Meg Van Deusen

The Power of Eye Contact: A Free and Easy Stress-Reducer

In a world of screens, a moment of warm eye contact can offer something easily overlooked: the feeling of being seen. I explore the links between compassionate attention, social connection, and relief from stress.

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Loving Kindness Meditation: A Response to Loneliness

How can sitting quietly with yourself help you feel less alone? Loving-kindness meditation offers a way to notice self-judgment, practice compassion, and approach both yourself and others with greater warmth and connection.

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Five Things To Do When Feeling Defeated and Overwhelmed

When life feels like an endless treadmill, pushing harder may leave you more depleted. These five steps begin with a pause and lead toward understanding your needs, clarifying what matters, and taking one small step forward.

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Help Relieve Stress by Cultivating Hope

Chronic stress can narrow our view until problems seem like all there is. I explore how noticing what is good, treating ourselves kindly, and creating a practical path toward meaningful goals can help restore hope.

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Meditation Benefits

Stress can make it difficult to focus, regulate emotions, and think through decisions. I look at how mindfulness meditation may help us pause, steady our attention, and respond from a calmer place.

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Reducing Stress In The Classroom

What changes when a teacher asks what a student has been through before judging their behavior? A conversation with an experienced educator explores how understanding trauma, collaborative learning, and restorative justice can build trust and reduce classroom stress.

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Social Media (for better or worse?)

We often reach for social media to feel connected, yet leave feeling lonelier or less satisfied. I examine that tension and share ways families, schools, and communities can support healthier habits and more time together in person.

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Could Your Gut Be Causing Your Anxiety and Stress?

Stress can unsettle the gut, but could the gut also influence how we feel? I explore the two-way relationship between the microbiome and the brain, including the promise and limitations of early research on probiotics.

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Coping with Holiday Stress

The gap between an ideal holiday and the one we actually experience can bring disappointment and tension. Through one family’s story, I explore how compassion, flexible expectations, and intentional choices can make room for a more meaningful celebration.

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Anxiety Self Help Tips

Worry can keep us circling problems we cannot control. Through one father’s experience, I explore how compassionate engagement with the people we love can interrupt anxious rumination and strengthen our sense of connection.

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Living in a World of Information Overload

Constant messages, notifications, and news can leave little room to hear ourselves think. I explore the pull of always being available and how stepping away from our devices can create space for calm, curiosity, and genuine connection.

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Feeling Lonely

Why can someone surrounded by people feel lonely while someone living alone feels deeply connected? I explore the role of perception and self-judgment, and how hope, compassion, and openness can help us feel a greater sense of belonging.

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The Power of Eye Contact: A Free and Easy Stress-Reducer

In a world of screens, a moment of warm eye contact can offer something easily overlooked: the feeling of being seen. I explore the links between compassionate attention, social connection, and relief from stress.

Are you aware of the power of eye contact? When was the last time you looked someone in the eye for more than a few seconds? Maybe you looked your co-worker in the eye this morning or maybe you looked your partner in the eye when you said good-bye to him before work. Or, maybe too busy answering emails or sending messages on your phone, you haven’t had the chance to look anyone in the eye today. After all, screens get a lot of our visual attention these days.

Eye Contact Increases Oxytocin

If the latter is the case, you may be missing out on an easy, free and readily available way to reduce stress. That’s right. Eye contact increases the hormone oxytocin which has an inverse relationship with the stress hormone, cortisol. In other words, when stress (and therefore, cortisol) go up, oxytocin (the feel-good, social bonding hormone) goes down. But, with eye contact, oxytocin increases, causing cortisol levels to decrease.[i] In addition, oxytocin leaves people with a sense of well-being and connection, the antithesis of stress.

Oxytocin Decreases Feelings of Isolation

Some might say that I have a stressful job, working with people’s emotional pain, listening to their traumatic stories and often sitting with their sadness, fear or anger. But I also have the opportunity to look my patients in the eye, every hour I’m at work. This may be one reason I don’t burn out. I benefit from increases in the hormone oxytocin that bring about feelings of social connection instead of feelings of social isolation. Despite the fact that I don’t have a team of colleagues to interact with on a daily basis, I don’t feel lonely. I’m sure repeated eye contact throughout the day has a hand in that.

Eye Contact Grows the Brain

Neuroscientists now know how important eye contact is between infants and their caregivers in forming secure attachment, a healthy style of relating to oneself, others and the world. One scientist says, “Without oxytocin and without the ability to form attachments, the human brain as we know it could not exist.” [ii] That’s because the infant-caregiver “gaze” in which the caregiver is visually attuned to the infant’s experience and conveys that attunement through the face, particularly the eyes, helps grow the infant’s brain.

The Power of Eye Contact: Conclusion

Eye contact is a powerful tool when used for the better good. In other words, looking at someone in a threatening way increases stress because of the sense of danger, but attuned eye contact, compassionate eye contact, helps mitigate the effects of stress on the brain and the body and brings us closer to one another, a healing force in and of itself.

[i] C Sue Carter, “The Role of Oxytocin and Vasopressin in Attachment,” Psychodynamic Psychiatry, December, 2017 Vol. 45 (4), pp.499-517.

[ii] K Uvnus-Moberg and M Petersson, “Oxytocin, A Mediator of Anti-Stress, Well-Being, Social Interaction, Growth and Healing,” Zeitschrift fur Psychosomatische Medizin and Psychotherapie, 2005, Vol. 51 (1), pp. 57-80.