Abraham Maslow believes that a sense of belongingness is the most essential part of life; only after breathing, eating, and sleeping. Without a sense of belongingness people can become lonely and accordingly, loneliness can cause people to feel, empty, alone, and unwanted. A series of recent studies have shown people without connections and relationships with people are more susceptible to drug and alcohol addiction. The state of being, in which one feels a sense emptiness does not only have negative effects on both physical and mental health, but it is also transmittable. However, relationships can help battle issues with loneliness. Therefore, for one to feel a sense of belongingness relationships, connections, and bonds are vital. In order to live a happy and healthy lifestyle, people need to feel like they belong. …show more content…
A study done by Bruce Alexander may have proved that loneliness may be the cause of most cases of addiction. Ultimately, he did this by the production of Rat Park, Rat Park was a cage that not only included features that would entertain the vermin, Rat Park also housed multiple rats, not just one. In previous studies, scientists placed rats in a cage, alone, with two bottles; one containing water, and the other containing water laced with cocaine. Of course, the rats drank the highly addictive water laced with cocaine and all eventually died, however, when Alexander redid the study using multiple rats in rat park, the rats, not only disregarded the drug water, but they all lived. Some may say this is not an accurate depiction of humans, but this theory was evident during the Vietnam war. 20% of US soldiers became addicted to heroin while stationed in Vietnam, and of that 20%, 95% ultimately stopped after they returned home, and reconnected with their friends and
The 3rd level of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, is the needs for belonging, love, and affection. Maslow described these needs as less basic than physiological and security needs. Relationships such as friendships, romantic attachments, and families help fulfill this need for companionship and acceptance, involvement in social, community, or religious groups.
Humans are social beings where the need for constant interactions is always revolving around them. Psychopathology creates crucial aspects which lead people to substance abuse. In an experiment conducted by Bruce Alexander and his colleagues, on rodents, concluded that psychiatric distress caused drug addiction. Alexander and his teammates set out to identify a cause of drug addiction, in which they experimented on two set of rodents; one group cage kept in isolation and the other in a replicate of an ideal rat park with social interactions. Both groups received a choice between consuming H2O or morphine water with sucrose. The caged rat almost always choose to consume the morphine water over pure water. In contrast, the rodents placed in rat park selected the pure water over the morphine water.
According to Maslow, (as cited in Meyer et al., 2008), a person becomes aware of their need to belong somewhere and with someone, to also be able to receive and give love with ease. People now have time for superficial intercourse instead of having genuine intimacy with and for one another, eventually leaving them lonely and then resulting in isolation.
It is an act to ultimately benefit one self. Conversely, it is also what is known as self-righteousness, where one claims to be charitable and or virtuous towards others, when all the while there is a hidden agenda to benefit one-self. The so-called “friendship” is only to benefit the oneself. Unfortunately, this type of self-love can lead to loneliness and loss of true friendships. As much as people may believe that true friendship is not necessary, it is our inherent human need to be in a relationship with other human beings, and/or to develop a form of friendship. To prove the theory that friendship is necessary, an article published by the Journal of Clinical & Diagnostic Research suggests that there is a correlation between loneliness and psychiatric disorders. According to this study, they stated that as human beings, we are a social species which require safe and secure social surroundings to survive. Friendship and/or social relationships are essential for mental and physical well beings (Mushtaq, R., Shoib, S., Shah, T., & Mushtaq, S. (2014). Without social interactions, loneliness ensues, and loneliness can lead to various psychiatric disorders like depression, alcohol abuse, child abuse, sleep problems, personality disorders and Alzheimer’s disease, just to name a few. Not to mention, it can also lead to physiological disorders. Most importantly, loneliness can have serious consequences for mental and physical health of people (Mushtaq, R., Shoib, S., Shah, T., & Mushtaq, S.
While there are differences both definitions have one main point. When you are related to someone you should treat one another with all of these characteristics. So, the real, true meaning of belonging is to be accepted, loved, and understood. These three qualities really fit into every group and family dynamic. You can take a good, healthy group of friends and observe each of the qualities in action. Many specialists talk about this a lot. Some claim that if one of these 3 qualities are missing, the relationship is not healthy. In your own relationships, do you have acceptance, love and understanding? If not, is this a good place for you to
Communication is a vital component in feeling complete, but however as seen with both sadness and love, there is always a balance to allow the capability of feeling. Out of everything in this world, satisfaction is difficult to attain, and somehow no matter what we do, we seem to paradox the very thing we want. The compatibility of ourself with others creates the greatest difficulty in this world. Loneliness is a fabrication within our own existence that simply serves as a way to provide us with unhappiness. The fact is our happiness derives also from the same very things that cause unhappiness, but one thing remains in this world that we all are trying to escape from, infinite loneliness.
He ran a series of experiments that he called Rat Park. The experiments led him to conclude that drugs like heroin and cocaine don’t cause addiction, the user’s environment does. Alexander constructed Rat Park with wheels and balls for play, plenty of food and a mating space, with 16 rats of both sexes mingling with one another. He tested a variety of theories using different experiments to show that the rat’s environment played the largest part in whether a rat became addicted to opiates or not. In the experiment, the social rats had the choice to drink fluids from one of two dispensers. One had plain tap water, and the other had a morphine solution. He found that the caged rats ingested larger doses of the morphine solution, more than Rat Park rats. The Rat Park rats preferred the plain water. Even when the rats in cages were fed nothing but morphine water and then moved to Rat Park, the rats voluntarily went through withdrawal. Based on the findings, the team concluded that the drugs do not cause one’s addictions. Rather, how a person’s environment feeds their addiction. Feelings isolated, lonely, hopeless, or a lack of control based on unsatisfactory living conditions is what make a person dependent on substance addiction. Alexander once said, " I f I lived like that in a cage, I'd get as high as possible too."(Duhigg 10) Alexander’s goal was to prove that drugs do not cause
Chuck demonstrated this by using his safety boat as a tent to protect him from the rain the first few nights he was on the island. After the first few nights, he ended up finding a cave and he made it as comfortable as he could. Love and belonging is the third level on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Human Needs. In this level people need to feel the sense of belonging. Chuck demonstrated this by always looking at the picture that kelly gave him.
There are many theories regarding addiction. The Institute on Drug Abuse has their list of theories such as “the bad habit” and “the CAP theory (cognitive-affective pharmacogenic)” (n.d.). Hari, an author for the Huffington Post, writes about the Rat Park experiment in which a scientist put rats into “condos” in a nice cage
Need to Belong (NTB) is a need that drives individuals toward connectedness which is most often birthed and cultivated by the interpersonal relationships of a community (Vanier, 1989). A study by Baumeister and Leary (1995) concluded that NTB is satisfied only by “frequent, affectively pleasant interactions with a few other people” within the context of genuine, reciprocal “affective concern” for each individual’s welfare
The concept of belonging is deeply fused to humans’ interrelationships, with acceptance from others being the key to a sense of belonging. Numerous texts reflect the fact that engaging in relationships with others, including varying groups and cultures, is integral to a feeling of belonging. However other texts present ideas that suggest identity is the most integral aspect of belonging, or that in fact an introspective alienation from others is necessary to belong. This essay will discuss the importance of acceptance to belonging and also how other aspects hold equal value with reference to various texts, namely the poems ‘This is My Letter to the World’ and ‘I had been Hungry all the Years’ by Emily Dickinson, the artwork ‘The Two Fridas’ by Frida Kahlo, and the film ‘As it is in Heaven’ directed by Kay Pollak.
In the Maslow’s Hierarchy of need it is demonstrated the essentials of the community in five different stages: Physiological, safety, love, self-esteem and self-actualization. Communities as it is express above is a group of individuals; each of these individuals needs self – actualization meaning the need for personal growth that is present during the course of a person’s life. The stage of love means being around by their love once and being free and save without having any dreaded. The only stage that may affect with the individual rights might be the stage of freedom, meaning that for some individuals their rights of freedom may affect the rights of others.
Fashion is one of those things that people can claim they don't care about. They can defend again and again that it doesn't matter what one wears, it's the person who wears it. But in all likelihood they will continue to be judged, as we all are, for the clothes on our body, the shoes on our feet and the hairstyle we are sporting.
Having a sense of belonging is a common experience. Belonging means acceptance as a member or part. It is such a simple word for huge concept. A sense of belonging is a human need, just like the need for food and shelter. Feeling that we belong is most important in seeing value in life and in coping with intensely painful emotions. From a psychological perspective, a sense of belonging is a basic human need, with many psychologists discussing this need as being at the level of importance of that as food, water, and shelter. A sense of belonging can be so powerful that it can create both value in life and the ability to learn healthy coping skills when experiencing intensive and
...e or friendship. We are taught that we don't have an identity if we are alone. Which is why we treat loneliness as a disease, one to be avoided at any cost. Loneliness is viewed as an inadequacy of our personalities. Though all of us are taught to be independent, our independence is superficial. We can cook, clean, and do our laundry but we can't seem to take care of our emotions independently. We are taught that we need to share all our emotions. And I believe that however hard we search we can never get the kind of understanding that we are looking for. We are taught to be uncomfortable in our own world. Society conditions us to believe that we are inadequately equipped to be alone and content. And that alone always means lonely.