3 things you must know about how friendships impact our nervous system

5/19/23

The Calculus of friendships and health

If you’re picky, and choose your friends wisely, and now there’s some new research indicating that doing so can help your health.

A new psychological study finds people with positive experiences in their close relationships appear to have better physical health. Previous research has focused on how relationship conflict or satisfaction can impact stress levels and blood pressure. In this current study, however, researchers looked at how either type of relationship, good or bad, affects a person’s health day by day.

“Both positive and negative experiences in our relationships contribute to our daily stress, coping, and physiology, like blood pressure and heart rate reactivity,” says lead author Brian Don of the University of Auckland in a media release. “Additionally, it’s not just how we feel about our relationships overall that matters; the ups and downs are important too.”

Over 4000 study subjects provided data on their blood pressure, heart rate, stress, and coping levels on their smartphone or smartwatch. The research participants also shared their experiences and feelings about their closest relationships, including the number of positive and negative memories, twice a week. As Gottman might have predicted, the math was self-explanatory:

People with more positive experiences than negative ones often reported less stress, better coping skills, and lower blood pressure.

The COVID challenge: more volatility equals more variability

On the other hand, people who experienced jarring daily ups and downs (variability) in their relationships and reported more negative experiences had more issues with stress, and increasing blood pressure, and negative emotions.

Other factors may have changed people’s relationships, and in turn, their health, Dr. Don adds. The COVID-19 pandemic affected how people interacted with others or how often they could see their friends and loved ones.

“Since the COVID-19 pandemic, relationships have been facing unprecedented challenges, turbulence, and change,” says Dr. Don. “What this means is that the COVID pandemic may have health implications not just because of the virus itself, but also indirectly as a result of the impact it has on people’s relationships. That is, because the COVID-19 pandemic has created considerable strain, turbulence, and variability in people’s relationships, it may indirectly alter stress, coping, and physiology in daily life, all of which have important implications for physical well-being.”

I’m not saying that your friends can make you suddenly sick or healthy. But the research clearly shows how relationships may be more influential on physical health than we realized previously.

Dr. Don says he hopes researchers can look beyond heart rate and blood pressure to get a more complete understanding of other ways relationships may affect health.

“It would be useful to examine other physiological states, such as neuroendocrine or sympathetic nervous system responses as outcomes of daily positive and negative relationship experiences, which may reveal different patterns of associations,” Dr. Don concludes.

Implications for couples therapy

Researchers are now considering whether other physiological states, such as the kind of responses generated in the neuroendocrine or sympathetic nervous system may reveal different patterns of associations.

These patterns can be understood is the resultant “emotional bank account” of the relationship.

This outcome, as Gottman might have predicted was the culmination of daily positive and negative relationship experiences.

Many marriages rely on a healthy friendship support system.

The math of friendship 3 things you must know

• Good friendships are profoundly helpful to your nervous system. Research shows that it takes 90 hours of time together to consider someone a friend.

• Want a close friend? That’s even more helpful, but that will require an investment of at least 200 hours.

• If your friendship circle has eroded during COVID, refuse to accept a lonely outcome. Call a friend that you haven’t spoken with in a long time, make a plan to meeting new people. Set a goal to meet at least one new person a month. Find someway to add value to other people’s lives…give yourself away; host a dinner party, offer a free class, or join a class. Part of the problems is that humans are supremely adaptable… we can get used to being lonely.

  Please don’t.

RESEARCH:

The study is published in Social Psychological and Personality Science.