5 Secrets About The Healing Power Of Friendship

When you feel unwell and share your feelings with a friend, you feel more protected, understood and even manage to see things from another point of view. We are social animals and to be happy we need to relate to other people. It is difficult to be fully happy without relating to anyone. It is difficult to be fully happy without having truly experienced friendship.

A friend is someone who does not belong to your family but who you perceive as a brother, a father, a mother. He is someone you can feel closer to at times than to your own family. This is friendship.

The effects of the lack of friends

At Brigham Young University (United States), a study was carried out that concluded, after studying three hundred thousand people for seven years, that the lack of personal relationships was equivalent to smoking fifteen cigarettes a day or drinking six glasses of alcoholic drinks.

Therefore, the lack of friends is worse for health than a sedentary life or alcoholism.

Distance from false friends

There are people who put on the mask of friends, who consider themselves our friends, but who judge us, treat us with indifference or leave us aside. These people are not friends, they are people who need to be removed from our lives, to let in other people who bring us joy and fulfillment, people from whom we learn things every day, who support us.

You can easily detect a fake friend with these simple keys:

Quick friendship

A good friendship is forged over time, with years of relationship throughout our lives. A friend who appears overnight is not really a friend. It is necessary that time passes, that good and bad things happen and see how the friendship relationship evolves.

Interested friendship

Those people who consider themselves friends but who disappear when things go wrong and reappear when things go well are not friends.

Destructive criticism

A friend does not criticize you to sink you, but to help you, and he knows how to do it with empathy, putting himself in your place. A person who deliberately criticizes you behind your back and hurts you is not your friend.

In any situation where you suspect the intentions of a supposed friend, trust your intuition, ask yourself: How does that person make you feel? If you think that a person does not bring you anything, do not cut the relationship radically but take some time to observe how it evolves.

Friendship benefits

True, sincere and selfless friendship makes us feel whole and encourages us to move on. A friendship can last for years or a lifetime and bring us many benefits.

Prevents the feeling of loneliness

Loneliness is sometimes a good companion that allows us to know and accept ourselves, but sometimes it is necessary to overcome isolation and go out there to socialize with our friends. True friends will make us feel accompanied, cradled, clothed. Just like we will do with them when you feel bad.

Improves mental health

William Bukoski published research in Development and Psychopathology in which he showed that depression in childhood is directly related to the absence of friends.  It has also been proven that children perform more physical activities when they play with friends.

Increase life expectancy

For ten years, several Australian scientists followed 1,500 people, for which they concluded that in people with a wide circle of friends the chances of dying are reduced by 22%. Therefore, having good friends and surrounding yourself with them, leaning on them, lengthens your life expectancy.

Protect our heart

A study conducted by Duke University (United States) among a thousand single people with heart disease, revealed that after five years, only fifty percent of those affected survived who did not have a trusted friend. Against the eighty-five percent of survivors among those who had at least one friend.

Helps develop self-esteem

The concept we have of ourselves, our self-esteem, is also nourished by the love and support of our friends. Friendship is very important to feel good.

What do you think about friendship? Is it something indispensable in your life?