Two More Ways Covid Has Stolen Our Health and Happiness, and How We Can Fight Back
By: Dawn Bevier
Tags: Health, Happiness, Mental Health, Self, Psychology

COVID has stolen so much from us. It’s taken our comforting routines, our sense of safety, and even smaller things that bring us pleasure, such as eating out, going to the movies, and getting together with friends. And if you’re like me, the loss of these things, combined with the endless fear and anxiety of catching the virus, has taken a major toll on your mental health.

As a matter of fact, research points to the fact that some of our feelings of hopelessness and COVID-induced depression may be related to two everyday things that most of us took for granted pre-pandemic: smiles and hugs.

The power of smiles

For many of us, it’s never been harder to smile than right now. The extended presence of this pandemic feels like the world as we know it is falling to pieces, and what was often the cure for our gloom pre-COVID is no longer available: the uplifting smile of another person.

It’s not just an old adage that smiles are contagious. It’s a scientifically proven fact. An article in Psychology Today states that “the part of your brain that is responsible for your facial expression of smiling when happy or mimicking another’s smile resides in the cingulate cortex, an unconscious automatic response area.”

In other words, when we see someone smile, it’s extremely hard not to smile back. After all, attempting not to smile in response to this situation is like trying to override our brain’s natural tendencies. And think of all the automatic smiles we miss out on because we are surrounded by people whose smiles are hidden behind masks, masks that if gone would make us happier as well.

For example, in the past, our co-workers smiled when they greeted us in the morning, our cashier smiled when we met them at the checkout counter, and our bank tellers, our doctors, and even our fast-food workers smiled at us in the drive-thru. But in our “new normal,” this is simply not the case, meaning all those reflexive bursts of happiness are gone.

So less smiling faces directed our way means less smiling for us, and that very fact has a major impact on both our physical and emotional health.

Debbie Hampton, author of Beat Depression and Anxiety by Changing Your Brain, states that smiling “releases feel-good transmitters, including dopamine, endorphins, and serotonin.” She then goes on to list all of the physical and emotional advantages that these hormones bring, benefits that are absent when we do not engage in the act of smiling.

And the side effects of not getting enough of these “feel good” hormones? Higher heart rate and blood pressure. Lack of motivation. Dwindling self-confidence. Increased pain. And these are just a few short examples.

The National Institute of Health reports research done on smiling by Jared Martin and Dr. Paula Niedenthal at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. These researchers characterized all smiles as being one of three types: dominance smiles, affiliation smiles, and reward smiles. Dominance smiles are negatives smiles that convey a sense of smugness and superiority, while affiliation and reward smiles are smiles that show true happiness and increase social connections between people.

After doing studies on the effects of these smiles, they found that those who received dominance smiles from others showed a rise in cortisol, often referred to as the “stress hormone,” but those who received affiliation and reward smiles saw a reduction in this hormone, thus proving that most types of smiles serve to counteract the damaging effects of stress.

And in addition to the repercussions of limited “smile sightings,” this pandemic also robs us of another emotional and physical stress reliever: hugs.

The benefits of hugs and human touch

We’re told to stay six feet away from others. That means no pat on the back or high fives when we’ve done something great, but also means something much sadder: no hugs.

We give or receive hugs to show compassion, to share moments of joy, and to convey unspoken feelings of love or understanding. And for most of us, these hugs bring both a needed emotional release and increased happiness.

But once again, at the present, these emotional rewards cannot be experienced.

In Well and Good, they list a number of advantages of those daily hugs that are now practically non-existent. Just as with smiling, they state that hugging reduces levels of cortisol. However, they also mention that lowered cortisol does more than relieve stress, it also benefits our immune system. The article cites research findings that conclude “people who experienced hugs more frequently were less likely to get sick and that even if they did get sick their symptoms were less intense.”

So what does this mean for us? Less hugging means more susceptibility to sickness. And at times like these, a compromised immune system is especially dangerous.

Hugging can do also do things such as reduce blood pressure and lower heart rate. For example, Healthline reports a study in which scientists had romantic partners do one of two things: hold hands and hug or sit in silence together. The hand-holding and hugging couples showed lowered blood pressure and heart rate, benefits absent from the distant couples who remained untouched.

The bottom line:

We can’t change the fact that most of the physical and emotional advantages of smiling and hugging will continue to be absent from our lives, but we can increase the opportunities to seize the benefits of these things by creating more joy and incorporating more touch in our lives with our immediate family. We can watch more funny movies together, play more games that induce laughter and smiles, and make more attempts to wrap our arms around those with whom we share a home. And let’s be honest, virus or not, we need to do more of these things anyway, don’t we? So let’s get to it.