped out of university. I moved to the countryside. I started to renovate and build houses and to grow food for my family.
What seems like the author's fundamental explanation is also written there:
> It is exactly the same with psychological pain. Ideally, psychological pain is information saying "stop doing what you are doing". The mechanism is not perfect and many people suffer from inexplicable psychological pain. But still, the purpose of psychological pain is telling people they are probably hurting their genes.
> One big problem is that our genes weren't invented yesterday. What was once good for our genes is not necessarily good for our genes today. So when we experience psychological pain, it is likely to be because we do something that was bad for our ancestors' genes.
She also notes that a lot of genes were selected for in the last 10k years, so some of our genetic instincts are for farming rather than hunting and gathering. [2]
[1] https://woodfromeden.substack.com/p/how-i-cured-myself-with-... [2] https://woodfromeden.substack.com/p/the-10-000-year-explosio...