Social Wellness

Signs of Social Wellness

• Development of assertiveness skills not passive or aggressive ones.
• Balancing social and personal time.
• The ability to be who you are in all situations.
• Becoming engaged with other people in your community.
• Valuing diversity and treat others with respect.
• Continually being able to maintain and develop friendships and social networks.
• The ability to create boundaries within relationship boundaries that encourage communication, trust and conflict management.
• Remembering to have fun.
• Having supportive network of family and friends.

University of New Hampshire Health & Wellness - https://www.unh.edu/health/social-wellness

Social Wellness Toolkit

Explore the National Institute of Health's Social Wellness Toolkit: https://www.nih.gov/health-information/social-wellness-toolkit

In a healthy relationship, both people:

• Feel respected, supported, and valued
• Make decisions
• Have friends and interests outside of the relationship
• Settle disagreements with open and honest communication
• Respect each other's privacy and space

Learn more: https://health.gov/myhealthfinder/healthy-living/mental-health-and-relationships/watch-warning-signs-relationship-violence

Platonic: How the Science of Attachment Can Help You Make--and Keep--Friends

Is understanding the science of attachment the key to building lasting friendships and finding "your people" in an ever-more-fragmented world? How do we make and keep friends in an era of distraction, burnout, and chaos, especially in a society that often prizes romantic love at the expense of other relationships? In Platonic, Dr. Marisa G. Franco unpacks the latest, often counterintuitive findings about the bonds between us--for example, why your friends aren't texting you back (it's not because they hate you!), and the myth of "friendships happening organically" (making friends, like cultivating any relationship, requires effort!). As Dr. Franco explains, to make and keep friends you must understand your attachment style--secure, anxious, or avoidant: it is the key to unlocking what's working (and what's failing) in your friendships. Making new friends, and deepening longstanding relationships, is possible at any age--in fact, it's essential. The good news: there are specific, research-based ways to improve the number and quality of your connections using the insights of attachment theory and the latest scientific research on friendship. Platonic provides a clear and actionable blueprint for forging strong, lasting connections with others--and for becoming our happiest, most fulfilled selves in the process.

Find Your People

In a world that's both more connected and more isolating than ever before, we're often tempted to do life alone, whether because we're so busy or because relationships feel risky and hard. But science confirms that consistent, meaningful connection with others has a powerful impact on our well-being. We are meant to live known and loved. But so many are hiding behind emotional walls that we're experiencing an epidemic of loneliness.

Better You, Better Friends

Offers a unique approach to becoming a better friend to FIND better friendships We know that our friendships increase our happiness, our health, and our longevity, yet people in the U.S. have fewer close confidantes today than we did three decades ago. Even though there's a huge amount of information in the media discussing these relationships, and our social media feeds run 24/7, most of us haven't come up with a constructive approach to friendship. But learning to BE a better friend is the first step to acquiring and cultivating better, more rewarding friendships. At her own birthday celebration, Glenda Shaw found herself questioning the friends and the friendships there to help her. It dawned on her that she did not feel truly connected to most of them. Something felt terribly wrong. She realized that what she shared with her birthday guests was proximity: they worked together, they lived close to each other, they went to the same networking events and movies. There were, however, other friends with whom she shared more fundamental qualities: the disposition of being encouraging to people, an attitude of looking for purpose in life, a spirit of adventure. Those were the friendships that meant something, the ones that felt truly deep and real. Friendship is voluntary; it's not legally binding; and it usually has no economic consequences. Yet, friendship, true friendship, is important and comes with challenges the can make or break a relationship. Each chapter of Better You, Better Friends: A Whole New Approach to Friendship explores and addresses a particular kind of challenge-envy, money, honesty-and discusses ways to overcome them or to know when to bow out of a relationship that brings more stress than happiness. Through expert input and personal stories, including her own, Shaw offers a new level of understanding of what makes a good friendship and a good friend.

Out of Touch: How to Survive an Intimacy Famine

A behavioral scientist explores love, belongingness, and fulfillment, focusing on how modern technology can both help and hinder our need to connect. Millions of people around the world are not getting the physical, emotional, and intellectual intimacy they crave. Through the wonders of modern technology, we are connecting with more people more often than ever before, but are these connections what we long for? Pandemic isolation has made us even more alone. In Out of Touch, Professor of Psychology Michelle Drouin investigates what she calls our intimacy famine, exploring love, belongingness, and fulfillment and considering why relationships carried out on technological platforms may leave us starving for physical connection. Drouin puts it this way- when most of our interactions are through social media, we are taking tiny hits of dopamine rather than the huge shots of oxytocin that an intimate in-person relationship would provide. Drouin explains that intimacy is not just sex-although of course sex is an important part of intimacy. But how important? Drouin reports on surveys that millennials (perhaps distracted by constant Tinder-swiping) have less sex than previous generations. She discusses pandemic puppies, professional cuddlers, the importance of touch, "desire discrepancy" in marriage, and the value of friendships. Online dating, she suggests, might give users too many options; and the internet facilitates "infidelity-related behaviors." Some technological advances will help us develop and maintain intimate relationships-our phones, for example, can be bridges to emotional support. Some, on the other hand, might leave us out of touch. Drouin explores both of these possibilities.

Surrounded by Narcissists

Internationally bestselling author Thomas Erikson shares the secrets of dealing with everyday narcissists. Are the narcissists in your life making you miserable? Are you worn out by their constant demands for attention, their absolute conviction they are right (even when they're clearly not), their determination to do whatever they want (regardless of the impact), and their baffling need to control everyone and everything around them? In this thought-provoking, sanity-saving book, Thomas Erikson helps you understand what makes narcissists tick and, crucially, how to handle them without wearing yourself out in the process. With the help of the simple, four-color behavioral model made famous in Surrounded by Idiots, Erikson provides all the tools you need to manage not just the narcissists around you but everyday narcissistic behaviors as well-something that is becoming more widespread in the age of social media. Engaging and practical, Surrounded by Narcissists will help you free yourself from the thrall of others' toxic agendas so you can pursue a happier, more fulfilling and successful life.

Algorithmic Intimacy: The Digital Revolution in Personal Relationships

Artificial intelligence not only powers our cars, hospitals and courtrooms: predictive algorithms are becoming deeply lodged inside us too. Machine intelligence is learning our private preferences and discreetly shaping our personal behaviour, telling us how to live, who to befriend and who to date. In Algorithmic Intimacy, Anthony Elliott examines the power of predictive algorithms in reshaping personal relationships today. From Facebook friends and therapy chatbots to dating apps and quantified sex lives, Elliott explores how machine intelligence is working within us, amplifying our desires and steering our personal preferences. He argues that intimate relationships today are threatened not by the digital revolution as such, but by the orientation of various life strategies unthinkingly aligned with automated machine intelligence. Our reliance on algorithmic recommendations, he suggests, reflects a growing emergency in personal agency and human bonds. We need alternatives, innovation and experimentation for the interpersonal, intimate effort of ongoing translation back and forth between the discourses of human and machine intelligence. Accessible and compelling, this book sheds fresh light on the impact of artificial intelligence on the most intimate aspects of our lives. It will appeal to students in the social sciences and humanities and to a wide range of general readers.