- Loss aversion for me for physical goods is today defined by value of the item relative to my income. I probably won't fret over losing a water bottle or tearing a t-shirt, but losing my house is a real problem. 1 week salary worth for me is a ton of money since it has the potential to add up quickly - while I have gotten to a point where I have to lose way more water bottles than I got to get to a worry state. When I lost one of my bicycles - I was pissed but thankfully it didn't break it. I still followed up with cop reports etc. because it worried me about the garage safety. This doesn't tie into urges / financial security at lower levels.
- Financial security chase is innate - probably the closest to a primal urge. But I worry about calling it that because I don't know if having enough resources for the long term was a real concept. I can see how animals look at short term need addressal, I don't know if they really have a safety net mentality. That is a new one - but I may be splitting hairs. My theory is that it is a harkening to 'retirement' - something that's out of reach for more and more folks every day.
- primal urges for me are the base drives, the lower level of Mazlow's Hierarchy + progenies.
RE Anxiety's link to anyone of these: I am assuming that comes down to your current life situation + personal makeup.
Finally I always assumed folks talk about 'Medical depression' as a diagnosed scientifically + possibly treated mental issue. I wouldn't conflate that with Anxiety either. Anxiety might have you feeling down - but that isn't depression. The fact that we naturally tend to call feeling down as 'depressed' is probably one of the reasons depression doesn't get the attention it needs. (Again I don't understand depression myself thankfully, I am placing my trust in the doctors here).
Dude, that one's easy. Look at your cheap crappy bike and laugh. "Hah! What kind of self respecting thief would even bother stealing a crappy bike like this?"
These urges used to be necessary - the cave man that didn't worry about feeding himself and didn't worry about having his stuff stolen probably had a tougher time surviving - but I think the urges remain but there's no real outlet in many developed parts of the world.
As an addendum, I think a good way to mitigate this is to find things that satisfy these urges when possible, and be serenely introspective about the things you can't. When I stress out about material resource, I calculate how long I can live comfortably with no income and try to tangibly see hoe wide my safety net is (granted, this is not something that may result in reduced stress for everyone). But some things just need to be accepted as a part of myself. For instance when I feel the temptation to sleep with other women I just have to accept that this a part of an innate instinct to impregnate as many women as possible, instilled through hundreds of millennia of evolution in a society vastly different from the one I currently live in.