Even as an adult -- really, I can only speak for myself, but my opinion is that this applies to most other people -- the brain understands and registers this same need for love. Do we really die without it? Do we really understand the importance of love, how to give it properly, and it's impact on health, as a human species? It's possible, to me, at least, that it's a powerful expression of emotion that human beings are either programmed to keep or discard as they age. The expression of emotions has a strong impact on people, and this can be seen whenever someone gets into an argument and has negative physical responses, verses someone who is hugging another person, who happens to have positive physical responses.
Love is powerful. Does anyone realize how essential and powerful it is?
How do you live without it if
- 1. you don't know how to give and receive love in a healthy, genuine way,
- 2. and you don't know how to keep anyone in your life who loves you because you don't know how to reciprocate genuine expressions of love?
Self-love is hard. It's especially hard for a survivor of various forms of childhood abuse. There is no guarantee, for me, that I can hold onto the idea of being lovable, so the idea of self-love is fleeting. It comes and it goes, for me; the idea of it doesn't stay. It wouldn't matter how much I worked on loving myself because the ever-present doubt of me being lovable would be in the back of my mind all the time. It waits until I think I am lovable and then it comes out and attacks that idea and makes me hold the belief that I am not lovable.
People are important in our outside environment. This is why places like psychiatric hospitals really push the concept of contacting family members and friends for something they like to call a "Safety Plan". Not everyone has friends and family members in their lives who are good enough to be on someone's "Safety Plan". It was a matter of coming to this realization, for me, that not having those types of people in my life for this so-called "Safety Plan" that it was the very reason I ended up in the psychiatric hospital in the first place. The fact that no one else but me could see that was sad.