Friendship and Mental Health: Why Healthy Friendships are so Good for our Mental Health

July is Social Wellness Month, a time to celebrate the importance of strong relationships and their impact on our mental health. The link between friendship and mental health is particularly powerful, contributing to increased happiness, reduced stress, and greater resilience. In this article, LifeSpeak expert Dr. Colleen Mullen (PsyD, LMFT) explores the profound impact of healthy friendships on our mental wellbeing. Discover the science-backed benefits of nurturing these connections and gain practical tips for building meaningful friendships

Healthy friendships are like flowers. Cultivating a connection with a friend is like watering your flower garden. When you tend to that friendship, like water to your planted flower seeds, the friendship can bloom, just like our flowers. But, just like growing our flowers, some of us have green thumbs and some of us struggle to get those flowers to bloom. If you’ve struggled to make new friends, I want to help you with that.

After I share the mental health benefits of healthy friendships, I’ll give you my best tips on how to make new friends throughout your life.

“Our interaction with healthy friends leaves us feeling like we’ve got someone in our corner. We trust them and feel emotionally safe with them.”

Healthy friendships are 2-way streams of communication. Our interaction with healthy friends leaves us feeling like we’ve got someone in our corner. We trust them and feel emotionally safe with them. In contrast, unhealthy or toxic friendships leave us feeling emotionally drained. Those friendships can make us feel like we are walking on eggshells around that friend. If you’ve had a toxic friendship, you know the feeling I’m talking about.

The mental health benefits of healthy friendships:

Friendships decrease feelings of loneliness

Even when we have friends, we can feel lonely, but having a friend to have coffee with, go for a walk with, or just talk to on the other end of our call when we need them reminds us that we are not alone. We know that truly being alone and isolated in life leads to increases in depression, self-destructive behavior, and in the worst-case scenarios, it’s a leading contributor to suicidal thoughts and acts. When you’re feeling lonely, reach out to a friend. Your friends care about you.

Friendships increase self-esteem

Having healthy friendships helps us feel like we belong somewhere. A sense of belonging, as in having others we relate to, increases our self-perception and it can lead to feeling increased self-esteem or self-value. We all want to matter to someone else. We want to know someone cares.

Friendships help us understand ourselves better

Our healthy friends make great sounding boards when we need some feedback in our lives. What do they think of the new person you’re dating? In what ways do they express concern about something going on in your life? In what ways do they express enthusiasm or support for what you do? That feedback can help us understand our own behavior more deeply.

Friendships help us learn healthy boundaries

Our friendships are where we often learn about setting healthy boundaries. How much time is too much time with one friend? When do you need to tell a friend “No”? When we feel secure in the trust that develops over time, we then can work on being our healthiest within those friendships.

Friendships can reduce stress

When we feel connected to someone else, we know we are not alone in the world and that alone can reduce our stress load. Friendships also often boost our mood through laughter, connection, and companionship. If we’ve been feeling down or depressed, or even anxious, the mood boost that comes with connecting with a friend can reduce how much stress impacts us on a daily basis.

Friendships can actually make us physically healthier

A little bonus about healthy friendships is that they can have a positive effect on our physical health. Having healthy friendships has been correlated with lower blood pressure, decreased systemic inflammation, and decreased incidence of heart disease and other chronic conditions. One study even found a correlation between friendships and improved or sustained cognitive functioning in older adults. When our bodies are healthy, it’s easier to maintain our mental health.

Now that you know how healthy friendships can positively impact your mental health, I want to help you with ideas on how to find and make new friends. It does take effort to meet new friends, but if you do what you enjoy, you‘ll meet people who enjoy that activity too. You don’t have to be into all the same things as a new friend but having someone to do your favorite activities with certainly is a good start.

Friendship and mental health: tips for meeting new potential friends

• Learn something new. Take a class. From cooking classes to world history, there are classes that are easily accessible that can be even free or low cost so that you can learn new skills while connecting with others that also love to learn new things.
• Join a team. There are usually local, non-professional sports organizations that exist for people who just love to play a good game of tennis, softball, soccer, kickball, etc. If athletics aren’t your thing, there are also gaming groups, both offline and online.
• Do your hobbies with others. Local meetups can be easy to find for almost any hobby. Knitting circles, drumming circles, drag racing, scuba diving, roller skating, running, reading, anything you are interested in probably has an established local meetup, but if it doesn’t, YOU can start one! Meetup.com and local community centers are great resources to find your perfect hobby club.
• Volunteer with an organization whose mission aligns with your values.
• Take a trip for single travelers or join a singles activities group.
• Post on an app. Facebook groups or Bumble BFF can be great places for finding new friends.
• Join a professional networking group. Business networking may not sound like a fun afternoon, but it can bring you more than some new business contacts. Joining a professional group can connect you to some fabulous people you would not ordinarily meet.
• If most of your social set is from your profession, it may be time to join a general business network group to meet professionals who could also use some new friends.

I hope my best tips for meeting new friends help you and lead you to some great people. In the meantime, think about reaching out to a friend you haven’t spoken to for a while and see how it feels. You both deserve a mental health boost today.

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Dr. Colleen Mullen, PsyD., is a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in San Diego, CA. Her doctorate work resulted in a unique way of mapping the process of behavioral change, merging concepts from Chaos Theory with Systemic Psychology. Dr. Mullen’s work with her clients focuses on helping them learn to manage or recover from trauma, co-dependent behavior patterns, depression, addictions, anxiety, and complicated intimate relationships.