Helping Others Helps You!

If you have a full-time job and also strive to be a good friend, partner, parent, and pet owner, adding volunteering to your already full plate might sound like a recipe for burnout. And if your work already revolves around caring for others (like teaching, nursing, or social work), volunteering could seem not only exhausting, but redundant.

Yet, research consistently shows the opposite. A study in Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (Ramos et al., 2015) found that people who both worked and volunteered reported better mental health and fewer feelings of work-life conflict. Similarly, a 2013 study from Carnegie Mellon University (Sneed and Cohen, 2013) discovered that adults over 50 who volunteered regularly were significantly less likely to develop high blood pressure than those who didn’t.

The so-called “Helper’s High” is now supported by neuroscience. Brain imaging studies show that altruistic acts, such as donating to charity or supporting family, activate the brain’s reward centers, including the ventral striatum and mesolimbic pathways linked to pleasure and motivation (Moll et al., 2006). Longitudinal research connects volunteering to improved mental health, lower hypertension risk, slower biological aging, and even reduced mortality (Sneed and Cohen, 2013; Jenkinson et al., 2013). Importantly, the strongest effects appear when giving is genuinely other-oriented rather than self-serving (Konrath et al., 2012).

Far from being another task on your to-do list, volunteering may be one of the few activities that refills your cup as you give your time and energy to others, proving that doing good can make you feel good.