“Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains.”
— Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Rousseau’ quote shows that humans are bonded with each other from the very moment they are born. These bonds which he calls chains are not real but connected virtually to our lives.
Well, calling this connectivity a chain mean we are in strong relationships with each other sand we cannot deny these bonds or the power they hold within. This is the beauty of our relationships, they have strong holding power of a chain.
Our relationships connect us to our family, friends, colleagues, society and culture. Without these chains of relationships we might not be who we are, live the way we live, act the way we act, talk the way we talk or even behave the way we do.
Relationships include all those people around us who are connected to us in any kind of physical or emotional bond. Our parents have strong emotional and physical bond with us because we are born from their physical being and their love and care develops a strong emotional relationship with them. Then comes our siblings who are also related to us because our origin of physical self is one with each other and from the same parent/s, which in turn develops an emotional bond as well, however this physical bond is taken over by the emotional bond as we grow. And our life partners, with whom we develop physical and emotional bond which can or cannot be successful as the marriage proceeds.
Relationships are very important from psychological point of view as well. We are born in our immediate relationships which we call family. Our parents provide our very first bonding experiences, from them we learn to be in relationship with others. Our siblings, being the second ones after parents, teach us a lot regarding relationship.
Family is our first learning environment, hence, being the most important as well. From there we develop our personality, our values, our identity and culture as well. Family is crucial to one’s life not only for safety reasons but for psychological reasons as well. Having relationships provides us with a sense of trust, increases our sense of identity and develops stability in our life. People with good relationships have better psychological well-being.
On the contrary, if someone has poor relationships with his close ones and others, he/she will not have good psychological well-being and that person might have to face social humiliation as well. This humiliation will ultimately affect his own physical and psychological condition
Research suggests that people who are having bad relationships do not grow as healthy human beings and slowly develop clinical problems and they may report such issues to their counsellors. Therefore, it is imperative to keep healthy relationships in our life because they ultimately affect us. Keeping healthy relationships is not easy but we have to keep on trying in our life as many opportunities will present itself.
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Presented to you by the Alegna Solutions Psychology Team
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