English
21002
Sarah Perez
Josiah Rajgopaul
CCNY
Reflection
I thought about my research question by trying to imagine what could help me grow as a person. There are some pieces of information that no matter what we choose to do in life, will help us tremendously, by being universal in that regard. Initially my question was, what are the effects of love on our mental health? However, upon initially having that question, it had caused a lot of confusion with people, as it was seen as too broad. I was often asked to further clarify that statement, and make it more digestible, so I decided to try to uncover the relationship between love and our mental health as a whole, by seeing how relationships and the love they foster affects us. There were a large number of challenges I faced when trying to find credible sources, first and foremost, there were a lot of pseudo scientific sources, especially because of my research question relating to love. I wanted reputable and scientific facts to back up my claims, and although anyone can write about love because it’s a universal thing, to have credibility to someone’s name especially with science would help my case significantly. As such, I’ve discarded a number of sources that I felt weren’t reliable enough, especially from blog posts from people without degrees. If given more time to conduct an interview, I would have tried to find more people who have done experiments in this field to not only touch on the practical applications of what I’ve researched but also the scientific areas. A course learning outcome that I’ve utilized while undoing this research would be practice using various library resources, online databases, and the Internet to locate sources appropriate to your writing projects, as I’ve referred to various articles online for this essay.
Relationships
In our day to day lives, we should always strive to make the most out of every moment. Our time on this Earth is limited, so we should do what we can to try and make the quality of our life better. My question is, how does love affect our mental health? We all can get joy and love out of different places, but there are some traits that are universally human. One of these traits is that the quality and the strength of our relationships could actually affect our physical and mental health significantly. (Department of Health & Human Services, 2017). Having these worthwhile connections can reportedly reduce anxiety and depression rates, cause us to have a higher sense of self esteem, as well as be more empathetic as people. Oddly enough, it could also allow us to have a stronger immune system. (Department of Health & Human Services, 2017) All these factors adding up can just go to show how essential relationships alone can be for us to thrive in many ways. When it comes to an absence of these relationships it can cause irregular sleep patterns, higher blood pressure, and increased stress. This can also cause an increased likelihood for depression and even suicide. It’s even flat out stated that having relationships leads to a better quality of life. (Department of Health & Human Services, 2017).
Something Natural by Design
Love and trust is the backbone to any healthy relationship. (Department of Health & Human Services, 2017) Love is linked to our biological nature as humans, more specifically the dopamine and reward receptors being fired off within the brain. (Love and the brain. Harvard Medical School). This goes to show, from a biological standpoint, science shows how beneficial that love can be for us. Love can take many forms, from a romantic relationship to a family connection. At the end of the day, regardless of how a relationship manifests, the research shows that when we feel love, it can actually deactivate the neural pathways that let us feel negative emotions, like fear or social judgment. (Love and the brain. Harvard Medical School). Moreover, it’s also mentioned that some of the most primitive areas of the human brain are involved with love. (Love and the brain. Harvard Medical School). In other words, when we take a step back to look at how the brain works, fundamentally, not only is our brain hard wired to crave and desire love from a primal standpoint, but it also rewards us and casts away negativity inherently when we receive love. In those regards, the natural and most healthy thing to do is embrace love. This goes to further establish the relationship between love and our health, by showing how beneficial love is for us. When 2,500 scans of the human brain were done on people who looked at somebody they loved and then somebody they were just familiar with, the people who felt love had their brains become more active. (Love and the brain. Harvard Medical School) What this means is, fundamentally, our brain simply works more when we feel love, which in some regards can be seen as us unlocking more of our potential.
What’s best for Our Health
With all the prior points I’ve shed light on in reference, we should all be able to agree that love just overall makes our lives healthy. Believe it or not though, there are a lot of layers to unpack behind this sentiment. Older people, who have obviously lived longer, can have their mental health decline and actually have poorer physical health if they don’t have any meaningful connections or support. (What’s love got to do with mental health? Next Avenue 2022) We’re said to be social creatures that thrive on social interactions, and unfortunately if we’re left alone for too long without love we can feel increased rates of depression as mentioned before, and poorer physical health. We shouldn’t just focus on health, but also in fostering environments we enjoy for our sake. There is a clear relationship between love and better psychological being in life, and it also can give us a feeling of euphoria. Moreover, chemicals can be released within a couple between one another to further strengthen their bond, similar to the chemical release between a mother and a child. (What’s love got to do with mental health? Next Avenue 2022)
What this means in other words, is that from a natural and biological standpoint our bodies literally respond to love and reward us for it in various ways, and our bodies release chemicals in an effort to grow closer to those who we love. For these various reasons I’m inclined to believe that love’s relationship to our health is beneficial and ideal, and we should foster and promote love with what we do.
Real Life Examples
When prompted to do research in this topic, I tried thinking about real world applications for this information. How could one utilize this information in order to better their daily lives? Naturally, it’s a firmly held belief anybody has the capacity to show love and empathy if they so choose. As such, I seeked people who assist others in critical points of their lives, who actively implement love into their jobs. I spoke with Mr.Gafur, a highschool teacher about his preferred style of teaching, and how it affected his classroom. He mentioned how highschool could be a very stressful moment in students lives, but when he shows up with passion and love for what he does, and he treats students with respect, it makes them easily more motivated to do the work. He said “Kindness is contagious”. He mentioned how there are all kinds of different ways to show passion and that you care, and how his love for his job not only helps himself but his students as well. This actually aligns with what research shows, if you motivate and inspire your students as a teacher they want to do more. (“When You Believe in Your Students They Do Better.” YouCubed, 2019) This mirrors the effects of love and our mental health, because when you treat people with love and reaffirm their efforts they will actually be in a mentally better place and improve. In addition to Mr. Gafur, I also spoke with another person with a lot of experience, albeit in a different area, nevertheless still utilizing the same principles, Ms. Shameen is an assistant at a hospital, and in conversation with me she explained very simply, your attitude when you show up to help people can very seriously make a drastic difference when it comes to recovery. Basic kindness and empathy and love for what you do can not only make your attitude and composure when you do your daily activities better, it can also help take stress away from the patient and make them more relaxed. “These are people in high stress situations, and if you’re there for them, it makes all the difference.” What Ms.Shameen explained to me aligns perfectly with the narrative painted by research, in terms of how compassion and empathy and caring can make patients healthy and feel better. (Compassionomics: The Revolutionary Scientific Evidence That Caring Makes a Difference, 2019.)
Conclusion
In conclusion, no matter what career we pursue, or what relationship dynamic is observed, universally love is essential for us to be in a healthy mental space. I’ve gone through speaking to professionals in different areas who utilize these principles that help them in a plethora of different ways, and they’ve described it as life changing. Not only can you come to appreciate the little things in life, but you feel better while you’re living too. I understand for some, establishing these relationships and dynamics, and moreover accepting love can be very challenging, however I’ll illustrate some ways in which we can seek a better mental state. In life we develop a number of habits, these can be healthy habits, like working out. Other times, these habits can be detrimental, like flat out rejecting love and the idea of getting closer to people or displaying emotion because it makes us uncomfortable. The issue here is, if you don’t allow yourself to fully feel or display how you feel, you’re inherently depriving yourself the experience of being authentic to who you really are. The trick is, we have to take risks and to break out of our comfort zone, as what’s comfortable for us isn’t always what’s best for us, and the payoff makes the initial discomfort worth the risk. There will be a number of times we may fail in our endeavors, however we must remember we’ve only truly failed when we’ve wholeheartedly given up.
References
Department of Health & Human Services. (2017, October 2). Strong relationships, Strong Health. Better Health Channel. https://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/health/healthyliving/Strong-relationships-strong-health
Love and the brain. Harvard Medical School. (n.d.). https://hms.harvard.edu/news-events/publications-archive/brain/love-brain
Next Avenue. (2022, March 18). What’s love got to do with mental health? Next Avenue. https://www.nextavenue.org/whats-love-got-to-do-with-mental-health/
