July is Social Wellness Month: A Guide to Nurturing Relationships and Social Support

By Jason Jowers, MS, MFT

What is social wellness? According to Sara Littlefield at Silvercloud Health, “social wellness is the giving and receiving of social support to nurture yourself and others. Your friends, your family, your coworkers, the barista at your favorite coffee place – they’re all part of your social wellness and support network.” (Littlefield, 2022).

A major piece of being ingrained into the military community is the value of unity and strength. From family, partners, friends, work, and community, we are social beings. July is Social Wellness Month, marking a time to focus on yourself and the value of your relationships.

With July being Social Wellness Month, we wanted to share some resources that we’ve come across that explains social wellness and how to give and receive social support from those around us.

Social Wellness Resources

• The first resource is the one we’ve already referenced: SilverCloud Health and their article on Social Wellness Month. They share why social wellness matters and the research related to it. Also, they get you started on several to get you started on taking care of your social wellness.
• The National Institutes of Health shares their Social Wellness Toolkit, which includes 6 strategies for improving your social health. These strategies include making connections, getting active together, and shaping your family’s health habits.
• Also, this article from the University of Minnesota shares helpful social wellness resources to help with nurturing relationships and growing your social network. There are also links to other related articles on emotions and social support.

Social wellness is the culmination of our relationships with ourselves and with those around us. Through resilience and strong support systems, we create strong bonds, more effective functioning, greater wellbeing, and enhanced capacities to overcome future life challenges.

We hope you carve out some time this July to cultivate your own self-love and to strengthen the support in your relationships!

References

Littlefield, S. (2022). July is Social Wellness Month. SilverCloud Health. Retrieved from: https://www.silvercloudhealth.com/us/blog/july-is-social-wellness-month

Blog Image: Photo from Pixabay [Puzzle Pieces Connect by Public Domain Pictures, March 1, 2012, CC0]