Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression – and the Unexpected Solutions

My desire for a solution that was private and personal—the psychological equivalent of a pill—was in fact a symptom of the mindset that had caused my depression and anxiety in the first place.

Even if you are in pain, you can almost always make someone else feel a little bit better. Or I would try to channel it into more overt political actions, to make the society better.

Our ego, our sense of self, always has both these qualities—protective, and imprisoning.

I started to see depression and anxiety as like cover versions of the same song by different bands.

He feels, he told me, that the experience made clear to him that people need a sense “of being accepted, to have some sense of importance, and to be loved. And I can give that to anyone at any time, and it’s that simple. It’s just paying attention. It’s just being with people. It’s loving.”

This evidence suggests if we return to seeing our distress and our joy as something we share with a network of people all around us, we will feel different.

“you don’t have to be controlled by your concept of yourself.”

They both, he said, break our “addiction to ourselves.”

The conversation shifted from figuring out what was is making us so unhappy in our lives, to trying to block the neurotransmitters in the brain that allow us to feel it.