How to Make Friends
You’ve got to have friends. That’s what friends are for. You can always count on me. Many songs and many movies extoll friendship. I extoll friendship, you probably do too, we all do. Friendships are important but are hard to come by and keep. Are friendships harder to keep these days? Studies say “yes”: over time, we have fewer friends and fewer people to turn to in times of need.[i]
In my work as a psychiatrist, I often get to help the people I treat wade through their friendship complexities. As a person, I too deal with the complexities of friendship: needing to accept a friend’s needs while hoping to have my own needs accepted. Much can, and does, go wrong in friendships.
Many years ago, a friend told me You know Christian, if you just say the wrong thing, you can lose a good friend. Wow! I was shocked. I couldn’t believe it. So I told him You’re wrong, you jerk, so piss off, I never want to see you again. (only joking)
The problem is, though, experience has taught me that he was right. Thanks to rising hyper-individualism – the tendency to live according to our own values without regard for others – our relationships are more fragile than ever before. I see it in society, in the work-place, in my own friendship circles, and in the people that I treat: careful not to tread on other people’s toes, not to be demanding, not to be challenging, sometimes not to even care. In this climate, many people ask: where the hell do I find friends?
Friendships are harder to find in our fragmented world. Yet we are social creatures by nature. The causes of this strange and sad situation include the treadmill of busyness, the overwhelming time-commitment to work, putting profits above people, the dopamine-pleasure hits of screens, the demise of community meeting opportunities, hook-up culture where we use others for pleasures rather than love them as treasures, commercialism and choice encouraging us to indulge in personal desires first, and the Big Three Epidemics: hyper-individualism, social isolation, and the mental health crisis. In a society of individual expression, autonomy, rights and self-love, we forget that our individualism comes at a price: decreased connection with others, less altruism, less community-mindedness, less togetherness and more loneliness. It’s hard to change this on a societal level but, as individuals, we can understand this and make choices to help us find and keep friends. If you want more togetherness with friends, that means choosing less hyper-individualism for yourself.
The key to find and keep friendships is to understand and accept others. Wait a second. I want others to understand me. I want others to accept me. Why should I give in and accept others first? There’s the problem. For genuine friendship, we need to understand but we also to be understood; we need to accept, but we also need to be accepted. We are all caught up in this trap: wanting understanding and acceptance and needing to understand and accept others; wanting to be loved and needing to love others. It’s all give and take.
Here’s the good news: trauma and abuses aside, most all of us want to get on with each other, and the science says we can, but our different personalities, cultures, values and “ways-of-doing-life” get in our way.
I’ll use the acronym “ACCEPT” to focus on what you need to do to help make and keep friends. It’s based on the very practical insights of humanist psychologist Carl Rogers, and on the emerging evidence on the importance of gratitude and forgiveness on mental health. Here’s the ACCEPT acronym:
1. Appreciate others’ strengths; Accept their weaknesses
2. Common ground: find it
3. Centre in on them by listening
4. Empathize: walk in their shoes
5. Pardon and apologize
6. Talk gently, but do talk
“Them” is anyone you have as a friend, want as a friend or meet as a person.
Practical suggestions
These ACCEPT points help you accept others. You can start using them today, they’re pretty self-explanatory. Appreciate the good things about the other person, tell them what you like about them (otherwise they won’t know). Common ground is what we all look for in friendships and getting on with people; keep looking for it. Centre in on them: listen to them and thank them for what they say. Empathize: imagine what it’s like to be them, to help you understand. Pardon and apologize: forgive the many small transgressions and the occasional large transgressions that happen. Talk gently: share your ideas so they can understand and accept you and feel safe to share their ideas with you. It’s give then take.
So let’s get really practical. If you have a friend, say
A: thanks for being my friend, I really appreciate it.
C: I like what we have in common.
C: I’d like to listen to what you have to say about …
E: I can’t imagine what it must feel like to do what you do.
P: Sorry for the times I haven’t been the greatest friend
T: It’s time I let you know something about me …
These phrases go through the whole ACCEPT acronym. We’ll discuss each of these more in coming posts. These will help you develop the skill of accepting people to make and keep friends if that is what you decide you want.
To find out how Social Media Affects our friendships, watch Dr Heim’s latest video: