Neuromantic

My name is Ana and I am a love addict. Neuromantic dives into my trauma related to intimacy and is an interdisciplinary scrutinization of dysfunctional relationships.

My name is Ana and I am a love addict. All my life, I have been consumed by anxiety and trapped in a loop of rejecting the partners who want me and obsessing over the ones who don’t.

In march 2020 the Covid 19 pandemic severely hit NY and I was suddenly trapped in my apartment with myself.

This ignited a process of looking inward and creating a visual language to process my traumas around intimacy. I started photographing partners and close female friends and family members with whom I shared similar histories and relationship experiences. My apartment became the stage where I could re signify my inner world.

I exhaustively researched neuro scientific and psychological journals and discovered that emotional and physical abuse makes us develop an insecure attachment style with dysfunctional coping mechanisms affecting the quality of our relationships.

I realized my intense infatuations were a way to dissociate from reality and seek pleasure to anesthetize my life-long emotional pain.

I found studies that suggest that exposure to trauma can change the way genes express stress in our brain, and that it can be passed on through generations perpetuating dysfunctional cycles.

I understood how important the quality of our relationships are for our mental health and to overcome addictions.

(link to project website: https://readymag.com/u632244703/science/)

In 2020 I launched a survey where I asked people to describe how their emotions around romantic love felt.

(Link to curated answers from 100+ participants: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RusfAcMVsv4t3uMYJZ5LxRslHyY-rZrU7KaNhRcV2c8/edit)

I am currently collaborating with data scientist Andrew Hill, and together we designed an anonymous survey to assess how people experience emotions in relationships according to their attachment style. (Link to the surveys: https://forms.gle/C73DtN9CMNViD8sb9 and https://forms.gle/i8YHZcH6pSBgbYHi6). The surveys provide a safe space of expression which will also give us insight into how people feel and perceive their intimacy.

Through this interdisciplinary scrutinization of relationships, Neuromantic delves into dysfunctional relationships to ultimately highlight why healthy relationships and trauma integration are essential for our wellbeing and mental health.

A grant would be essential for me to finalize the data aspect of the project. I would be able to hire a web designer to visualize the data in the surveys. The web experience would also allow the viewer to filter responses according to attachment styles (secure, anxious, avoidant or ambivalent) or other categories like nationalities and key words.

Financing would also allow me to exhibit the project as an installation where more data could be collected.

Eventually, I want to develop this project into a book as well.

© Ana Vallejo - Image from the Neuromantic photography project
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As young children are born into a world of unknowns , they quickly begin to understand the characteristics of those who care for them. Those characteristics guide them biologically and behaviorally to prepare for a life of secu­rity or adversity. Early experiences of family conflict, limited resources (such as economic scarcity), and poor parent­ing (unavailable or unreliable parents) are biological signals of the environmen­tal conditions into which the child has been born, when children are born into a world where resources are scarce and violence is a constant possibility, neurobiological changes may make them wary and vigilant, foster quick and strong reactions to perceptions of danger But there are several trade-offs. First, mental resources devoted to vigilance cannot as read­ily be devoted to learning and problem-solving. They might find it hard to concentrate, focus on tasks, remember things, and control and regulate their emotions Second, A social orientation toward detecting threats coupled with poor emotion regulation, makes it hard to develop constructive relationships. Furthermore, these children have trouble controlling their impulses and emotions Thirdly, chronic activation of the neuroendocrine , cardiovascular, and immunological systems extracts a cost. These systems are designed for short-term activation, and chronic arousal may compromise immunological functioning. Source: Stress and Child Development by Ross A Thompson

© Ana Vallejo - Image from the Neuromantic photography project
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“You worry too much People who experienced childhood trauma have been documented to have changes in the brain and nervous system that can be long-lasting. One of these changes is a larger or overactive amygdala. Deep in the center of the brain, the amygdala is involved in detecting and responding to threats, among other functions. People who have this symptom might detect danger or threats where there are none, thus becoming afraid or worrying over even minor occurrences. The worry and anxiety these people experience can feel very real and distressing, even when there is nothing to worry about, and can be difficult to calm down." source: National Insitute of Mental Health

© Ana Vallejo - Image from the Neuromantic photography project
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Collage made from a denounce that I made on April 2019 about a sexual assault on March 22 2013: "In that moment I was alone, for example didn’t want to talk about it publicly because it was outside of the school it took me two months to assimilate what had happened. I didn’t have the knowledge it was taboo and they worried more about my image in society so neither offer help I had the strength to start a process my testimony crime feel too much anxiety rage pain. I think. I didn’t know him. a prudent normal distance between two people who just met. I fall asleep. I wake up. I feel something is not OK. moment I am confused because I am recovering consciousness and I don’t understand what is happening. I start to scream, cry, and hit him. I told a variety teachers. They couldn’t. I went out. Denigrated. Precautions. Could go to prison. Time after. Calm."

© Ana Vallejo - Image from the Neuromantic photography project
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"Brain scanning studies show that feelings of intense romantic love engage regions of the brain's "reward system" specifically dopamine pathways associated with energy, focus, learning, motivation, ectasy, and craving, including primary regions associated with substance addiction source: Intense, Passionate, Romantic Love: A Natural Addiction? How the Fields That Investigate Romance and Substance Abuse Can Inform Each Other by Helen Fisher

© Ana Vallejo - Romantic love activates pleasure in the reward system. Thus love induced analgesia reduces emotional and physical pain. s
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Romantic love activates pleasure in the reward system. Thus love induced analgesia reduces emotional and physical pain. s

© Ana Vallejo - Image from the Neuromantic photography project
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"A panic attack is a sudden occurrence of anxiety consisting of bodily symptoms and negative thoughts. The bodily symptoms can include breathlessness, sweating, heart pounding or racing, feeling faint, feeling hot, blurred vision, feeling unreal, tingling in parts of the body, nausea, an urge to empty one’s bladder or bowels, dizziness, and a dry mouth". source: MCT Institute

© Ana Vallejo - Image from the Neuromantic photography project
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Photogram made with my blood. "Severe stress exposure in a parent—the kind that can result in mental disorders such as depression, anxiety, or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)—is a risk factor for a number of adverse outcomes, including psychopathology, in offspring." source: -Intergenerational Transmission of Stress in Humans by Mallory E Bowers and Rachel Yehuda

© Ana Vallejo - Image from the Neuromantic photography project
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"After an experience of trauma, the survivor’s world can never be quite the same again. Previous beliefs and assumptions may be profoundly challenged and the survivor must search for new beliefs and assumptions that can enable him or her to make sense of what has taken place and to go forward into the future. For some survivors, the trauma may leave behind an ongoing sense of meaninglessness, raising troubling questions about themselves, others and the world for which no satisfactory answer can be found. Others may reevaluate their lives, developing a new appreciation for themselves, other people and existence in general." source: “Social Theory and Trauma.” by Ron Eyerman

© Ana Vallejo - Image from the Neuromantic photography project
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Cognitive research suggests that a process of rapid self-expansion takes place when we fall in love and start to uncover the experience of the other. With time, we begin to include a partner’s characteristics into our own self-concept, treating partners as an extension of ourselves. source: "The self-expansion model of motivation and cognition in close relationships by A. Aron"

© Ana Vallejo - Formulas synthesizing some of my research
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Formulas synthesizing some of my research

© Ana Vallejo - Image from the Neuromantic photography project
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"Emotional and physical abuse have negative effects on an individual's capacity to regulate emotions. Hence, the person is unable to effectively regulate stress and anxiety when conflict arises. Romantic love activates pleasure in the reward system. Thus love induced analgesia reduces emotional and physical pain." source: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

© Ana Vallejo - Image from the Neuromantic photography project
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I identified the bathroom as a place I had to re signify after learning that both of my parents had attempted suicide in a bathroom.

© Ana Vallejo - Plasticity is the capacity of organisms to change with experience.
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Plasticity is the capacity of organisms to change with experience.

© Ana Vallejo - Image from the Neuromantic photography project
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"Anxious individuals may be more willing than others to tolerate sustained abuse from intimate partners. Even when a partner’s response is negative, preoccupied individuals may perceive this as evidence that their partner is engaged, and, in a perverse sense, more intimately involved. Thus, preoccupied individuals could be at an increased risk of tolerating abuse from a partner." Source: When Loving Means Hurting: An Exploration of Attachment and Intimate Abuse In a Community Sample

© Ana Vallejo - Image from the Neuromantic photography project
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Human beings who do not experience a sufficiently secure base develop insecure patterns of attachment.. Insecure individuals will face difficulties in forming relationship with others. Psychotropic substances then might become attractive as one way to "self-medicate". " source: "Attachment and Substance Use Disorders—Theoretical Models, Empirical Evidence, and Implications for Treatment"

© Ana Vallejo - Image from the Neuromantic photography project
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Effects of Anxiety: Dissociation from the present Always experiencing extreme emotions Anger Increased perception of physical sensations source: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

© Ana Vallejo - Collage dedicated to my father's schizophrenia
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Collage dedicated to my father's schizophrenia

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