In fact, everyone is "love-brained"?

Love is sweet and makes people yearn for it, but there are also many people who are trapped by love, and even seek death when the relationship fails, which seriously affects their normal life. We often jokingly call people who are too involved in love "love brain".

You may be curious - from a psychological perspective, is "love brain" a normal phenomenon? Why is breaking up so painful? And, will frequent failed relationships have irreversible effects on people? In this article, we will talk to you about the little thing called "love".

01

Maybe... everyone is "love-brained"

When we are "in love", we recall our many behaviors in love and always feel that we were a little "love-brained" at that time, and we regret our "stupid" behavior. In fact, "dementia" in love also has a basis in brain science.

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In April 2021, researchers from the Scripps Research Institute in the United States published a study in Nature that provided an explanation for the phenomenon of "love dementia" from a biochemical perspective, starting from the concept of "forgetting". Forgetting can be permanent or temporary, and it can help the brain manage memory (because there are too many memories).

In this study, researchers discovered a neurobiological mechanism that causes people in love to forget temporarily. This is because there is a memory suppression of temporary forgetting mediated by dopamine neurons in the brain, and the activation of dopamine neurons may cause some memories to be temporarily forgotten. When we are in love, we secrete a large amount of dopamine, and some memories are temporarily suppressed, making some common sense judgments blurred and rationality gone. This provides an explanation for the "intelligence decline" in love.

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However, these common sense memories are not actually gone, they just cannot be retrieved for a short period of time. As time goes by, when they can be retrieved again, these temporarily suppressed memories will become clear again. When our dopamine secretion decreases and we "get over" the love affair, our rationality will be restored as the suppressed memories are restored.

From this it can be seen that love makes people blind is a real psychological phenomenon, and "love brain" is a "love trap" that everyone cannot escape.

02

Love is not only sad, but also hurts your brain

In addition to "short-term dementia", another emotional fluctuation brought by love may come from breaking up. We often say that breaking up makes us sad, but psychological research shows that the failure of love hurts the brain, not the heart.

In a 2011 study conducted by the Fitzgerald Laboratory at University College London, neuroscientists found through brain scans that the areas that are excited when people are addicted to love are the same areas that are excited when they take heroin. When we first fall in love, it is just like when we first take drugs. The reward nerves in the brain are turned on, repeatedly releasing the happy hormone dopamine, which drives us to stick with our loved ones every day, which is what we call addiction.

But after a breakup, the brain still wants to get the reward of dopamine, but the reality no longer allows it. It's like an addict without drugs. The brain nerves will motivate you to do all kinds of stupid things, such as desperately calling your ex, getting drunk in the bar, and even having a one-night stand. And after a breakup, the pain control system in the brain is also activated, which can affect the heart, digestion and immune system. This is how the feeling of heartache comes.

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From this we can see that seeking death because of love is just a normal reaction of the brain being "damaged". It will gradually recover with the passage of time, so there is no need to be too anxious.

However, if failed relationships have made you afraid of intimacy, then you need to be alert - you may have fallen into "attachment injury". The concept of "attachment injury" originated from the clinical practice of marriage and family counseling by Johnson and other researchers in 20001. In an intimate relationship, when one party destroys, violates or fails to meet the "expectations" in the relationship, it will cause emotional or psychological trauma to the other party, and then "attachment injury" will appear.

The impact and harm caused by attachment damage to people are not like physical trauma which leaves some "visible" wounds. Therefore, those unresolved knots continue to affect people's intimate relationships unconsciously, and even continue to affect subsequent relationships after the original relationship ends.

For example, the experience of failure in love will threaten our cognition and view of ourselves. It makes people begin to doubt whether they are capable of making accurate judgments about the world and others. They may even begin to deny their own value, thinking that they are not cherished because they are not good enough and that they are not worthy of being treated gently.

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It can be said that many times, when we are in a new relationship, even if the other party has not done anything deceitful, we still continue to distrust the other party. In the final analysis, it is actually because we have lost trust in ourselves. In the end, these changes in cognition not only make us no longer trust the relationship and the other party, but also make us no longer trust ourselves. Therefore, we unknowingly carry the unrepaired past - these painful feelings and distorted cognitions, and face the people and things in the current situation in the same way as we dealt with the past.

03

Good love requires a moderate degree of indifference

In fact, good love requires "moderate indifference". If you are tired of the emotional fluctuations brought by love, you might as well try "moderate withdrawal". Moderate withdrawal means that when the emotions are intense, you can temporarily jump out of the emotions and create an observing self in your heart.

In this process, we observe our own behavior and emotions without any judgment or position, and observe everything that happens when we interact with each other. In a relationship, we are devoted and immersed in it because of the passionate love, but it is also easy to stick to our own goals and ideas, causing both parties to have blind spots in each other's desires and needs.

If you can observe your feelings as an "outsider", temporarily withdraw from the state of immersion appropriately, and not be affected by the bias brought about by emotions, you will give the relationship more room for exploration and growth.

References:

[1] Burton, N. (2017). What's the Difference Between Friendship and Love? Psychology Today.

[2] Chew-Helbig, N. (2020). Amendt-Lyon: Creative Indifference & Gestalt Psychotherapy. Chew-Helbig Psychotherapist.

[3] Labier, D. (2010). A Declining Relationship? Recharge It Through "Indifference". Psychology Today.

[4] Mann, D. (2010). Gestalt therapy: 100 key points and techniques. Routledge.

[5] Papp, LM, Kouros, CD, & Cummings, EM (2009). Demand-Withdraw Patterns in Marital Conflict in the Home. Personal Relationships, 16(2), 285–300.

[6] Whitbourne, SK (2012). What Is the Passion in Passionate Love? Psychology Today.

Source: Author | Tang Yicheng, Editor | Jiang Fan

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