We know that good relationships are so important to our happiness, yet we may not know just how vital they are to our health and well-being.
What do our connections to others give us? And what happens when we don’t have them?
The Vital Benefits of Good Relationships
Research shows that good relationships help people live longer, deal with stress better, have healthier habits, and have stronger resistance to colds. In a 2010 review of 148 studies, researchers found that social relationships improve lifespans. People in healthy long-term relationships are 50% less likely to die prematurely than people without them. In terms of life expectancy, living without these relationships, is as unhealthy as smoking!
Humans are social beings – and the quality of our relationships affects our mental, emotional and physical health.
As researcher and author Brené Brown explains, “A deep sense of love and belonging is an irreducible need of all men, women, and children. We are biologically, cognitively, physically, and spiritually wired to love, to be loved, and to belong.”
What Happens Without Good Relationships
Without healthy connection, the result is not simply a quieter, duller life. The outcome is much worse than that. “When these needs are not met, we don’t function as we were meant to,” Brown assures us. “We break. We fall apart. We grow numb. We ache. We hurt others. We get sick. There are certainly other causes of illness, numbness, and hurt, but the absence of love and belonging will always lead to suffering.”
This is not an exaggeration, a hunch, or an opinion. A landmark public health study, called the Adverse Childhood Experiences or ACEs Study, amazed the medical and psychotherapy community by revealing how significant the quality of our relationships are to our health and even social behavior, with overwhelming evidence.
The Shocking Impact of Adverse Childhood Experiences
The CDC and Kaiser Permanente surveyed over 17,000 participants (a cross section of average Americans) between 1995-1997, and followed them for over 15 years. Researchers suspected that trauma in childhood was linked to adult conditions such as obesity.
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