Several years ago I discovered ‘The Great Courses’ on Audible and downloaded several with stored up credits. I listened to one, which was very well written and interesting, but left the others mothballing in my library because I don’t spend much time with headphones in or speakers on.
I’ve been making an effort over the last few months to broaden my horizons through reading and courses, and have been listening to “Stress and Your Body” by Prof. Robert Sapolsky on walks or in the car to and from work. As with all new information, some of it is “sticky” and will remain prominently in our brains even if sometimes we wish it wouldn’t (I have learned things I never considered about hyenas listening to this – I will spare you the details!). Others weave into our mind more as impressions giving slight tilts and extra substance to our thoughts and perspectives even if later we do not realise where this detail came from.
I was listening to a module on modulators of stress this week: there are two main ways in which mammals discharge stress: lashing out (passing it to another) or social behaviour such as grooming. It struck me as I lay in bed that night with a book and my cat immediately jumped up to claim the space on my chest right in front of my face that this is possibly a large reason we have pets.
The days were most of us directly benefitted from animals in our lives increasing our chances of survival either through providing or defending food or bringing security are behind many of us, so why has the prevalence of ‘working’ animals in our homes continued to extend far beyond their use as tools? The obvious answer is because they still bring a benefit to our lives.
Modern living, at least in the Western world, has drifted further from our clan roots and our households are much smaller – we do not see multiple generations of our families daily or interact with our neighbours sometimes at all. Our opportunities to discharge stress through close social interaction with trusted people are curtailed – particularly as the distances people can live from their family nucleus can now be hundreds of miles.
Domesticated animals brought into our homes can give us a guaranteed interaction with a living creature as soon as we enter the door – and another known stress reliever is having a degree of control over stressful situations: the repetition of your cat, dog, rabbit always coming to greet you as soon as you enter the house no matter what mood you’re in after your day is calming in itself – this is an interaction with predictability. This is even before you have reached for the animal in question to directly interact with it.
The caressing of fur and giving an obvious pleasure to another creature – purring, tail wagging, kneading – mimics the grooming seen in populations of apes and rodents which have been proven to reduce stress hormone levels and bond the animals together. I do not know how our ancestors interacted, but they would definitely have been more closely knit than our ‘clans’ of today and this likely includes physical contact of a social nature.
I believe humans naturally recognise the need to be physically present for each other in times of stress, but through social stigma we have curtailed it to certain emotions or situations: It’s very natural to reach for someone’s shoulder or give them a hug when they’re upset, we affirm relationships through handshakes or pressing cheeks together, we pat small children on the head and hold hands with those we are close to. The recognition of the importance of these small moments however is drifting – we take for granted that people know we’re here in our relationships without making those reaffirming signals for ourselves and them that this is so until the other is in a heightened stress response.
As we drift further onto lonely roads as individuals, it may be the animals rather than the people in our life who keep us grounded.
A Life of Well 