There’s alot of buzz about this concept. Here’s what it is and why it matters to you.
It’s a powerful reframe for how you relate to human connection.
Hello you wonderful human.
I want to introduce you to the concept of social health and wellbeing.
Social health and wellbeing offers you a powerful reframe if you’re experiencing loneliness now.
If you’re not experiencing it right now, then the reframe is for when you next experience loneliness.
What’s social health?
One of the people leading the work on researching social health is Kasley Killam. She runs Social Health Labs in San Francisco and defines social health as:
“Social health is the dimension of well-being that comes from connection and community. Whereas physical health is about our bodies and mental health is about our minds, social health is about our relationships.”
Why is your social health so important?
Exciting research has been happening over the past few years about the importance of social health and wellness for all humans. You and I both know that physical, mental and emotional health and well-being is important for our quality and enjoyment of life. But we’ve all been learning that unless we’re socially well, all the yoga, vitamins, exercise, cold plunges, saunas and meditation can make little dent in how you feel.
Beyond running Social Health Labs, Killam literally wrote the book on social health and wellbeing. Her book ‘The Art and Science of Connection: Why Social Health in the Missing Key to Living Longer, Healthier and Happier’ was published in 2024 and has become a must-read for anyone wanting to learn about social health and thriving in life. [As an aside, stay tuned for a short book review on the HUMANS:CONNECTING blog shortly…]
Dr Julianne Holt-Lunstad from Brigham Young University in the United States is also a leading researcher of social health. She has a fantastic video about social health that is worth a few moments of your time.
Paying attention to your social health and wellbeing is important because while we thrive as humans when we feel connected, not being socially well can shorten our lives.
And the thoughts and feelings of a loneliness experience are signs that we’re not socially well.
Here’s the reframe
There’s a stigma to loneliness. The stigma is what makes it hard for us to admit – to ourselves, let alone to others – that we’re experiencing loneliness.
Social health allows discussions about loneliness and social disconnection to bypass that stigma and offers a more positive way of sitting with the concept of our human need for connection. Framing loneliness as an outcome of poor social health and suggesting that we need to prioritise our social health can make the subject more palatable.
Rather than seeing a loneliness experience as a life sentence of dreariness, we can begin to see loneliness for what it’s meant to be: a temporary situation which reminds us that we need to work on our social health to feel socially well again.
The reframe empowers each of us the power to influence our experience of loneliness. It can inspire us to do something about it. Addressing loneliness is no longer only seen as the remit of mental health services and professionals, but as something that we each need to do for ourselves and each other.
Pros and cons to improving your social health
The beauty of social health is that what has you feeling the benefits of connection is unique to you. You get to experiment, knowing that there are three pillars – elements, if you prefer - to connection:
- Connection to self
- Connection to those most important to you
- Connection to community.
There’s joy in the experimenting. There’s joy in discovering – or rediscovering – what brings you alive.
While the process can be fun, there’s often some frustration that this process takes time, effort and energy.
We want that quick fix, but there are none. Time working on your social health can seem frivolous, especially when there’s a lot of work to do or people who rely on you. Sitting around socialising with friends is low on the list of priorities when shit needs to get done, right?
I see you and I love your low-level scepticism. Read on.
Here’s an uncomfortable truth
It doesn’t matter what you do for work, or how old you are, or how busy and important you are, you are a human who has social needs.
If you have a busy job, have caring responsibilities or have ambitions to change the world, you have time to work on your social health.
If you have the time and energy to go to the gym, binge episodes of a TV show, watch videos on YouTube, scroll on social media or doomscroll the news, you’ve got time and energy to work on your social health.
Remember the earlier point. You can do all the things: eat all the nutritious foods, plunge in all the cold water you find, stop smoking, reduce alcohol consumption, do all the yoga, rake all the Zen gardens, drink all the vitamin-infused water and swap out all the plastics that touch your food, but unless you’re socially well, your physical, mental and emotional health will suffer.
I say this from my own experience: you can be physically fit, but socially unwell.
There is a cost to not being socially well. You’re paying it.
And you can stop paying it at any moment you choose.
Let’s end your loneliness
Social health offers us all a powerful reframe on how we can each respond to our loneliness when we experience it.
And while it may feel like it just one more thing that you need to add to your endless to-do list, perhaps beginning to weave your awareness of the importance of social health on your overall wellbeing as you go about your day is a great first step towards connection.
Recognising that listening to your favourite music as you exercise or are driving in your car to be an act of reconnection to yourself. Do more of that, knowing you’re working on your social health.
Knowing that taking a few minutes at the beginning of meetings to chat with colleagues is not frivolous and a waste of time, rather it’s a way to improve your social health and the social health of everyone else that improves moods. People who are in better moods are going to collaborate and will want to work through differences because they see each other as humans first.
How are you going to begin prioritising your social health to improve your overall wellbeing?
That’s it for this post
Thank you for taking some time to read these words. We provide them to serve, support, challenge and inspire you as you become a more connected human.
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Until next time, be awesomely you.
~ Phil
Important:
All views expressed above are the author’s and are intended to inform, support, challenge and inspire you to consider the issue of loneliness and increase awareness of the need for authentic connection with your self, with those most important to you and your communities as an antidote to loneliness. Unless otherwise declared, the author is not a licensed mental health professional and these words are not intended to be crisis support. If you’re in crisis, this page has some links for immediate support for where you may be in the world.
If you’re in crisis, please don’t wait. Get support now.
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