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

He says he has learned, especially with depression and anxiety, to shift from asking “What’s the matter with you?” to “What matters to you?” If you want to find a solution, you need to listen to what’s missing in the depressed or anxious person’s life—and help them to find

If you worked in the civil service and you had a higher degree of control8 over your work, you were a lot less likely to become depressed or develop severe emotional distress than people working at the same pay level, with the same status, in the same office, as people with a lower degree of control over their work.

“You can get real in-depth and intellectual with all that stuff, but when it comes down to it—doing anything, and not having a purpose behind it, and then feeling like you don’t have any other option except to continue: it’s terrible. At least for me, it turns into—well, what’s the point?”

To end loneliness, you need other people—plus something else. You also need, he explained to me, to feel you are sharing something with the other person, or the group, that is meaningful to both of you.

To end loneliness, you need to have a sense of “mutual aid and protection,” John figured out, with at least one other person, and ideally many more.

“The more you think happiness is a social thing, the better off you are,”

A one-way relationship can’t cure loneliness. Only two-way (or more) relationships can do that.

So every human instinct is honed not for life on your own, but for life like this, in a tribe. Humans need tribes12 as much as bees need a hive.

You have to be in it together—and “it” can be anything that you both think has meaning and value.

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.