February: Love and Belonging
I invite you to take a few minutes and slowly engage with this exercise to maximize its full potential.
Pause and take a moment to check in with yourself.
Imagine you are flipping the page on your calendar to this new month.
You see the word “February.”
Without trying to change your thoughts or judge yourself, what emotions organically come up? Where do you feel those emotions in your body?
Check in with all of your senses (sight, touch, taste, hearing, smell); do any of them have memories that come up?
What about dates or anniversaries of events?
Who in your life do you associate with this month?
What does this month mean to you?
Take another moment and breathe in deeply for 4 seconds,
hold it for 4 seconds,
then slowly exhale for 4 seconds.
Without any force or resistance, what comes up when you think about the word “love?”
What about the word “belonging?”
Just notice what your thoughts are about hearing those two words, for they will be the lens that you read this blog and you connect with the world around you.
In the month of January, people tend to focus on themselves and their inner world. In a life-long quest for finding “peace” (“balance,” “nirvana,” “insert life goal word here”), the mind will naturally start seeking clues on how to achieve this by searching in our environment. That tends to be a natural focus for the month of February.
Do you believe in love? How do you know it does or does not exist? What areas of your life do you feel like you belong, like you actually fit in. It is important to understand that love and belonging are pivotal to your mental health and that is usually accomplished through close, human relationships, but there are other ways as well. Over this month, we will be checking in on many ways to search for love and belonging in our environment and some of them might surprise you.
Love has been researched and explored by all disciplines, and it turns out that science and psychology agree on a few things. Love is an energy produced by hormones. In relationships, oxytocin is one of the most important hormones your body produces. It’s called the “love hormone” and it helps create a sense of belonging, calmness, and security. Another hormone is vasopressin. This hormone also helps with creating attachment in relationships. Other hormones produced in the body create a sense of belonging - testosterone and estrogen send signals of interest. Dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin all create attraction. Love is also an action that requires some sense of quality and reciprocity. Science may create the start to a love bond, but ultimately it is up to the sense of belonging that will lead to longevity and deep affection towards others.
In no way am I suggesting that the only way to get a sense of love and belonging is through relationships with others. As we explore love and belonging this month, we will look into diversifying where you find your sense of connection. We will expand on how being chemical and hormone deficient affects your mental health. If you completed the exercise above, you have already engaged in something different, acceptance of self. Accepting the “authentic self” in micro-moments is the start of the most important relationship of love and belonging - the one you create with yourself.
Silver Buonocore, LMHC
