Deepa

“Protracted loneliness causes you to shut down socially, and to be more suspicious of any social contact, he found. You become hypervigilant. You start to be more likely to take offense where none was intended, and to be afraid of strangers. You start to be afraid of the very thing you need most. John calls this a “snowball” effect, as disconnection spirals into more disconnection. Lonely people are scanning for threats because they unconsciously know that nobody is looking out for them, so no one will help them if they are hurt. This snowball effect, he learned, can be reversed—but to help a depressed or severely anxious person out of it, they need more love, and more reassurance, than they would have needed in the first place. The tragedy, John realized, is that many depressed and anxious people receive less love, as they become harder to be around. Indeed, they receive judgment, and criticism, and this accelerates their retreat from the world. They snowball into an ever colder place.”
― Johann Hari, Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression – and the Unexpected Solutions

“I don't want to lose you. I can't imagine ever feeling this
strongly about anything or anybody ever again.
This was unexpected, my
soul's connection to you.
You stole my loneliness
No one knows that I was wishing for you, a thief, to enter my
house of autonomy, that I had locked my doors but my
Windows were open, hoping, but not believing, you
would enter.”
― Douglas Coupland, Microserfs

“You aren’t a machine with broken parts. You are an animal whose needs are not being met. You need to have a community. You need to have meaningful values, not the junk values you’ve been pumped full of all your life, telling you happiness comes through money and buying objects. You need to have meaningful work. You need the natural world. You need to feel you are respected. You need a secure future. You need connections to all these things. You need to release any shame you might feel for having been mistreated.”
― Johann Hari, Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression - and the Unexpected Solutions

“Loneliness isn’t the physical absence of other people, he said—it’s the sense that you’re not sharing anything that matters with anyone else. If you have lots of people around you—perhaps even a husband or wife, or a family, or a busy workplace—but you don’t share anything that matters with them, then you’ll still be lonely.”
― Johann Hari, Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression – and the Unexpected Solutions