One major thing I feel I’ve learned in all my relationship efforts and reflections is that attachment to one's original attachment seems deeply ingrained. We may feel like we are adults with fresh starts able to re-invent the path relationships can take, but in fact we are more like an amalgamation of our former selves with the outward facing adult layers atop deep, dense and densely carved pre-verbal layers of our much younger selves. The first few years of life are critical.
We become who we are by sensing and acting through the world of inputs in the womb and beyond. We build our core of personality in relationship to a mother’s attunement and her attunement or lack thereof is very valuable information for what kind of world we are just arriving in. Human threat system will turn on earlier than the threat, we have a built in survival bias. The direct provision of heat is very important to our physical and psychological development with deep connections between thermoregulation and attachment theory.
A rather remarkable and convincing finding related by Hans Ijzerman in his recent publication of Heartwarming, How Our Inner Thermostat Made Us Human. Actual provision of physical warmth to an infant by its mother is a critical input to our mammalian, and human, attachment systems. Rat pups kept at appropriate temperature did remarkably better than others when they were separated from their mothers. This indicates the importance of the pure temperature element in the relationship. Mothers producing increased amounts of oxytocin go on to increase their peripheral temperature allowing more heat transfer to their pups or babies. Less heat from less oxytocin or any other disturbance without some kind of substitution would mean a less beneficial development.
Our thermoregulatory systems are impacted by social inputs throughout our lives. Even as adults we crave energy and heat compensation from a loss or absence of social support. We will turn down our metabolisms and peripheral temperatures when we are faced with a loss of social support. The evolutionary logic is that we will be less secure about future nutrients or other threats with a less robust social network which will drive our bodies to reduce metabolic output and conserve resources. The work on thermoregulation aligns well with research into oxytocin and metabolism more broadly, and is light years ahead of typical counseling or psychiatric paradigms. If true, it seems like a major breakthrough grounding both psychology and relational psychology in physiology with lots of ready applications and implications.
It happens to also be deeply consistent with the overall argument that social-moral behavior is significantly if not primarily driven by environmental metabolic conditions, especially the availability and use of energy. I argue that the energy throughput of individuals matters greatly in determining the aggregate behavior of groups and societies. To quickly see what I mean you can read my article On Locusts and War, or for a more extended look into the effects of nutrient access on social life consider reading: Climate, Catastrophe, and Faith by Philip Jenkins. Climate, Catastrophe and Faith is a powerfully important read which documents the impacts of climate change on historical religious behavior. While the author was trying to make a point about climate change he did a marvelous job of pointing out all of the major negative influences of historical cooling and essentially only positive effects of warming considering his focus on Europe during the middle ages. A similar more global analysis might find the psychosocial change that occurs with and before drought. I expect caloric deprivation from any source will cause similar stress physiology and psychology, but perhaps some difference would arise from the specific environmental features. At the moment I am wondering how I have not looked further into climate and the rapid spread of early Islam.
Returning to the topic at hand however, the theory of embodied social cognition and attachment if understood fully has massive implications for how we might manage our personal and social well being. As a recent personal example: I found myself reading Heartwarming while feeling both lonely and physically cold. For about a week around the winter solstice I found myself wondering what was happening such that I went from happy to lonely in very short order. I read about how we try to compensate for a lack of social attachment(s) by seeking warmth and vice versa, we also seek social attachment more in colder environments and seasons. I happen to be experiencing that and writing this as the nadir of my social life having moved in the winter during a pandemic to a suburb full of transient, commuting, fearful rule-abiding folk. After reframing the likely source and internal, I started thinking through all the supplements I take and how they might affect my body's temperature and calorie balance. For those of you who might not know, substances like quercetin which is good for immunity also suppresses thyroid and with it temperature and metabolism. I was taking it in consideration of COVID as a zinc ionophore, but in line with the thermoregulatory (attachment) theory, I stopped. I then increased my thyroid, added small doses of aspirin and began large doses of taurine, a precursor to oxytocin. Thyroid, aspirin, and oxytocin are all thermogenic, and within a day I was no longer lonely or craving hot baths. I only wish I had taken various types of peripheral temperature reading throughout the experience to confirm my efforts and intuition. I suppose I could at any point repeat the whole cycle with that in mind, but who wants to feel that lonely.
Beyond my recent experience, attachment systems seem to stay with us into adulthood which begs a question about how the initial parental warmth or lack of warmth condition becomes embodied in the child-organism. Hans Ijzerman makes the suggestion that “relationship cognition is fundamentally linked to the body’s regulation of temperature”. Within that framework we can move our investigation out of the brain and back into the body. Love and bonding in this view is much less abstract and much more visceral and metabolic. The consistency or inconsistency of a mother’s responses becomes critical to the infant’s attachment style. Consistent warm responses and their actual provision of warmth or succor will provide continuous reinforcement and secure associations, whereas inconsistency will drive anxiety into the association with the primary attachment. Presumably avoidance is simply a strategy to reduce or manage anxiety, while not being physiologically different, just my hunch. Consistent warm touch and milk inform the child that the world is secure and that he or she can use more resources to develop, including development of higher cognitive functioning to aid in greater exploration of the environment which hints and psychological traits like extraversion and openness and their relationship to attachment.
The way I am explaining the evolutionary situation to myself is that an anxious mother is either dispositionally anxious or in an anxiety inducing state from her environment and that will then drive the type of care delivered to her offspring. On the most basic level being anxious is consistent with having less metabolic resources for heat, attention and milk production. Adaptively, it also makes sense for offspring to be more sensitive to threats in an environment the mother is reacting to as threatening. In rat mothers infanticide and canabalism are quite commonly observed in the lab and it is known to result from the mother’s stress. While human mother’s may not usually go quite as far it’s possible that conditions like postpartum depression are a way mothers cut their metabolic losses of parenting in less conducive environments. The concomitant deficits of progesterone and oxytocin are consistent with a reduced metabolism and lowered peripheral heat as well as lowered mood.
The predictive model that our brain uses for thermoregulation and metabolism is radically embodied and is in large part ignorant to the source of its information. This is a very important point: because we are blind to the internal causes of affect, it is extremely common for us to project our inner body’s state change out onto the world. I am more and more convinced that the flavors, textures, and tones of thoughts we experience are highly dependent on the state of the body with small causal arrows flowing from the mind back to the body. The mind seems most successful at changing mood when it simply focuses on managing body basics, like breath rate, sleep, heat, sufficient calories, sufficient protein etc. I know it is a very counterintuitive position as we naturally and deeply identify ourselves with our thoughts.
Our brains work off of rapid non-cognitive associations much more than deliberative evaluations. Studies show that you feel more warm towards someone when you are holding something warm. This happens to be perfectly consistent with the allostatic model of affective realism. A different and clever example of affective realism comes from studies of attraction done comparing attractiveness of a researcher in a neutral setting vs on a high bridge. The autonomic arousal of being well above the ground on a bridge makes the evaluated person seem more attractive because we do not and cannot separately identify the variety of inputs to our arousal or metabolic systems.
Lisa Barrett Feldman, whom I’ve written about a few times, clarified the importance of metabolism to us and the functioning of our brains:
“metabolism and other forms of energy regulation may be at the core of the human mind, regardless of whether a person is thinking, feeling or perceiving”
In this view we are creatures preoccupied with energy and heat, and for most of us that concern is usually understood only opaquely and is almost always mediated through many other physical sensations, emotions and cultural concepts. Knowing the central importance of heat and energy and that we are naive to our thermo-metabolic inputs can allow us to better manage ourselves and our relationships outside. Well ahead of me on this, Hans Ijzerman, notes that mild hyperthermia, which is known to improve mood, might be paired with a partner to promote the association with security in a relationship. Sharing the sauna, hot bath or a tropical vacation presently and pleasantly come to mind, but it is likely that consistency also needs to play a role.
Other physiological options related to temperature include: thyroid, oxytocin, 3,4-Methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) and increased calories and protein consumption. In terms of diet, perhaps hunter gathers returning successful from a hunt increased calories and protein consumption of their social groups which would drive enhanced bonding. This idea accords reasonably well with our modern conceptions of feasts, festivals, and holidays. Alcohol seems to increase vasodilation and the perception of warmth while actually lowering the core temperature in both the immediate and long term. Oxytocin is critical to maternal-infant pair bonding as well as thermoregulation, but Ijzerman did not mention its potential for external use. The social use of thyroid seems completely unexplored, but the emotional consequences of low thyroid on individuals are well known. Low thyroid is associated with a variety of symptoms: stress, overwhelm, depression, tearfulness, mood swings, ease to anger and even cognitive dysfunction and dementia. Of course and in typical tragic fashion, modern medicine manages thyroid to an ever decreasing group average and then allows “benign hypothyroidism” even beyond that, paying essentially no attention to the psychological, social and long term physical implications. Exogenous oxytocin has been recently re-envisioned by findings from Jaak Panksepp that demonstrate its dramatic effect in reducing separation anxiety essentially by increasing what he describes as confidence. As an interesting reframe, confidence might simply be the same as, or closely related to, an increased metabolism or confidence of energetic resource availability.
In my experiences with exogenous oxytocin, it does seem to have prosocial effects in a dose dependent manner, but with strongly specific thoughts and feelings towards one person. Might that simply be related to temperature? The singularity of my thoughts was fascinating, and even had me wondering about my sense of attachment.Was more confidence making me feel more securely attached? Oxytocin works on the order of minutes while MDMA works over the course of hours, and while oxytocin may increase peripheral temperature a tenth of a degree MDMA reliably increases the peripheral temperature and does so up-to about 1 degree celsius. Unfortunately, I am yet to feel the difference of MDMA but through existing scientific literature, its therapeutic history and anecdotes from responsible friends clearly highlight MDMA as a potent tool for relationships. Therefore it’s also a tragically regulated substance. In case you might not be aware, MDMA was used for couples counseling before being a party drug and also before being banned.
Other potential prospects for increased individual or shared peripheral heat include: hot baths, exercise, shared tea and coffee, and shared meals especially with pro-metabolic nutrients and an emphasis on sufficient protein. Protein is the most thermogenic of the macronutrients. Low levels of endorphins are also hyperthermic. Endorphin receptors are supported by oxytocin and endorphins are released in response to both human connection and exercise. Curiously, another “love” drug lysergic diethyl-amide (LSD) is also known to promote hyperthermia, and this begs some good questions about what it does to metabolism and how those might relate to the subjective effects. Relatedly, floating in deprivation tanks is something I quite enjoy, and while it’s not terribly different in some ways to a warm bath, the water temperature being held at or just above core body temperature is likely a critical part of it’s perceived effect. Personally I suggest turning the temperature up 1 or more degrees celsius, but to do so you need liver or recently ingested glucose to prevent the rise in metabolism from causing a stress response. Sharing as a couple is a good option considering the embodied association, and I would recommend it more heartily if the operators were not generally charging one pod rental for the price of two.
In sum, consider the association of heat in your life and in your relationships. It seems very useful to internalize the way our bodies direct our minds, moods, and associations even if we intuitively think it might make no sense. At the core of feeling good and sometimes feeling hot is our actual bodily metabolism. I hope you will enjoy some new ideas for feeling and being less lonely and more warm alone or together and if you try anything I've suggested or find any new applications within the same perspective please let me know.
Selected References:
Climate, Catastrophe, and Faith
Toward a radically embodied neuroscience of attachment and relationships