Being A Member Of The Community: Don’t Seek Friends, Be A Friend

People are meant to live in communities. It is our na­ture; it is in our genes and in our jeans. Being connected with other people is crucial to our happiness.

Do you feel lonely? If you do, you are not alone. While you may think it’s a personal mental health issue, the collective social impact is an epidemic.

Friendships made in school play a special part in young people’s development. They are more than just moral support, friends help them learn key social skills, and serve as a source of social support.

Relationships are quite different from the engaged-married-live-together-forever lockstep. The romantic friendship is a new feature in the relationship landscape of most conventional Americans, though not unknown in other cultures around the world.

Researchers have discovered a connection between Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram use and decreased well-being.

Your chances of forming online friendships depend mainly on the number of groups and organizations you join, not their types, according to a new analysis of six online social networks.

Social media sites can make us feel left out—and can actually inhibit intelligent thought, research shows. A new study takes a critical look not just at Facebook and other similar platforms, but at the peculiarities of the systems on which they operate.

Imagine that someone you care about is procrastinating in advance of a vital exam. If he fails the test, he will not be able to go to university, an eventuality of major consequence in his life. If positive encouragement doesn’t work, you might reverse strategy, making your friend feel so bad, so worried, so scared, that the only strategy left is that he starts studying like mad.

Good friendships seem worth celebrating. But for many of us, tensions can appear from time to time between being a good friend and doing “the right thing.”

In early November 2017, Brooks Fisher’s neighbor in Sonoma, California, pounded on his door at 2 a.m., rang the doorbell and shouted, “There’s a fire coming and you need to get out now! I can hear trees exploding!”

Strong sibling bonds can offset the negative effects of parental strife, according to a new study.

In 1906, the young Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung received a collection of essays from none other than the founder of psychoanalysis himself, Sigmund Freud.

Whether your relationships are as wonderful as you wish them to be or you feel that there is room for improvement, using metaphysical methods to manage and sustain them is as rewarding as is it empowering.

NPR reported on a survey about loneliness conducted by Cigna, a large health insurance company. Are Americans becoming lonelier?

It takes more than 200 hours before someone can be considered a close friend, according to a new study that explores how long it typically takes to move through the deepening stages of friendship.

When it comes to presenting yourself online – such as your profile pic for Facebook or even Tinder – which type of photo do you chose?

One of the fiercest and most hypocritical human emotions is envy. When the envy is conscious and sent deliberately, the harm is even more terrible, appearing as a sudden illness in the person's life, with no apparent cause.

The nature and ethics of “fake news” has become a subject of widespread concern. But, for many of us, the issue is much more personal: What are we to do when a cranky uncle or an otherwise pleasant old friend persists in populating our news feeds with a stream of posts that can run deeply contrary to our own values?

Independence is glorified in North American culture as a symbol of strength. As a society, we value individual achievement and extol self-reliance.

New research suggests we can “pick up” good and bad moods from friends, but not depression. “We investigated whether there is evidence for the individual components of mood (such as appetite, tiredness, and sleep) spreading through US adolescent friendship networks..."

Among older adults, friendships are actually a stronger predictor of health and happiness than relationships with family members, research shows.

Avoiding Trump supporters only increases our already dangerous polarization. Here’s how to really listen and find compassion.

For a long time, friendships between gay men and straight men – what some now call “bromosexual” friendships – were uncommon.

Whether offering us consolation after the death of a loved one or commiseration when our team loses yet again, our social relationships are invaluable for helping us lead happier, less stressful lives.

Friends encourage and support each other in difficult times and generally make a positive impact on each other's lives. However, they're also willing to confront and constructively . So let's take a look at how you can deal with conflict and with saying those things that your friend might not want to hear.

While there is no cure for dementia or Alzheimer’s, studies suggest strong social ties can help ward off the diseases’ advance. The Momentia movement uses strong social ties to ward off the effects of Alzheimer’s and dementia.

In this article I will explore what toxic relationships are, explain how we can get out of them, and share an exercise to cut energy links with toxic people in our lives in order to regain peace.

Growing up I had a lot of trouble distancing myself from other people's problems. I had every aspect of the Savior Complex embedded in my cells. It was this natural-born Savior Complex which resulted in a lot of drama in my life.

For years, friendships between straight women and gay men have been a subject of pop culture fascination. Books, television shows and feature length films have all highlighted this unique relationship, noted for its closeness and depth.

In his first interview as Prime Minister with The Today Show on Monday, Malcolm Turnbull responded to questions about increased funding for women escaping family violence by declaring “real men don’t hit women”. 

Long before the invention of Facebook and Match.com, our ancestors grappled with how to improve their social lives, forge beneficial connections, and strengthen their reputations. Their insights will help us enhance our social lives, extend our online social networks, and lead to greater opportunities for success.

We have ideals about being a good friend and, when we don’t measure up to those ideals, we judge ourselves negatively. How good a friend are you? Many would contemplate this question for a minute and then reply, “Not a very good one.” For many years I also...

In many ways, to encourage is to help the heart unfold. And each time we do so, another aspect of our true self unfolds. Very often, the art of encouragement is needed to counter some sort of fear...

It goes without saying that harming others does not a friendly community make. We can begin to refrain from doing harm while cultivating love and good relations. When we live with this value, we honor all with whom we...

You can’t choose your family, but you can choose your friends. So goes the saying. Ask yourself if that is true for you. Did you choose your friends, or did you allow them to choose you? It may be that in...

by Alan Cohen. I was surprised to receive a Facebook friend invitation from Eric Butterworth, a respected author and minister who introduced me to the new thought movement many years ago. The astounding element of Dr. Butterworth’s invitation is that he is dead. He passed away eight years ago. How he found his way onto Facebook is...

A while back, in the spirit of wanting things to be "better", I rearranged the furniture in the office. The changes were a little unconventional, yet  the layout was more efficient and would lead to a better functioning of the office. People often have a resistance to change, especially when the change is thrust upon them without giving them a chance to make a choice. So, the reactions of my co-workers...

If you are struggling to learn something new and you have people around who are not only unhelpful but downright negative about what you're doing, then you need to really look at each and every one and decide if each is truly a friend...

"The meek shall inherit the earth..." . Those of us raised in the Christian faith know this statement well. And for many of us, myself included, it was interpreted to mean that we should bite our tongue, hold our peace, and not rock the boat.