Tend and befriend

Creating relationships and taking care are the most cheap and common medicine in the world, with no counter indications nor side effects. They are self-prescriptible and you can take them before and after meals, as many times every day as you want. They can cure fear, solitude, extraneousness. They can induce proximity, creativity, sense of belonging and curiosity. A daily use is advised and it’s recommended to increase the doses in every situation critical for the psychological well-being. The easiest way to create relationships is through visual contact, and visual contacts come with a smile. The benefits of the cure are immediate, permanent and have passionate and unexpected consequences such as bonds, ideas, visions. This is an ongoing project about belongingness, interpersonalness, relatedness. Every living being reacts to stress with what we call “fight or flight” response: face the threat or run from it. Most recent studies have hypothesised that although the “fight or flight” is still the primary response to a threat, female-identifying individuals are most inclined to behave following a different pattern, called “tend and befriend” and characterised by forming strong social bonds designed to protect the self and the offspring. The stronger the bonds, the more the individual feels safe, the more creativity can thrive. The human pervasive drive to form and maintain lasting, positive, and significant relationships is almost as compelling a need as food. The need to belong is universal, innately prepared, and appears to be able to overcome antagonistic, competitive, or divisive tendencies and it seems to me the most far-reaching and integrative construct currently available to overcome our contentious times.