“Tell me about your emotional support network,” I ask patients every year at their annual exam.
Our relationships kill us or save us, I am still convinced.
How is your emotional support network? If you’re really honest: How secure are you in your relationships? How truly connected do you feel to the people in your life? In my mind, secure and connected relationships make up the core of our health and well-being. They are what give us deepest meaning and purpose, and what hold us up through any and all adversity.
This feeling of closeness, the ineffable sense of connection that inspires the most timeless and evocative poetry, that moves us to heroic acts, and that inexorably bonds lovers, friends, and especially mothers and children, is mediated in large part by oxytocin, the so-called love hormone. In the body it facilitates childbirth and lactation by contracting smooth muscle in the uterus and milk ducts. It plays a role in sexual arousal and orgasm. In the brain it promotes feelings of relaxation, trust, and belonging. It may even make us better at attuning to one another’s emotional cues. Levels rise when we connect with others, such as when hugging, dancing, and even reading or hearing stories. Interestingly, oxytocin also increases in times of stress, such as when we are separated from loved ones and feeling anxious. How fascinating and protective–I LOVE how nature works! The research seems new, but it may be that when cortisol rose under threat stress (of which social isolation is one of the most severe and dangerous), our ancestors whose oxytocin levels also rose survived better because it caused them to seek reconnection with the tribe, to stay close despite the drive to separate. Like so many things in nature and the body, the dynamic balance of opposing instincts gives us amazingly effective elasticity, flexibility, and adaptiveness–not only for survival but to really thrive.
Like other neurotransmitters, oxytocin’s presence in tissues is transient, stimulated and cleared in the course of normal cellular function. That said, the frequency, intensity, and consistency of tissue exposure to oxytocin has important consequences. More oxytocin correlates with improved mood, more secure attachment, and even increased pro-social behavior such as donating to charity and helping others in need. So how can we get more of this life-enhancing hormone in our systems? It’s about relationships, duh.
“She understood now. Treasure wasn’t something that could be picked up and carried off, that could be owned. Whatever happened here… could only happen here, and after it happened, it lived on inside you.”
—The Conquering of Tate the Pious, Sierra Simone
Multitple times a week, I think my brain must be positively swimming in oxytocin. Ethos workouts with Jacob, Pam, Tim, Kasey, and now Andrew and Hailey stimulate it, for sure. I schedule regular meals and calls with close friends, and that always lifts me. These interpersonal contact highs defy verbal expression, truly. When I meet someone new I listen for their stories, engage my most sincere curiosity, and ask open ended questions to learn more about the very interesting person in front of me. We inevitably find something fascinating to share and expound on. I make these connections all the time, and the benefits last.
So therein lies the treasure. There simply is no substitute for the time and attention required to connect meaningfully in relationship with our fellow humans. Pictures in albums and shared on social media are great to commemorate, but they only matter because they bring back the feelings we had in communion–that warm and fuzzy, settled yet giddy, glad and joyous sense of true togetherness and connection.
And it doesn’t necessarily need to be in person. Phone, video, letters–OMG letters! Read how The World Showed Up For Steven through www.moreloveletters.com, a website that allows people to request snail mail for their loved ones going through a hard time. Steven was widowed after 64 years of marriage and his daughter thought she could get maybe a dozen people to drop him a note. He received hundreds of letters, some that also included gifts of books, drawings, and invitations to Zoom meals. You are not alone. If that doesn’t raise someone’s oxytocin levels, I don’t know what does.
Cards, gestures, messages, collages, stories; hugging, laughing, crying, cuddling, making love–sharing love–that’s what it’s about, my friends. And it’s all kinds of love: romantic, platonic, fraternal, familial, collegial–Agape. Just the act of giving it heals us, even if we don’t necessarily get it back. *sigh*
I bet writing this post has elevated my oxytocin levels! As I think of my amazing friends, my loved ones, my patients, colleagues, and all of you readers–we are all connected! I feel it in my chest the most–full and calm–comforted the way a soft, heavy blanket feels on a cold night. If you want an oxytocin boost and blogging isn’t your thing, try these 12 suggestions. Or just do what the meme below says. Regardless, I hope you’re getting all the connection you need and want to live your best life, dear Reader. It’s what I wish for us all.
Healing Through Connection 