Why aren't we talking about social health?
Why aren't we talking about social health?
Rising rates of loneliness, unprecedented rates of separation and divorce, a drastic decline in meaningful friendships. We need to talk about relationships and our social health. So, why aren’t we?
Listen while you read:
There’s been something on my mind lately.
When it comes to our personal wellbeing, we’ve started to talk more. We’ve started to talk more about self care, our emotions, our experiences, and our mental health. We’ve made good headway in our understanding about emotional wellbeing and our human need to share our stories.
This is a good thing. It’s important for us to talk about our personal experiences. Talking is good for our mental health and it is really good for our relationships.
Sometimes, however, I wonder if our focus on the Self and this cultural obsession with working on ourselves is preventing us from seeing the bigger picture, which is that our inner worlds are shaped by our relationships. We become who we are by being in social relationships. And so, being too self-focused prevents us from being social and other-focused. When we’re far too concerned with ourselves, we don’t develop a concern for others. When we’re only focused on the solo Self, we don’t practice how to build the social Self.
So, yes, developing healthier relationships with ourselves is a part of our deeper work. But growth, healing, and healthy living happen in relationships. We literally cannot live without each other. Recent studies have shown that experiencing loneliness causes the social engagement system in our brain to deteriorate; we need other people around us to be healthy and well.
We need to connect more than we do
All of this is to say that we need to talk more about our social health. We’ve normalized conversations about personal wellbeing and it’s time we have a chat about the importance of social connection. But I’m not just here to prove that having friends, companions, and people to call your family is important for your wellbeing. Deep down, I think we all know this to be true and, to be honest, I actually don’t think many people would debate this point. I think we all know we need to connect more than we do currently.
I want to have a different conversation. I hope we start talking about the reasons why we don’t actively pursue social connection, despite it being good for us. I fear that social connection has been given the same treatment that we’ve given other healthy pursuits like getting exercise and eating real food. We know they are good for us, but many of us struggle to build these practices into our lives. I think we need to talk more about our social health challenges. In doing so, we will normalize the difficulties we all face when it comes to connecting with those we care about and we will show others that it’s okay to struggle too.
The decline in social health
Social connection is in our nature. Through evolution, we’ve acquired the ability to connect with others in order to keep our groups, and the individuals within them, at a healthy and optimal level of functioning. Without the ability to connect with each other, we live lonelier lives and we have more difficulty feeling safe in a group. Our neurobiology even changes when we’re not connected to a group; we’ve evolved to live alongside others for companionship, for mutuality, and for reciprocity. We literally need each other. And yet, so many of us struggle to be part of a group, struggle to make and keep close connections, and struggle to find our place. We are a social species, and still so many of us are living siloed, solo, and separated lives.
In my work with young people, I’ve been noticing the decline in social health for some time now. I’m seeing that kids are spending less time outside, less time with their friends, less time pursuing new friendships, less time going on dates, less time having sex, and less time taking social risks. All of these things require us to learn how to tolerate ambiguity and let uncertainty be an inherent part of our social lives. In today’s world, it’s really easy to stay in our bubbles of comfort. I do wonder if the need for constant comfort is what holds us back from improving our social health. Today, it seems as though we choose personal comfort more than we choose social connection.
Disconnecting from social connection
One of my main concerns here is that when we are always choosing personal comfort, we don’t get the social practice we need in order to build social skillsets. I think this is one of the reasons why we struggle to connect. Many of us don’t have the social practice we need to thrive in the social health arena and many of us haven’t had exposure to secure-functioning relationships. Both of these factors, in my view, contribute to rising rates of adolescent mental health issues and the crisis of connection we’re all experiencing globally. In other words, the decline in social health has personal and interpersonal roots. This makes sense. When we’ve been hurt in relationships, it makes it that much harder to practice and to trust in the safety, security, and social sturdiness they offer us. In order to heal, though, we need to consider the mind, body, and our social health. After all, even though we get hurt in relationships, we must heal in relationships too.
Another major worry of mine when it comes to our social health is that it has become somewhat commonplace to end relationships that make us uncomfortable. Sometimes it seems like perfectionism and negativism have transformed how we show up for each other. I worry that we are losing the ability to sit with each other through something hard. I worry that we’re not flexing our social muscles enough. And I worry that we’re being too reactive when it comes to small differences. More than anything, I worry that it’s becoming too easy to lean away when we need to be leaning in.
So what does true social connection look like?
When it comes to social connection with others, I wonder if we all share the same definition. One of the myths about social connection is that, in order for it to be real connection, it has to be a vulnerable conversation about something deep and there has to be a mutual sharing of hard things. In my view, this is not the case. I view true social connection a bit differently.
True social connection is about being seen and seeing others.
It is about being listened to and listening to others.
It is about being cared for and caring for others.
It is about being known and knowing others.
In my view, being socially held has three core qualities: safety, belonging, and mattering. Meaningful relationships allow you to feel safe enough, they give you a felt sense of belonging, and they make you feel like you matter. Meaningful relationships are inherently reciprocal too. This means making other people feel safe enough inyour presence. It means helping people feel secure in their belonging with you. And it also means letting others know that they matter to you.
That, to me, is true connection.
Going back to this question of why we’re not talking about our social health, I wonder if this is due to the fact that although these concepts are not new, the context within which we practice them is constantly changing. For a lot of us, life seems to be unfolding faster than we can keep up with it. Social wellbeing, therefore, is about our ability to adapt to the ever-changing social context we’re faced with through the development of strong social bonds that can carry and hold us through hard moments.
Social health is not just about how often we socialize. It is a practice of building meaningful relationships with people in our social groups, which could be family, friends, partners, and colleague relationships. Social health is a quality over quantity equation; scoring high in social health is not about being more social, making more friends, or going out more, it is about deepening the quality of the connections you already have. This is our starting place, which is perhaps one of the most vulnerable places to start.
Going forward, I hope we continue this conversation about social health.
I still don’t think we’ve talked about it enough.
Being in relationships is in our nature. So let’s make sure we nurture that.
Be well,
Jake