Social well-being

Lena Berg, social worker

Social well-being - what is it? Is it something you can buy, teach yourself or is it something you learn throughout your life and which perhaps weakens if you become mentally ill?

I believe that we all learn it from when we are children and throughout our life through the influences, experiences, challenges and social connections we enter into.

It starts in our family, develops during our time spent in nursery, kindergarten, school, work, education, with friends, acquaintances and through life's ups and downs.

One's childhood and challenges are not equally and fairly distributed. But you can still have a good life and social well-being. It does demand though that you scrutinize your life and actual life situation, and depends on whether you wish to change your current situation.

Can't buy friends

Some people think that you can buy your way to well-being by for example always being the one to buy "another round" of one kind or another. This often only results in a short-term social contact, acceptance and socialising. When the money has gone, the "friends", the socialising and the care have gone.

Irrespective of what the childhood and challenges of someone's life have been, there are a couple of things you should make your mind up about: How can I achieve an increased well-being, and what conditions do I have to change to achieve it.

You can start modestly by taking one step at a time. When you have achieved success in one of your goals, you can then go on to the next.

Social well-being is to be respected, valued and cared about. It is also being able to cope with and master social situations and be with other people in a mutually giving way. You can furthermore fill up your spare time with activities and chores, which make you feel good.

Your self-esteem is strengthened by conquering your own feelings of inadequacy and turning them around so that you act in a positive and constructive way.

Better social well-being

But what can you do to get better social well-being? You can show respect for others, speak to them and behave in a way that you wish yourself to be treated.

This might be by giving and offering support to a friend, the family or acquaintances, who are currently feeling worse than yourself. By showing respect and that you care for this person, will make him or her feel an increased degree of well-being because you have shown an interest in him/her. You yourself will feel a sense of well-being from having done it.

It is a good idea to focus on what you used to be good at or liked doing and then try doing it again. This might for example be dancing. Perhaps you are good at dancing or maybe you would like to learn.

The question is whether you dare take a risk and do something about it. If you were to take a risk, it would lead to socialising and joy. This again would give you a better sense of well-being, more quality of life and courage to do other things and to get on.

Good advice

A couple of days before I wrote these lines, I sat and drank a cup of coffee with patients in the ward where I work. I told them that I was writing this article. I asked them what well-being is to them, and whether they had any good advice that I could pass on.

Here are some examples of what they prioritised the most:

• You have to look at the interests that you have or used to have, what you are or used to be good at and then strengthen that.
• If you are receiving an early retirement pension, it mustn't become a pretext for doing nothing. You mustn't withdraw from social relations.
• You must continue to function together with others and not feel inferior or superior but meet on an equal footing.
• You can help others, in order to help yourself.
• You must create and shape your everyday life by structuring it with different tasks, for example cooking dinner, do sport, meet up with friends.
• It is important to have friends who can help, support and back you up, and to show humour in a mutual way.
• You must make sure that you get "input" in your everyday life from friends, family, courses, newspapers and by communicating with the outside world.
• A telephone is a good thing but when it never rings, it is a sad thing. So call a friend every day.

As Søren Kierkegaard used to say: He who dares, will loose his footing, he who doesn't dare, will loose himself.