6 Ways Friendship Benefit Your Health
6 Ways Friendship
Benefit Your Health
Good friends are among the most significant people in most people’s lives. However, not all friends are good.
Good friends converse openly. They usually don’t shy away from telling the truth, even when they fear you may not like it. They accept you for who you are, just as you accept them for who they are. Even if you disagree with each other, you can count on them to respect your boundaries.
Healthy friendships also involve mutual support, so a good friend won’t just expect you to assist them out. They also offer support when they can, even if it’s just a listening ear.
The icing on the cake? Solid friendship is also beneficial to one’s health. Here’s how to do it.
1. Reduction in loneliness and social isolation
Loneliness and social isolation can have a negative impact on mental and physical health, and an increasing number of people are lonely these days.
Consider the distinction between these two concerns: friends can help you avoid isolation, but good friends can help you avoid loneliness.
Have you ever heard the expression “lonely in a crowd”? Even if you aren’t lonely, you can have a lot of friends and still feel lonely.
It’s the quality of the relationship that matters. Friendships that are casual or shallow rarely provide much emotional support. You may have gaming mates, coffee companions, or gym partners, but if you don’t have somebody to confide in, you’re bound to feel lonely.
However, even a small group of close friends might help you overcome loneliness. When you do feel lonely, you know you may get help by talking, laughing, or spending time with a buddy.
Although distance and other considerations may prevent you from physically hanging together, knowing that you have a strong bond can make you feel less alone.
As you can see, avocados are extremely nutrient-dense fruits that are high in healthy fats, fibre, and a variety of vitamins and minerals.
They’re high in nutrients like magnesium, B6, vitamin C, vitamin E, and folate, which are commonly low in many people’s diets.
Half an avocado, for example, has 10% of the daily need for potassium.
2. Less Stress
Everyone is subjected to some level of anxiety. It can arrive in huge or tiny quantities, but no matter how insignificant it appears at first, it can quickly accumulate and overwhelm you.
You may experience anxiety, despair, or irritation as a result of stress, but stress can also influence you in other ways.
Stress for an extended period of time can cause:
- Poor immune health
- Insomnia
- digestive problems
- heart problems
- diabetes
- high blood pressure
However, there is some good news. Maintaining great friendships, according to research, can help you manage stress more successfully and reduce your odds of experiencing various types of stress in the first place.
Consider the last time you were anxious or upset about something. Perhaps you confided in a friend who listened to you vent and helped you come up with ideas.
Potential stressors don’t have a chance to pile up and produce considerable anguish if you know you have friends who care and want to help.
3. SUPPORT EMOTIONALLY
Relationships provide significant emotional support.
Your friends could help you by:
- Listening to your challenges
- Confirming your emotions
- Doing pleasant things for you because it’s the right thing to do
- When you’re depressed or upset, it can be helpful to have someone to distract you
If you’re in a romantic relationship, you can start by talking to your spouse. This is totally normal, and romantic partners can certainly provide reassurance and comfort. They shouldn’t, however, be your sole source of emotional support.
Friendships with people other than your partner are often recommended by relationship specialists, as they can help emotional wellness as well as relational health.
Friends that share your interests can help you preserve your sense of self when you and your partner disagree or desire to spend time on separate pastimes.
4. Personal Growth
Friends can help you keep your determination to follow better behaviours whether you wish to make a positive change in your life or break a habit. This could be one of the reasons why great connections can help you live longer.
Friends can help you change for the better by setting a positive example for you. Perhaps your best friend’s recent choice to stop smoking motivates you to do the same.
Your buddies may also show their support for your decisions by making adjustments alongside you. If you want to join a gym or begin running, for example, having an exercise partner can help you stick with it until it becomes a habit.
Whatever else they do, they’ll almost certainly support you. This encouragement can raise your self-esteem and increase your chances of achieving your objectives.
5. Sense of belonging
We all want to know that we are important to others and that our lives have meaning. In reality, on Maslow’s hierarchy of requirements, belonging comes in third, behind basic wants (such as food and shelter) and safety needs.
The development and maintenance of close friendships aid in the development of sentiments of belonging.
Caring about others enriches one’s life. You take on the obligation of delivering compassion and emotional support when you care for others. This has the potential to make you a stronger and better person.
Having a support network, on the other hand, can make you feel more comfortable in your own life.
Even if your buddies are dispersed over multiple towns, states, or even countries, you still have reliable friends who have your back.
6. Support through challenging times
Life isn’t always straightforward. It can be downright depressing at times.
You could be confronted with stressful or difficult experiences that damage your emotional well-being at any time, without warning, such as:
- Divorce or breakup
- A pet or a loved one has died
- Pandemics
- Unemployment
- Family issues
Any of these difficulties has the potential to have a major impact on long-term mental health results. According to new research from 2017, having close friendships makes it simpler to deal with anything life throws at you.
Friendship was found to highly predict resilience, or the ability to recover after traumatic situations, in this study, which looked at resilience in over 2,000 teenagers between the ages of 14 and 24.
While family support aided immediate resilience, the authors of the study found that friendship predicted better resilience later in life, whereas family support did not.
It’s possible that friendship will be especially helpful in coping with the stress of familial problems, such as neglect and abuse.
7. Making Friends
You might be wondering how to find (and maintain) wonderful friends now that you’ve learned more about the advantages of solid friendships.
It’s frequently easier said than done to form and maintain friendships, especially as an adult with the responsibilities of daily life. These pointers may be useful.
Pursue your passions
While it isn’t required for friends to share all of their interests, some common ground might help build a bond.
Joining a hiking group, taking an art class, or going to library events can all help you make new acquaintances.
Consider taking up a new pastime that allows you to meet new people if your existing hobbies don’t allow you to do so.
Take the initiative and move first.
Take a look at your most recent encounters with others. Maybe you have a lunchtime conversation with a coworker or a playground run-in with another parent. You won’t know for sure if they’ll make a good buddy unless you spend more time with them.
Extending an invitation might be nerve-wracking, especially if you’re afraid of rejection. However, if they are nervous as well, your friendship may never take off.
Keep it basic and informal with your invitation. You can always ask if they’d like to have a cup of coffee or bring up something you both have an interest in:
- “Remember that book signing we mentioned the other day?” “How about we go together?”
- “I heard a new Italian restaurant is opening in town. “Would you like to have lunch there next week?”
More advice on getting to know individuals can be found here.
Keep in contact
Once you’ve established a friendship, you’ll need to work hard to keep it going:
- Instead of letting them do all the work, reach out to create plans.
- Call or text them every now and then, even if it’s only to share a joke or inquire about their well-being.
- When you ask them questions, pay attention to their responses.
- If you know they’re having trouble, check in with them.
- When they ask, share your personal challenges; this strengthens both of your bonds.
Here are some suggestions for increasing communication in friendships and other interactions.
If maintaining several friendships is challenging for you, consider focusing on the ones that are most important to you. Many people don’t have enough time or emotional energy to maintain a large number of intimate connections.
At the end of the day, the quantity of your friendships is far less important than the quality of those friendships. To get the benefits, you don’t need a certain amount of friends. Even a few close friendships can have a significant impact on your happiness.
Knowing when to let go is essential
Friendships that are unhealthy or toxic can generate tension and drag you down just as readily as friendships that are healthy can raise you up.
You might want to reconsider if your friend:
- Gossips
- Has a bad attitude toward you
- You are being manipulated
- Is all take and no giving
- Does not appear to be concerned about your feelings
More indicators of toxic friendships may be found here, as well as advice on how to deal with them.
SUMMARY
Friendships are crucial at all stages of life.
As you grow and mature as an individual, some aspects of your friendship may change.
Strong friendships, on the other hand, will continue to strengthen you year after year since the most important things; trust, respect, forgiveness, and support will never change.