Showing posts with label Friendship. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Friendship. Show all posts

Tuesday, March 28, 2023

Lack of proximity is a barrier and obstacle to maintaining friendship.


Were friendships always so fragile? I suspect not. But we now live in an era of radical individual freedoms. All of us may begin at the same starting line as young adults, but as soon as the gun goes off, we’re all running in different directions; there’s little synchrony to our lives.

  “It’s Your Friends Who Break Your Heart,” by Jennifer Senior, Atlantic, March, 2022


The factor influencing friendships that has changed dramatically over the last 100 years has been geographical mobility. Carole King’s song, “So Far Away” plaintively expresses the problem when she sings, “People don’t stay in one place any more.”


People are no longer constrained by physical proximity and so they can go off from their geographical orbit and explore other places and relationships. Even in the same room people are exploring virtual spaces and relationships. These opportunities and capabilities require that people be much more intentional in their engagement and maintenance of friendships.


To what extent do people invest intentional effort into being a friend and maintaining the relationship especially when there are barriers and obstacles to its maintenance? Is the effort worth it? The research seems to indicate that it is for the improvement of mental health and spiritual growth.


Monday, March 27, 2023

We lose half our social network in 7 years.



In 2009, the Dutch sociologist Gerald Mollenhorst published an attention-grabber of a study that basically showed we replace half of our social network over the course of seven years, a reality we both do and don’t intuit.

  “It’s Your Friends Who Break Your Heart,” by Jennifer Senior, Atlantic, March, 2022


Studies repeatedly demonstrate that social connections are a key factor in mental health, and yet studies also show that loneliness is a major problem especially as people get older. Therefore, this is the first in a thread of articles on friendship that are tagged friendship.


In Jennifer Senior’s article in the Atlantic in March of 2022 just as the quarantine and social distancing required to mitigate the spread of the Covid virus were starting to diminish, she points to Gerald Mollenhorst’s study which showed that half of our social network is replaced over a seven year period. There are many factors that influence this dynamic such as geographical relocation, divorce, and death.


Another factor which is huge is changes in the family life cycle. Children are born, raised, and separate from their families of origin. The “empty nest” is not only about the loss of the child but the parents of their childrens’ friends. The time and energy spent in facilitating children's involvement in social activities is no longer required or desired and so the social fabric of the parent diminishes and loneliness and ennui set in.


In their 50s and 60s an intentional effort is often necessary to cultivate and maintain a new social network that has some purpose and meaning. The old social institutions such as church, and community organizations no longer serve this purpose in the digital age where more time and energy is spent in digital and virtual reality than in personal connection.


How has this dynamic manifested in your life or the lives of people you have observed?


Saturday, August 22, 2020

How to make a new friend

One of the regular topics which come up in psychotherapy sessions with my clients is lonliness. Social connections is one of the key components of wellness. As we get older it is harder to make new friends. There are some good tips in this video which is informative and entertaining.


 

A way of understanding later life problems in living is to understand the trauma we may have experienced in childhood. This trauma is called "adverse childhood experiences."

If a person has a high score on the ACE screening tool, what can they do to lower their over all anxiety and tension level? Dr. Nadine Burke Harris describes 6 components of wellness one of which is social connections.