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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
About the author, LifeSpeak Inc. expert Dr. Colleen Mullen, PsyD, Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist
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.