What Are Good Friends Good For?

I know from days of not having chit-chat that it is so important. Life is more real when you speak it out loud. When you having your experience, your viewpoint of a situation, known and validated. It sounds like ethical support in getting through life, which is so upsetting and hard at times.

In my job I cope with a very stressed-out populace woman with stepchildren. A large body of psychological and sociological literature demonstrates that factors like societal disgrace; stepchildren and adult stepchildren in faithfulness binds who behave in rejecting and hostile ways; spouses who are ineffective, responsible or liberal parents and fail to establish proper rules for the family, including civil cure of stepmom .

That's why, whenever I speak to a woman partnered with or married to a man with kids of any age from a previous marriage or relationship, one of the first questions I ask is, "How often do you see or speak with friends?"

Social support is crucial to our mental health, as a recent Brigham Young University study by lead author Laura Padilla-Walker demonstrates once again. Deborah Tannen noted in the Science Times that "the study found that adolescents who have a sister are less likely to report such feelings as ‘I am unhappy, sad or depressed' and ‘I feel like no one loves me.'"

Summarizing additional studies including the one by U.K. psychologists Liz Wright and Tony Cassidy that found young people who had grown up with at least one sister tended to be more upbeat and happier, and to do better psychologically if their parents divorced--Tannen suggests that even though men and women may come at expressing support in different ways, having a sibling of either sex can be highly adaptive as we grow up and face life's unfolding challenges.

Consistent with the thesis she put forward in "You Just Don't Understand" and "You Were Always Mom's Favorite: Sisters in Conversation Throughout Their Lives," Tannen suggests that while men and women talk differently, it's the fact of talk and the built-in social support a sibling can confer--that matters.

While men might talk to one another about weather, sports or cars, and women might exchange information about equally baffling (to men) and "unimportant" topics like a sale, a recipe, or a colleague at work, such "pointless conversation," Tannen found in her extensive interviews of women and men, can be as comforting to women as "troubles talk" in which problems are tackled head on.

The long and short of it is that talk, even when it's "just chit chat," is strong medicine. Indeed, a growing body of research makes a compelling case that the mere act of face-to-face, engaged speaking to another person can improve mood, lower cortisol levels, and even improve immune function.

I often encourage women coping with the stresses of partnership with stepchildren to discover a good girlfriend who will only hear her "troubles talk" and talk to her without judging. But this new investigation suggests that coffee and speak with her brother, or perhaps a male friend, even though it doesn't touch on her dilemma directly can also create a world of dissimilarity.

I think lots of stepmothers fall into a model of becoming concerned with the new family, in consequence, lots of usually have fewer power for themselves and their friends. Friendships and societal supports are important and not only for stepmothers. At times it's difficult to do when you feel down. Is it probable that this research showed females to feel better if they speak with other females?