Everybody has had a special furry someone in their lives, whether it was a bear, an otter, a wolf, a giraffe…you know, a stuffed animal to keep and hold dear. While we are often taught that this is something to abandon after childhood, new studies have shown that keeping a stuffed animal close as an adult is actually really good for your mental and physical wellbeing. Plus, it turns out sleeping with a stuffed animal as an adult can not only provide comfort and help assuage trauma, it can also ease anxiety and stress.
It turns out there's a positive psychological response to having a cozy, fluffy friend that can offer a feeling of closeness. This response can be generated by traditional stuffed animals or even weighted stuffed animals, which can duplicate the feeling of being held. Stuffed animals can also help ease past childhood memories when owners care for their creatures, in turn offering the love they perhaps didn’t know as children, CNN shares. As Rolling Stone also reports, “Doctors and therapists have been using weighted teddy bears for years to help patients deal with grief and loss.”
My best friend once told me about how, on a trip home from Mexico, she found herself running for the airport gate with a mountain of Squishmallows under her arm. She has a tower of them on a couch in her apartment, but she still found a few new friends on her travels she wanted to take home. When she told the story, I remember her saying that if being an adult means you can’t buy all the Squishmallows you want, then what’s the point? I myself have lived with a giant four-foot tall bear named Randolph for over a decade. Given to me by parents, he chills nonchalantly on my couch, never paying a dime in rent. Still, there have been many times I’ve cuddled up to him when I’m sad, just to feel a hug.
Neither of us are alone. There’s also been an uptick in adults purchasing stuffed animals for themselves in the last few years as well. In an interview with CNN, sleep psychologist Dr. Jade Wu wondered if it’s part of a process where “people are seeking more comfort in the face of uncertainty,” remembering with stuffed creatures the comforts of a simpler time amidst the precariousness of current events.
The author with Randolph, a giant, four-foot Teddy bear who has lived with her for over a decade without paying rent. Elyssa Goodman
“This is one of the ways to self soothe,” Dr. Barbara Greenberg also told CNN. “We take something like an animal into our bed; it’s comforting.” Additionally, according to The School of Life, psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott surmised that “mental well being depends on…a repertoire of more gentle, forgiving and hopeful inner voices to keep going. It's this kind of indispensable, benevolent voice that the child first starts to rehearse and exercise with the help of a stuffed animal.” When stuffed animals teach us to self-soothe as children, this can become something we take throughout our lives and revisit.
So, the next time you spy a Squishmallow you want, or even a Randolph of your own, remember that as an adult it is okay to seek the comforts you sought out as a child. It’s even good for your health. The inner child is always there, and sometimes a hug from their favorite creature can help them start to feel better.
"It's this kind of indispensable, benevolent voice that the child first starts to rehearse and exercise with the help of a stuffed animal." The School of Life, www.youtube.com
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Will your current friends still be with you after seven years?
Professor shares how many years a friendship must last before it'll become lifelong
Think of your best friend. How long have you known them? Growing up, children make friends and say they’ll be best friends forever. That’s where “BFF” came from, for crying out loud. But is the concept of the lifelong friend real? If so, how many years of friendship will have to bloom before a friendship goes the distance? Well, a Dutch study may have the answer to that last question.
Sociologist Gerald Mollenhorst and his team in the Netherlands did extensive research on friendships and made some interesting findings in his surveys and studies. Mollenhorst found that over half of your friendships will “shed” within seven years. However, the relationships that go past the seven-year mark tend to last. This led to the prevailing theory that most friendships lasting more than seven years would endure throughout a person’s lifetime.
In Mollenhorst’s findings, lifelong friendships seem to come down to one thing: reciprocal effort. The primary reason so many friendships form and fade within seven-year cycles has much to do with a person’s ages and life stages. A lot of people lose touch with elementary and high school friends because so many leave home to attend college. Work friends change when someone gets promoted or finds a better job in a different state. Some friends get married and have children, reducing one-on-one time together, and thus a friendship fades. It’s easy to lose friends, but naturally harder to keep them when you’re no longer in proximity.
Some people on Reddit even wonder if lifelong friendships are actually real or just a romanticized thought nowadays. However, older commenters showed that lifelong friendship is still possible:
“I met my friend on the first day of kindergarten. Maybe not the very first day, but within the first week. We were texting each other stupid memes just yesterday. This year we’ll both celebrate our 58th birthdays.”
“My oldest friend and I met when she was just 5 and I was 9. Next-door neighbors. We're now both over 60 and still talk weekly and visit at least twice a year.”
“I’m 55. I’ve just spent a weekend with friends I met 24 and 32 years ago respectively. I’m also still in touch with my penpal in the States. I was 15 when we started writing to each other.”
“My friends (3 of them) go back to my college days in my 20’s that I still talk to a minimum of once a week. I'm in my early 60s now.”
“We ebb and flow. Sometimes many years will pass as we go through different things and phases. Nobody gets buttsore if we aren’t in touch all the time. In our 50s we don’t try and argue or be petty like we did before. But I love them. I don’t need a weekly lunch to know that. I could make a call right now if I needed something. Same with them.”
Maintaining a friendship for life is never guaranteed, but there are ways, psychotherapists say, that can make a friendship last. It’s not easy, but for a friendship to last, both participants need to make room for patience and place greater weight on their similarities than on the differences that may develop over time. Along with that, it’s helpful to be tolerant of large distances and gaps of time between visits, too. It’s not easy, and it requires both people involved to be equally invested to keep the friendship alive and from becoming stagnant.
As tough as it sounds, it is still possible. You may be a fortunate person who can name several friends you’ve kept for over seven years or over seventy years. But if you’re not, every new friendship you make has the same chance and potential of being lifelong.