Gestures Of Care Improve The Quality Of Life

Gestures of care, like all other attentions, play an important role in our well-being. However, as is often the case with health, we begin to value them in the presence of an emotional problem or wound.

On the other hand, the quality of life, translated into physical, emotional and social well-being, is closely associated with health. This is just one of the reasons gestures of affection are so important.

What does offering gestures of care mean?

Gestures of care are connected to the world of emotions. It is about giving attention and protecting feelings, thoughts and actions.

They require a right disposition of mind; we must remember to give to the people we love:

• Affection, which is transmitted through small gestures, caresses, looks, words and smiles.
• Empathy. It is the ability to put yourself in the other’s shoes. This way we will be able to understand him better and give importance to what he feels.
• Respect. It means taking into consideration, not going beyond the limits imposed by the other, but also enforcing ours.
• Gratitude. It allows us to recognize what others do for us and what we ourselves do.
• Patience. It is the ability to face any situation without losing your temper.

All of these values ​​are fundamental when it comes to care. The idea is to give value to the emotional sphere, to provide support in difficult situations, to offer our perspective so that the other can learn from the situations they face.

Trust also plays its part: it is important to be able to count on someone who respects us and makes us feel good.

Gestures of care protect and  shape us. They allow us to learn from emotions and to enjoy a better quality of life. They can be addressed to others, to ourselves or, for example, to nature.

The importance of health care gestures

In the first years of our life, the gestures of care come from the mother, from the father or from whoever looks after us. They guarantee our survival because when we are born we depend on what others do for us.

Then our idea of ​​feeling begins to take shape, of how we should behave with others and with ourselves. We too begin to express gestures of care towards others and towards ourselves. If our emotional world collapses, we won’t be able to help support that of others.

Gestures of affection affect emotional, physical and social health.

• On the emotional one because they guide us, they give us security, understanding and support.
• Social because they help us understand how we should interact with each other.
• Finally, physics, because diseases are aggravated if our mood is negative.

What does psychology say?

Psychology and psychoanalysis have come to the conclusion that affective deficiencies hinder the development of the child. On an emotional level, above all, they facilitate the tendency to establish toxic relationships. 

Much of the research on gestures of care in the 1900s started from the analysis of psychological disorders related to the construction of identity, as suggested by Bion, Anna Freud and Winnicott. Around the 1970s, John Bowlby went further. In devising the attachment theory, he suggested that establishing close relationships is even essential to our very survival. 

Today, thanks to advances in neuroimaging techniques, we can see its effects on the brain. This is what Nafissa Ghanem suggests in her article “ The impact des carences afectives vus par les neurosciences ”. Thanks to the evidence offered by magnetic resonance we can understand how the mechanisms of emotional deprivation, or the lack of attachment, act on the human brain.

New discoveries in the neurophysiological field confirm the importance of caring gestures in childhood development. Furthermore, they suggest that mental maturation is conditioned by the social, emotional and cultural environment and will adapt over the course of a lifetime.

Taking care and its benefits

Being able to count on gestures of care guarantees us a better quality of life. Here are some of the more visible benefits:

• They help us understand the emotional world.
• They improve communication.
• They make us feel safe.
• They help integral development.
• They create connections with their surroundings, with people and with ourselves.
• They create favorable conditions for learning.
• They improve the management of emotions.
• They increase self-awareness.

Gestures of affection therefore open the door to the world of emotions, allow us to grow, to establish better relationships with others, with ourselves and with nature.

In short, we can say that they are fundamental to our growth. A growth that in many cases will be favored by assertiveness. However, our behavior does not depend only on the gestures of care we receive in the early years. Certainly life experiences will also help shape our personality.