Friends Provide Protection

Your connections add more than just fun to life.

Photo by vjapratama from pexels.com

Friends and fun go together, and it’s not just alliteration. We go bowling and hiking with our friends. We share books and podcasts and jokes. We explore new shops together. We join in meals and concerts and shows. Movies and television shows highlight the joys of friendship. Friends enrich our lives.

The benefits of friendship aren’t just social. Loneliness and isolation have negative impacts on both our emotional and physical health. As Surgeon General Vivek Murthy recently pointed out, isolation can damage our bodies as much as smoking cigarettes, being overweight, or drinking too much.

But one of the most important contributions of friendship is protecting us from ourselves. Friends help us get out of our own way, which is particularly important since most humans are their own worst enemy. (Which is a topic for a whole other article.)

In over 30 years practicing psychiatry, I see people become trapped in two different types of detrimental behavior. Having friends can help expedite exiting from, or avoiding completely, either of these harmful patterns. Friends can protect us from harm.

Two types of harm