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Healthy friendships

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Healthy friendships are essential for our overall well-being and happiness. They provide us with emotional support, companionship, and a sense of belonging. Good friends can boost our self-esteem, reduce stress, and offer valuable perspectives on life's challenges. They encourage us to make positive choices, promote personal growth, and help us navigate difficult times.

Making friends

One of the easiest way to find potential new friends is to think about the people who already exist in your wider life. Think friends of friends, the people you know at school but don’t really hang out with, or your sports teammates.

Losing a friendship

At times, too, you may lose friendships. This can be painful and make you question yourself and the relationship you had, but remember that friendships have seasons and many of the connections you find yourself developing with others aren’t meant to last. When you’re at a certain stage of your life you might connect really well with someone, but over time you both move on and grow in yourselves, you have less in common or less to say to each other, and find new friends. That’s ok.

A positive friendship can look like:

  • Telling the truth, even when it can be hard to. You’re both open and honest about who you are when you’re with each other.
  • Building each other up, encouraging each other to live your best lives and wanting to see each other achieve.
  • Genuinely caring about each other. Being kind, respectful and not judging despite what’s going on in your lives.
  • Sticking with each other even when you make mistakes.
  • Understanding each other’s unique differences and not trying to change each other.

A friend who is having a negative impact on you might be:

  • Talking about you behind your back
  • Constantly putting you down
  • Not wanting you to spend time with your other friends or meet new people
  • Not willing to compromise in disagreements
  • Encouraging you to do things that might harm you or get you in trouble

Further information

  • www.netsafe.org - information and advice for young people on cyberbullying and staying safe online
  • Sticks and Stones - a student led programme focussed on taking positive action online to stop bullying online and in person. 
  • https://www.thelowdown.co.nz/article/friendships-The Lowdown, a space created with rangatahi, for rangatahi. Find support here for your hauora, identity, culture and mental health.

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