How to form healthy friendships – and avoid loneliness

Your social biome is made up of all of your everyday interactions with others, big and small, and the pandemic has seriously harmed much of ours. Here's how to re-energise it.

▲women sitting on green grass field. Photograph: Pexels

Firstly, it requires someone to care:

This means deciding to spend quality time with your beloved ones. Even if you just devote one or two hours a week, you can still make a difference. There is no replacement for face-to-face contact. Spend time with your loved ones and listen to them, their desires, jokes, laughter and needs. If your loved one has a desire to socialise outside of the house, look into joining a club or joining a group of people who share the same interests.

Establish a social circle:

Remember the first day of nursery. Making new friends and feeling comfortable in your new surroundings may be challenging at times. Now it's the same. According to research, adults who disengage with others can suffer from cognitive impairment at a much higher rate than those who communicate with others regularly. We must reconnect if we have lost contact with our social support networks.

Get involved in activities:

For older adults, many neighbourhoods offer a variety of programs, clubs, and activities. Lunches, presentations, lectures and festivals will help you look forward to activities and remove the feeling of isolation. Adult leagues for anything from bowling to bridge and manicures to Mahjong are available at several recreation centres. If you are still waiting for these places to reopen, VisitScotland provides fun outdoor activities to visit during the lockdown in Scotland.

Bring the party:

Many people are unable to go out in public without feeling pain or discomfort due to physical distances restrictions. Bring the party to your loved ones if they are in this situation. At home, host a dinner party or a book club for your family or close friends and enjoy the happy times together. You will enhance your own and others' quality of life by taking the initiative and seeking ways to facilitate social experiences. We all need friends and the best way to escape isolation and find purpose is to be a good friend yourself.

Invite people to things:

You'll need to invite people to stuff if you want to have more meaningful social interaction with people you want and have more say of how and with whom you spend your time. It may seem self-evident, but if you were someone who waited to be invited – to dinner, to a group, to a gallery – rather than doing the inviting before the pandemic, this may require a mental shift. Inviting someone you don't know well but want to learn more about is a good way to move a relationship forward in a constructive way, and it won't only help you; it will also benefit the social biomes of those with whom you communicate.

Don’t forget about Zoom calls:

You shouldn't stop waving awkwardly on video calls so we can hug when lockdown is over. We must be careful not to cut ties with people with whom we can only interact online, he advises. Whether we're amid a pandemic or not, it's important to establish safe online contact habits because we're unlikely to have face-to-face interactions with some of our closest friends and family members.

Prepare for some social renegotiations:

When we come out of the lockout, there will almost certainly be some changes between friendship circles. As soon as you avoid seeing a friend as often as you used to, the nature of that friendship begins to decline noticeably within a few months. Some of our friendships have likely been broken. They aren't quite the same as they used to be, so when you see them again, keep that in mind. They aren't quite the same as they were, so you'll have to renegotiate when you meet up again, so your mate might have found someone else to take your position in the meantime. That's a part of life. People in their middle years have a slower turnover than those in their late teens and early twenties, but friendships in their late teens and early twenties shift at a rate of about 30% each year. You have no choice but to be ready.

Become a member of a gym or a neighbourhood fitness centre:

Become a member of a gym helps you interact with others and improve your physical activity. Sign up for a competitive community class at your nearest gym. Participating in a class of strangers can make you feel uncomfortable at first, but if you stick with it, you'll discover that community exercise will help you with inspiration, engagement, and friendship. After that, invite the person sitting next to you out for coffee or a smoothie. Alternatively, after a few classes, recommend a meet up so that you can get to know some of the people in the class better. Exercise will help you meet new people and improve your mood.