29d • General discussion
How Bad Relationships Impact Our Mental Heath Part 2
Modern research shows that when social connection is threatened or absent, the brain reacts as though something essential has gone wrong. Loneliness activates stress and threat systems in much the same way danger does. Neuroscience studies show that social rejection and exclusion trigger neural responses similar to real felt pain, which helps explain why loneliness doesn’t just feel sad, but unsettling and exhausting. So no, you’re not being dramatic. Being lonely really does suck.
This also helps explain why childhood connections often felt easier. Children seek proximity, play, and shared attention instinctively. They don’t intellectualise belonging; they embody it. Adulthood, on the other hand, prioritises independence, productivity, and emotional self-management. We also lose a certain fearlessness. It’s why social anxiety is relatively rare in children under ten. They approach the world with unfiltered curiosity. In all honesty, it’s one of the saddest losses we experience as we grow up, in my humble opinion. And the frustrating part when exploring all of this is that we don’t suddenly become less social creatures with age. We simply move into environments that ask us to override that wiring more often, slowly dulling those exploratory instincts one email reply and bill payment at a time.
As Dr Robert Waldinger, director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, puts it, strong relationships are the single most reliable predictor of long-term well-being. Not success. Not status. But everyday relationships. When connection is present, it buffers us against stress, creating something like a protective force field against life’s inevitable challenges. When it’s missing, the body registers that absence as a problem that needs solving.
By this point, it should be clear that relationships aren’t just a backdrop to our lives. They actively shape how we think, feel, and cope. Mental health doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and despite how individualised the conversation around wellbeing has become, our psychological stability is deeply relational. Strong, supportive relationships act as emotional regulators. They help us process stress, make sense of difficult experiences, and regain perspective when our thoughts start to spiral. When we feel securely connected to others, challenges don’t disappear, but they feel more manageable. We recover faster. We’re less likely to catastrophise. Our nervous systems calm more easily because they’re not carrying the load alone.
When those relationships are absent, strained, or emotionally unsafe, the opposite tends to happen. The brain shifts into a more vigilant state. We ruminate more. We doubt ourselves more readily. Small setbacks feel heavier, and stress lingers longer than it needs to. Over time, this chronic sense of emotional self-reliance can contribute to anxiety, low mood, and burnout, not because something is “wrong” with us, but because we’re trying to regulate complex emotional experiences without the support systems we evolved to rely on. Reaching out to others isn’t a sign of weakness; it’s a return to our biological needs, even if our stubborn adult brains sometimes resist it.
This is why research consistently links poor-quality relationships with higher rates of depression and anxiety, and strong social bonds with greater resilience and life satisfaction. It’s also why Dr Robert Waldinger’s work shows that relationships don’t just make life more enjoyable; they actively protect our mental health, particularly during periods of hardship. What matters here isn’t the size of your social circle or constant companionship. I’m not suggesting you start knocking on your neighbours’ doors every evening. The real difference lies in the quality of the connections you do have. Feeling genuinely understood by even one or two people can make a measurable difference in how we cope with life’s challenges. What all of these points to is something quietly hopeful. While we can’t control every relationship, every outcome, or every challenge life throws at us, our connections still sit within the part of mental health we have the most influence over. Some aspects of well-being are shaped by genetics. Others are shaped by circumstance. But relationships live in the space where daily choices matter. Who we prioritise, how we show up, and whether we allow ourselves to lean on others all shape how resilient we feel over time. To understand why this matters so much, and why it’s more within our control than we often realise, we need to look at what research says about happiness, genetics, and the part we actually get to play in our own wellbeing.
At this point, a fair question tends to surface. If connection matters this much, how much of our well-being is actually in our hands? The answer, according to decades of research, is both less and more than we’d like.
Psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky suggests that around 50 per cent of our baseline happiness is influenced by genetics. Yes, it’s a lot, and it can feel uncomfortable. It means that some of us are wired to experience the world a little more positively or negatively from the outset, placing us at an advantage or disadvantage when it comes to mental health. Despite being outside our control, that reality doesn’t always feel fair. What Lyubomirsky goes on to explain, however, is where things start to shift. Only around 10 per cent of our happiness is shaped by life circumstances, things like income, environment, and major life events. That is surprising, and it should also feel hopeful. The areas of life we often believe will determine our happiness actually account for a relatively small part of it.
That leaves roughly 40 per cent influenced by intentional actions and daily behaviours. This is where influence lives. If the 50 per cent feels daunting, this 40 per cent should feel energising. And this is exactly where relationships sit. We can’t change our genetic set point, and we don’t control everything that happens to us, no matter how much we plan or manifest. But we do have influence over how we engage with others. Whether we prioritise connection or postpone it. Whether we reach out or withdraw. Whether we allow ourselves to be known, or stay safely surface-level.
Biology supports this idea. Systems involving dopamine and oxytocin, chemicals linked to reward, bonding, and trust, play a role in how connected we feel to others. When relationships are supportive and emotionally safe, these systems reinforce a sense of pleasure and security. When the connection is missing, that reward loop weakens, and stress takes up more space instead.
What’s important here is that this isn’t about optimising happiness or forcing positivity. It’s about recognising where influence exists. Small, repeated relational choices compound over time, shaping how supported, resilient, and emotionally stable we feel. A conversation you don’t cancel. A message you do send. A moment of honesty instead of deflection. Happiness isn’t something we control outright. But connection is one of the most reliable ways we can nudge the system in our favour, not by doing more, but by choosing differently.
At this point, it’s tempting to turn connection into another self-improvement project. Something to optimise, schedule, or fix. Trust me, I’m exactly the type of person who would try to do that. The reality, though, is that rebuilding connection in adult life isn’t about doing more. It’s about doing things differently.
As children, connection was woven into our days. Play, proximity, shared time, and curiosity did most of the work for us. Even scheduled naps happened as a group. Adulthood removes that structure and replaces it with independence, efficiency, and personal responsibility. There’s nothing inherently wrong with independence, but there is something quietly damaging about withdrawing from the social world altogether.
Rebuilding a connection starts with letting go of the idea that it has to look impressive. Community isn’t about having a packed social calendar or endless group plans. It’s about mutual care. About knowing there are a few people who notice when you’re not quite yourself. And no, that doesn’t always mean you need a Snickers. More often, it means a valued conversation, a good laugh, or simply a shoulder to lean on.
This often means choosing depth over breadth. Fewer relationships, invested in more intentionally. Long-term research, including findings from the Harvard Study of Adult Development, shows that close, emotionally supportive relationships are far more important for well-being than having a large or busy social life. In practice, this might mean staying in a conversation a little longer instead of rushing to the next thing, or saying yes to an invitation you’d normally decline out of habit. Not because you should, but because connection rarely deepens without time and presence.
It also means allowing yourself to be known, which is usually the hardest part. Many adults are comfortable being liked, but far less comfortable being seen. Yet vulnerability is the entry point to meaningful connection. Not oversharing, not emotional dumping, just letting a little more truth into the room than feels strictly necessary.
Actor Austin Butler touched on this idea in a characteristically poetic way, as all actors must do… describing embarrassment as an underexplored emotion. And I like that framing, because as adults, we’re often so afraid of embarrassment, especially in relationships, that we avoid the very moments that could lead to deeper connection and happiness. That fear of embarrassment is likely one of the reasons many men remain quiet when it comes to seeking mental health support. So, despite DNA and the uncontrollable nature of our happiness, our relationships and the willingness to invest in them have a huge impact on our mental health.
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How Bad Relationships Impact Our Mental Heath Part 2
