Social Wellness means nurturing yourself and your relationships. It means giving and receiving social support, ensuring that you have friends and other people, including family, to turn to in times of need or crisis, which gives you a broader focus and a positive self-image.
Social support enhances quality of life and provides a buffer against adverse life events. Social support can take different forms:
- Emotional (sometimes called non-tangible) support refers to the actions people take to make someone else feel cared for.
- Instrumental support refers to the physical, such as money and housekeeping.
- Informational support means providing information to help someone.
Why is Social Wellness Important?
Having a strong and high-quality social support system can offer physical, emotional, and psychological health benefits. Research suggests that social support can have the following effects on a person’s well-being:
- Self-esteem: Surrounding yourself with people who respect and care about you can lead you to think more highly of yourself, potentially improving your self-esteem.
- Coping skills: Having social and emotional support can improve your sense of autonomy, potentially making it easier to cope with stressful situations, even on your own.
- Stress: Research suggests that having social support can make an individual more resilient to stress. Conversely, those with less social support may be more prone to experiencing stress.
- Feelings of belonging: Social support can give individuals “the feeling of being loved, cared for, respected, and belonging to a network of communication.”
- Physical health: Research suggests that social support can significantly predict the physical health symptoms an individual may experience.
- Mental health: Research has also shown that social support to be a strong predictor of mental health symptoms, such as depression. According to researchers, positive social communication with one’s social network can reduce anxiety and improve feelings of stability.
Nurture Your Relationships
The concepts below are instrumental in attaining a healthy and lasting relationship.
1. Become a master of commitment. It’s important to be aware of precisely what you are committing to, so that you can realistically judge whether you have the capacity to follow through with the commitment.
2. Make commitments you can stand by. In a relationship, it is important to be honest and empathetic to each other’s feelings, hopes, and dreams.
3. Break the cycle of blame and criticism. It is important to own your part in the dynamics of relationships.
4. It can be helpful to shift your attention away from “fixing the other person” and onto more creative expressions for resolving conflict. Shifting the focus in this way will help to inject more positive energy into the relationship.
5. Become a master of verbal and nonverbal appreciation. Showing appreciation for others is critical to healthy relationships.
Strong social support can offer a variety of physical, emotional, and psychological health benefits. Social Wellness Month can be an opportunity for individuals to prioritize their social wellness, which is important for overall well-being, through healthy relationships, strong social networks, and support systems. If you’re looking to form strong connections, you might reconnect with old friends or distant relatives, take up a new hobby, exercise and eat right to stay healthier, or join a club or group. Additionally, strong relationship-building skills can improve the quality of your relationships.
