How to Make Friends, Part 1: Inner Work

Why you're lonely and how you can change it

Are you lonely?

Do you have a close partner or friends, or a wider social network? Do you have people you can connect with, and depend on? Whether or not you have these things, do you feel lonely day to day?

In the last few decades, by most measures, levels of objective social isolation and subjective loneliness have been on the rise. A quarter of the world’s population reports feeling very or fairly lonely. In America, there are more people living alone than ever before in history. The percentage of people in America who say they don’t have close friends has increased fourfold since 1990.

These changes have implications on social, mental, and also physical health. Social isolation increases the risk of cardiovascular disease, chronic pain, depression, Alzheimer’s disease, and general mortality. It increases health and welfare costs so much that both Great Britain and Japan have made reducing isolation a central part of their national health policy. 

“A large body of research shows that social isolation and loneliness have a serious impact on physical and mental health, quality of life, and longevity. The effect of social isolation and loneliness on mortality is comparable to that of other well-established risk factors such as smoking, obesity, and physical inactivity.” - World Health Organization

The most striking evidence of our need for connection comes from an incredible 72-year-long Harvard study that followed 268 men throughout their lives, understanding what makes humans find joy or suffering, sadness or survival. Their findings about the link between strong social relationships, health, and happiness were so strong that after collecting all the evidence, the study’s director, George Vaillant, concluded: 

“It is social aptitude, not intellectual brilliance or parental social class, that leads to successful aging...the only thing that really matters in life are your relationships to other people.”

But - you don’t need this research to know what you experience in your own life. 

Some of us have many friends, and some have few. Even if you have many friends you may experience loneliness. It is the quality of our relationships, as well as their quantity, that affects our experience.

This article is on how to make more, higher-quality friendships and relationships. To have more people to go out with in the evening, more hands to call when you’re moving, more support for the endings in your life, and more health and happiness every day.

What is Loneliness?

Understanding why we struggle when we don’t have friends is essential for understanding how to make them.

Most people tend to think of loneliness in terms of “not having people around”. But, there are actually two factors within this experience: 1. Social isolation, and 2. Subjective loneliness. 

Social isolation is the lack of an objective support network - aka, not having people around. Loneliness is the feeling of being socially disconnected. 

Distinguishing these two factors matters because they have different mechanisms of resolve. 

Social isolation stems from a lack of objective connection, whether because we’re struggling to get ourselves out of the house, don’t live around friends, or have health problems that make connection difficult. Interventions that just get us around other people (some of which we’ll talk about in this article) can help a lot with isolation.

Loneliness can either stem from or lead to negative cognitions of ourselves and/or others, meaning that we don’t trust our capacity to make friends, or others’ desire to have us as friends. It involves a belief that our situation is uncontrollable - that we are unable to make friends. Lonely people tend to get pushed to the edges of social networks, so then we have less opportunity to make friends. All of this creates a self-perpetuating loop of disconnection. Instead of addressing it just by our actions, we have to address it by working on our concepts about ourselves and the world.

In this article, we’ll address making friends from a few angles:

• Challenging our beliefs about ourselves

• Challenging our beliefs about others

• Finding effective ways to start friendships

• Strategies for keeping friendships going

Let’s get into it!

How to make yourself friendly

There is a game I play in my Authentic Relating work, called “Emotion Sculpture”. In this exercise, participants are invited to physically shape another person into the form of one of their own emotions.

When I played this game, I chose the emotion of shyness. I sculpted my partner into the position that felt right for how I experienced the emotion. Then I stepped back and took a look.

I was shocked by what I saw. I thought that my shyness was like a call for help, an innocuous humility that would have others feel drawn to engage with me. But the person in front of me looked cold, standoffish, and unapproachable. No wonder I thought nobody wanted to be friends with me. I looked like I didn’t want anyone to be friends with me. 

This has, over time, created a self-fulfilling prophecy. The less others approach me, the more isolated I am; the more isolated I am, the more lonely I feel; the more lonely I feel, the less I trust others to approach. Eventually, I vacillate between judging myself for “obviously not being interesting/attractive/socially powerful enough” and judging others for “obviously being shallow/judgmental/cooler than me”. As these beliefs become ingrained, it becomes harder and harder for me to get past them to connect.