Dr. Leaf | Toxic Love
By Dr. Leaf Show: Neuroscience & Mental Health
Summary
## Key takeaways - **God Designs Us for Unconditional Love**: God's designed us to be loved. We are made in His image, He is love, so we are designed to give and receive healthy nurturing unconditional love. [00:00], [00:24] - **Evolutionary Love Ignores the Heart**: The whole evolutionary kind of biological approach to love is if you've got muscles you can protect so people fall in love with people that have got more muscles and our glass shape for fertility. God looks at the inward heart he doesn't look at the external appearance. [00:12], [00:48] - **External Focus Distorts Healthy Love**: When we just look at the external we can distort that love. It's very important that love stays healthy and positive and unconditional. [00:36], [01:00] - **Loving Environments Activate Stress-Dampening Genes**: They have found genes inside a part of the brain called the hippocampus and those genes when they switch on they actually dampen the stress response so when we are in a loving environment those genes switch on and we are better able to manage stress. [00:48], [01:23] - **Toxic Love Switches Off Stress Genes**: People that are not experiencing a nurturing environment either as a child or in a relationship or as adults in a marriage or in a work environment that gene actually switches off and the stress levels increase. [01:11], [01:34]
Topics Covered
- God Designs Us for Unconditional Love
- Evolutionary Love Ignores Inward Heart
- Nurturing Love Dampens Brain Stress
Full Transcript
hi I'm Dr Caroline Leaf toxic love I wonder if you've ever thought about that before what toxic love is well God's designed us to be loved We Made In His Image he is love so we are designed to
give and receive healthy nurturing unconditional love but this can go this can go wrong the whole evolutionary kind of biological approach to love is this the scientists say things like if you've
got muscles you can protect so people fall in love with people that have got more muscles and our glass shape for fertility or God looks at the inward heart he doesn't look at the external appearance and it's very important that
love stays healthy and positive and unconditional and when we just look at the external we can distort that love but they've also found that nurturing good positive love has an enormous impact on how your brain functions so
for example they have found genes inside a part of the brain called the hippocampus the hippocampus is this part of the brain over here and those genes when they switch on they actually dampen
the stress response so when we are in a loving environment those genes switch on and we are better able to manage stress so the converse of that is that they've actually found that people that are not
experiencing a nurturing environment either as a child or in a relationship or as adults in a marriage or in a work environment that Gene actually switches off and the stress levels increase so
it's really important that we examine the kind of love that we receive and that we give
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