Structure and stimulation from human interactions and activities with others: games, sport, groups, intimacy, loving relationships and family provide us with human structure and stimulation. We are built to live in a community. Distress and dysregulation from a lack of human structure and stimulation can be as damaging as malnutrition.
People are in states of dysregulation for long periods, not self regulation with electronic devices – due to not interactitng with a human-being. The same is true for driving for long periods on your own. Hence coffee is on the incline as a stimulant to try to survive or compensate for a deficit in human interactions and spending large amounts of time on devices without human interactions.
The stress response becomes dominant in long periods without others as you are in isolation and task oriented. Your energy rises to your mind and you become more rational, less optimistic and more dysregulated. It is human structure and stimulation that keeps you in your body.
A lack of meaningful interactions on a daily basis for most people is a serious problem now in society due to technological advances, with computers and phones being the dominant ways of communicating with others. We need human interactions in the physical realm, not the virtual realm, to provide us with human structure and stimulation – community is medicine.
Dogs
Dogs can replace human interactions to a degree, due to the companionship they provide. They can also read facial cues such as eye contact and facial expressions to experience a meaningful interaction with humans. As a professional credentialed coach it is important to explore the quality and number of human interactions our clients has throughout their week, to determine if they have a good support structure, family and community to achieve a state of self-regulation from meaningful human interactions.
