Are Relationships Important?

Relationships Are Important

This week (16th - 22nd May) is Mental Health Awareness Week; this year, the focus is on relationships. According to mounting research evidence, relationships are a crucial predictor of good mental health, and the actual quality of the relationships we can form with those around us: family, friends, colleagues, and others, is also essential.

It turns out that good relationships (as opposed to abusive or conflictual relationships) are vital to our overall well-being. It has been shown that social relationships are just as meaningful regarding the effect on our long-term health and mortality as the results of smoking or alcohol consumption. Social relationships also influence our health more than obesity or physical inactivity.

Harvard University researched over the past 80 years into what makes us happy and recently published the results in a 2012 book called 'Triumph of Experience'.

The findings indicate that not fame, wealth, or working hard makes us happy, but that happiness comes from our relationships.

Childhood Experiences of Relationship

We first begin learning how to 'do' relationships through our interactions with our parents, guardians, and caregivers in our early lives. Our attitudes towards others, the way we make sense of how other people behave towards us, how we believe others perceive us, and the unwritten, unspoken 'rules of engagement' when we are socially interacting with others as adults have all been formed during our earliest experiences in the relationships of our childhood.

It is also important to realise that our early relationships have severe implications for us in our adult lives. According to the Mental Health Foundation:

"The attachment that a child has with its parent or guardian is a central predictor for mental health and wellbeing, as well as relationship satisfaction, during adulthood."

5 Steps to Better Relationships

The Mental Health Foundation suggests five steps we can take as individuals to develop more healthy relationships. These are:

  1. Give time - Try to dedicate more time to building connections with others, particularly with friends and family.

  2. Be present - When you are with someone, then be with them, don't multitask or think about other things, but focus on the interaction with the person you are with.

  3. Listen - Try to hear what the other person is saying, non judgementally and from their perspective.

  4. Be listened to - Be honest with the person you are with about how you feel and allow them to support you.

  5. Recognise unhealthy relationships - Remember that, whilst positive relationships are beneficial, unhealthy relationships can impact our well-being negatively.

How Might Therapy Help?

Suppose our early relationships have been problematic, complex, abusive, and neglectful. In that case, we may find ourselves in our adult lives sometimes struggling to build healthy, fulfilling relationships for ourselves. These are not easy patterns to shift even when we want to, but exploring these patterns in a supportive, confidential environment can go some way to helping change them for the better.

Therapy can be one way of exploring and understanding how we relate to others. Sound therapy can often help when it comes to wanting to change for the better some of the habitual ways that we interact with others, which we very likely learned when we were young.

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