From Depression to Contentment E-Book

Bob Rich

• Herausgeber: Loving Healing Press
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Seitenzahl: 259

Beschreibung

From Depression to Contentment: A Self-Therapy Guide is a course of therapy in your pocket. You can be your own therapist, changing the way you see yourself and your world. Not only does this save lots of money, it also is 100% confidential. The book starts with first aid, provides an understanding of the nature and causes of suffering, instructs you in research-based techniques for dealing with your problems and, finally, teaches you an actual cure for depression.

• Every tool in this book is based on research, but presented in an easy to understand, easy to apply manner.
• With homework assignments, you will find your inner strengths, uncover the true source of happiness and develop great resilience.
• Learn how to put the philosophies of all great religions to practical use, even if you are an atheist.
• This program can help you start a new life - one of meaning, positivity and purpose.
• Unlike instructional books, this book is not only useful but also enjoyable.

"If you're depressed and need someone who 'gets' you, who has been there and who can walk you through the journey toward a life worth living, then From Depression to Contentment will be your new best friend. Bob meets you where you are and can lead you home to yourself."
-- Petrea King, CEO and founder of Quest for Life Foundation

"Combining his personal and professional experience, Dr. Rich offers a valuable self-help tool for those seeking additional insight for coping with depression. The suggested exercises are easy to follow with an explanation of what they are helping with. And he does it all with a great sense of humor woven in."
-- Chynna T. Laird, author of Not Just Spirited: A Mom's Sensational Journey with Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD)

"Dr. Bob Rich has created a simple and direct guide to beat back depression for good. Put forth in easy to digest bits, the approach uses small, effective steps to move past the overwhelm of depression."
-- Diane Wing, M.A., author of The Happiness Perspective: Seeing Your Life Differently

"The essential message of the book is that you can beat depression by improving the quality of your thinking, your behavior and your life. Overall, a wonderfully refreshing and practical self-help guide to healing from depression and living a fulfilling life."
-- Beth Burgess, psychotherapist, author of Instant Wisdom, The Happy Addict, and The Recovery Formula

"Depression can be turned into a positive and can actually enrich our lives if we just try. It is not easy to acquire the skills and the knowledge necessary to learn to cope well and to recover, but this book will make the effort easier. Specific interventions - like guided imagery and mindfulness meditation - are suggested and explained. All-in-all, this is a valuable manual on how to live well with depression and acquire the right skills and knowledge that will tame the depression to a point where the person will live well without being affected by symptoms."
-- Alfredo Zotti, author of Alfredo's Journey: An Artist's Creative Life with Bipolar Disorder

Leseprobe

From Depression to Contentment

A Self-Therapy Guide

Bob Rich, Ph.D.

Loving Healing Press

Ann Arbor, MI

From Depression to Contentment: A Self-Therapy Guide

Copyright © 2019 by Bob Rich, Ph.D.

Learn more at http://anxietyanddepression-help.com

ISBN-13: 978-1-61599-435-9 paperback

ISBN-13: 978-1-61599-436-6 hardcover

ISBN-13: 978-1-61599-437-3 eBook

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Rich, Robert, 1943- author.

Title: From depression to contentment : a self-therapy guide / Bob Rich, Ph.D.

Description: Ann Arbor, MI : Loving Healing Press, [2019] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019000127| ISBN 9781615994359 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781615994366 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781615994373 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Depression, Mental--Treatment. | Depression, Mental--Popular works.

Classification: LCC RC537 .R523 2019 | DDC 616.85/27--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019000127

Published by

Loving Healing Press

5145 Pontiac Trail

Ann Arbor, MI 48105

www.LHPress.com

[email protected]

Tollfree: 888-761-6268 (USA/CAN)

Fax: [phone]

Contents

Chapter 1: You have to be crazy to stay sane in a crazy world

This is a User’s Guide

Chapter 2: Basic First Aid

Whatever Your Depression Tells You, Do the Opposite

Healthy Eating

Satisfying Sleep

Regular Physical Exercise

Regular Fun

Creativity

Social Connectedness

Meaning

Chapter 3: Relaxation and Meditation

Muscular Relaxation

Mindfulness Meditation

Guided Imagery

Chapter 4: Know Your Enemy

The Conventional View

Sources of Sadness

The Causes of Human Suffering

The Development of Resilience

Chapter 5: Controlling Depression

Fixing the thinking

Rewriting your story

Act The Way You Want To Be

Chapter 6: The Cure for Depression

The Destination

Don’t Like Your World? Change it

Processing Trauma

Loving the Inner Monster

You Get What You Send

The Resilient Mindset

Moving Hedonic Adaptation

Flow

Chapter 7: Spiritual Care

My Greatest Teacher

Reincarnation

Equanimity

Chapter 8: Depression in the Family

Caring for the Carer

Inducing change and growth

Chapter 9: Dealing with Relapse

References

About the Author

Index

Important Notes for the Reader

• If you are feeling suicidal, contact telephone help services that are available almost everywhere. In the USA, call 1-800-273-8255, in the UK 1850 60 90 90.

• If you want to discontinue antidepressant medication, you must do so slowly and gradually, under medical supervision.

• This is not a book to simply read, but a handbook for changing your life. There are homework tasks in many places. Some of them will need weeks, or even months, to implement. Take them seriously, and you’ll have done very powerful self-therapy that has a good chance of improving your very world, and yourself within it.

• I suggest one of three ways of doing this program: 1. A quick read through, then a step-by-step progress, probably taking months; 2. A quick read, then focusing on the chapters you need most at this time; or 3. Front-to-end progression, carrying out all the tasks.

• Links to web pages are scattered throughout. Since clicking them in some versions (e.g., paperback) is not particularly effective, I’ve listed them all, as well as all the homework tasks, at http://bobswriting.com/dlinks.html. If you have a PDF edition, note that the cursor will change to a “pointer” when you hover over a link to remind you that this is indeed a clickable item.

• Something works for everyone, but nothing works for everyone. If you find that the program in this book doesn’t work for you, the best investment you can make is 8 to 20 sessions of therapy with a good psychologist.

1

You need to be crazy to stay sane in a crazy world

Pessimism vs. optimism is one of the dimensions of human personality. Interesting research shows that pessimists are consistently more realistic than optimists. This is because reality is far worse than you could think without getting depressed.

Diagnosed depression is a galloping epidemic. The facts are admirably summarized by Tyrell and Elliot (https://tinyurl.com/bobrich01). Their main conclusions are worth repeating:

• Major depression is the No. 1 psychological disorder in the western world. It is growing in all age groups, in virtually every community, and the growth is seen most in the young, especially teens. At the rate of increase, it will be the second most disabling condition in the world by 2020, behind heart disease.

• More than ever, we need to look at alternatives to drugs that will equip us to deal effectively with the triggers that allow depression to take hold again and again. This is where drug treatments fail.

• People of all ages, backgrounds, lifestyles, and nationalities suffer from major depression, with a few exceptions.

• Up to 20% of people experience symptoms of depression.

According to Martin Seligman, depression in 1984 was 10 times as frequent as in the 1950s.

So, if you’re depressed, it’s not the fault of your biology, individual circumstances, or personality, but of the world you live in. Maybe you’re just smarter and more perceptive than others who are lucky enough to carry on OK in a toxic culture.

If depression was mainly a matter of heredity, it wouldn’t be a growing problem. The fact of its rapid increase points the finger at society, not the individual. Nevertheless, the causation of any psychological reaction is always complex. To learn to gain a less painful way of reacting, we need to understand what leads us to extended periods of sadness. So, read on!

This is a User’s Guide

Depression is a way of seeing the world; a way of being. It isn’t a disease, a disorder, or a chemical imbalance. It’s not something you are, or have, but something you DO.

There is a lot of evidence for my statement, but this is a user’s guide, not some academic treatise. I am not interested in getting into scholarly arguments.

The causes, nature and treatment of depression are best described in an excellent article Michael Gathercole published in the Australian Journal of Counselling Psychology in 2004. It didn’t make the impact it should have, so I’ve reproduced it with permission on my website http://anxietyanddepression-help.com as “An important NEW MODEL OF DEPRESSION.” And that’s almost all the academic stuff you’ll get from me in this book.

I have two credentials for writing this user’s guide.

First and most important, I personally lived with depression from infancy. Without realizing it, I started to do therapy on myself when I was 21. By 23, I had it in control all by myself. A crash would come occasionally—then I fixed it. This went on for another 20 years. When I was 43, I noticed that the depression was gone. Previous invariable triggers failed to drag me down. (My personal journey is described in two of my books: Anikó: The stranger who loved mehttp://bobswriting.com/aniko.html, and Ascending Spiral: Humanity’s last chancehttp://bobswriting.com/ascending.html).

If I could do it, you can do it.

I did have a relapse in 2011, as a reaction to a loss I hadn’t thought would affect me. Using the tools I’d developed to cure myself, I returned to contentment in three weeks.

Second, I have a Ph.D. in psychology, and provided psychotherapy for decades. So, I do understand all the science, and know what I am talking about. If I could be successfully of service to my clients, I can be successfully of service to you.

As with any manual, you need to DO what it recommends. You can’t learn tennis by reading a book about how to do it. You can’t change your world by reading a book about how to do it.

I’ll start with first aid, which helps everyone in any situation. Then we’ll get an understanding of depression, and finally go onto the specifics of living a contented life, even if we are on the planet of the insane (“normal people” who do what everyone does).

2

Basic First Aid

There are seven requirements for a contented life. All of them may be present to varying degrees. If you have a good dose of all seven, you’ll have the inner strength and resilience to support you in your fight against Depression, Anxiety and similar devils.

Your Depression knows this. It knows the list, even if you don’t. It protects itself by sabotaging as many of these requirements as possible. It can do this very well. So, first aid, the way to fight back, is to return these seven features into your life. The rule is:

Whatever Your Depression Tells You, Do the Opposite

I’ll briefly discuss the list here, so you can take immediate action, before examining what depression is and isn’t, then presenting tools for controlling it, and finally tools for getting rid of it altogether—most of the time.

The seven first-aid measures are:

• Healthy eating

• Satisfying sleep

• Regular physical exercise

• Regular fun

• Creativity

• Social connectedness

• Meaning

Since this is a first aid list, I’ve ordered it so that the easiest to implement is at the top.

Note what is NOT on the list:

• Wealth

• Success

• Status

• Beauty

• Romantic love

• Youth

• Physical health

• Absence of pain

• Freedom from stress

• Having a job

• Getting out of your job/marriage/stressful social situation

...and all the other reasons people tend to associate with their mood.

The last requirement, meaning, comes from the work of Viktor Frankl. You just have to read his inspiring book, Man’s Search for Meaning. The other six come from anthropological research on the lifestyles of hunter-gatherer people. You see, genetically, we are identical to our ancestors from up to perhaps 10,000 years ago. By analyzing the lives of modern hunter-gatherers, anthropologists have extracted the essentials of the lifestyle humans have evolved in, and that’s the list I’ve given you.

Think of my recommendations as antidepressants. Only, these antidepressants have several huge advantages over nasty little pills:

• Many of them are free. Those that cost money have other benefits. These benefits are what you pay for; the antidepressant aspect is free.

• They have no undesirable side-effects. In fact, most of them have very pleasant and desirable side-effects.

• Like prescription antidepressants, they’re habit-forming, but since they feel nice and do you good, this is an advantage rather than a disadvantage.

• The only withdrawal effect is the risk that Depression (or whatever your monster is) may return.

Let’s now look at each of the seven requirements for contentment, see how monsters like Depression sabotage them, and how you can protect yourself.

Healthy Eating

Depression starves some people. It tricks others into ill health and obesity by getting them to eat too much, and all the wrong kinds of food. Either way, its job is easy in today’s crazy society: even people who are not suffering distress are likely to eat badly, and many of the common foods are full of stuff that does you harm.

Eating Too Little

Fred didn’t want to get counseling. He knew it couldn’t possibly help him—nothing could. Life was hopeless, and that was that. But when he mentioned killing himself to his doctor, he was given my leaflet and ordered to see me. He canceled the first appointment, because his car (conveniently) broke down. He didn’t show up for the second. I phoned him, and after a long conversation, he at last made the effort to be there the third time.

Sound familiar? It may well be if you’re in the grip of deep Depression.

When we finally sat face to face, I asked him what was making his life so miserable that he contemplated suicide. A whole list of woes emerged, but the top item was, “I can’t eat. If I have something, I feel like chucking up.”

“Have you ever done so?”

“No, but it sure feels like it.”

I knew that his doctor had checked him out for any physical problems, so I told him, “Food is medicine. Eat a tiny bit, doesn’t matter how it makes you feel, and do this every now and then until you have enough to keep you going.”

We organized a few strategies. He bought grapes, and popped them one at a time, ten minutes or so apart. He made a cheese sandwich, cut it into eight pieces and ate one piece, went on with whatever he was doing, ate another little square, and so on.

At first, the nausea persisted. But, while he fed his body regardless of how bad he felt after it, he was starving his Depression. Within a couple of weeks, he could eat a normal meal.

By the way, Fred wasn’t his real name, and I’m not even saying if the client was male or female. All my examples in this book are real, but I’ve changed identifying details. Where I could, I’ve asked the person’s permission for inclusion.

Eating Too Much

Depression tricks you into becoming overweight through “comfort eating” or “boredom eating,” and always the things you swore you won’t touch (but have handy all the same). You feel guilty, and put on weight—and this gives something else that your Depression can use to beat you over the head.

First aid is to get rid of all the wrong foods and store up on things that are good for you: apples, carrots, celery, chewy dried apricots, and nuts of various kinds. When you feel like some comfort food, eat a small amount of one of these, then congratulate yourself. Tell all the people in your life that you’re switching your food intake in this way, and ask them to help by keeping the problem foods away from you.

Shopping is the danger time. Make it a rule: you come with a shopping list. If it’s not on the list, don’t buy it. The internet allows you to be up to date on specials in your neighborhood store, so even a reduced price shouldn’t lead to impulse buying. If you do slip and buy something from the old times, punish yourself by giving it away. Then, being generous to someone else will make you feel good about yourself.

Satisfying Sleep

As with food, Depression can trick you into either too much or too little. Or it can keep you awake all night, and then you’ll feel sluggish and sleepy all day.

Too Little Sleep

Do you lie in bed, your mind going around and around, torturing you with thoughts you’d rather not have? Among them will be the thought, I MUST get to sleep! I’ll be so tired tomorrow! Oh, will I never get to sleep? On and on the wicked merry-go-round goes, keeping you awake.

Some facts about the nature of sleep will help. Sleep has several stages, which can be grouped into two: rest, and dream time (called “rapid eye movement” or REM sleep, because when you dream, your eyes visibly move under your closed eyelids). You can’t do without REM sleep. No matter how many hours you spend asleep, if someone wakes you the moment your eyes start moving, you’ll be like the walking dead in the morning. If you put all your REM times together, they’ll amount to about two hours. You’re guaranteed to get that much during an average awful night of disturbed sleep. So, typically, lack of REM sleep isn’t the problem. It is that you haven’t rested at all during your stay in bed.

It actually makes no difference whether you’re awake or asleep for the remainder of the time. As long as your body is relaxed, you’ll be as rested as if you were asleep. In contrast, sleeping while tense doesn’t rest you at all. You can sleep deeply for ten hours and wake tired, if during all that time your body was like a compressed spring.

So, the first aid trick is to learn muscular relaxation. I’ll teach you in the next chapter, because it’s an important tool in its own right.

Then, it is just as restful to lie there, eyes closed, breathing softly, your body completely relaxed, as if you were asleep.

As you breathe in, feel air going in your nose, into your chest, and your tummy rising. As you breathe out focus on tummy going down, air out of your chest, relatively warm air coming out of your nose.

It’s good to fill your mind with a mantra: something you say over and over till it becomes boring, then till it becomes meaningless, and still do it. I use the mantra just as... ...restful to remind me of what I’m doing: resting whether I am awake or asleep. That means, you’re concentrating on four things all the time.

The mantra is true. But even if it wasn’t, it would cut through the negative thinking that’s keeping you awake. Get relaxed. Lie there with your eyes closed, breathing softly, and keep saying this mantra to yourself. You’ll soon be asleep. And even if for any reason you’re still awake, you’ll feel rested in the morning.

Too Much Sleep

Tony was a nice, decent 17-year-old. He and his group of close friends did everything together. Unfortunately, that involved substance abuse. One night, a member of the group murdered his best friend, while out of his mind on marijuana and alcohol. (In some people, marijuana can induce intense terror or rage.)

Tony held the dying boy during his last moments. Months later, he was required to testify against his friend in court. Not surprisingly, he needed counseling.

I asked him how he was affected. He told me that the worst thing was that he couldn’t be bothered to do anything. He took “sickies” from work as an apprentice mechanic, because he couldn’t get up in the morning, had no energy. All he wanted to do was sleep. “What’s the point of doing anything anyway?”

He hadn’t realized that he was in the grip of Depression, a natural aspect of grieving.

He agreed that whenever his grief tried to talk him out of doing something, he’d force himself to do just that. He set his alarm clock for the usual time he needed to rise for work, even on weekends and holidays.

“If you feel too bad to go to work, then maybe you need to stay at home, but still get up at the right time,” I told him. “Then, do all the other preparatory things you do on an ordinary day: have a shower, shave, get dressed, eat breakfast. After that, if you want to, you can undress and return to bed.”

When he did this, he ended up going to work (well, not on weekends and holidays). The first step is always the hardest.

On the days when he defied his grief, he actually felt good, in power, for having done so.

Regular Physical Exercise

Many people do things that get them tired, but that is not the kind of exercise I mean. You need to work up a sweat, and find yourself puffing for air. When you do this, your body generates chemicals called “endorphins.” When endorphins settle in certain receptor sites, you feel good, happy, full of energy. So, aerobic exercise is a holiday from depression.

Have a skipping rope handy, or do a few star-jumps, or go for a brisk ten-minute walk, and you’ll feel good for a while.

Exercise can be the wedge that allows you to escape the trap of Depression. It can become a “good addiction.” If you do exactly the right amount of exercise for your current level of fitness, you’ll enjoy the experience. So, you’ll be motivated to do more.

There are three dangers: to overdo it, so exercising also develops negative reactions; to set yourself unrealistic goals, so Depression can then torture you with thoughts of failure and inadequacy; and to compare yourself with others.

This exercise is strictly an antidepressant. It doesn’t matter whether you’re improving or not. It doesn’t matter if someone else can do it much better. All that matters is that you develop a tool for feeling good.

It may seem like a paradox, but keeping records is a great motivator. Without trying to improve, you will, and this’ll be obvious when you check distances and speeds of walking, or the number of pushups you do, or the weight you use for a particular exercise, compared to what you could manage a few months ago.

Regular Fun

How can you have fun when you’re miserable?

You often do. I did an experiment once. My friend Georgia and I went to a concert. She is a musician—and was suffering from severe depression. As I watched her, it was obvious that she thoroughly enjoyed herself. Her eyes never left the performers. I could see that she was up on stage with them. Her mouth was half open much of the time, her body subtly moved with the rhythm. After the performance, she chatted with me, bought a CD and talked for some time with the players, smiled at strangers.

I saw her again a few days later. “How did you enjoy the concert?” I asked.

“Oh... it was all right I suppose.” Her tone of voice was bored, flat, shoulders were slumped forward, and she didn’t look at me. She was in the pits, and couldn’t even imagine that a few days previously she might have had fun.

That’s what the doom-colored glasses of suffering do to you.

Don’t believe your Depression when it tells you that you never have fun, can’t have fun, there is no such thing as fun.

There have been times in your past when life was OK. If you’re in the pits now, chances are you won’t remember them. But try. Think back to times when you got on with your life, and the misery was absent. What did you do for fun then?

Whatever it was, deliberately schedule it into your week.

Creativity

One reason for the high incidence of suffering in technological society is that so many people stop doing creative things for months, even years at a time. They go on day after day, week after week, year after year, round and round the same treadmill of routine and boredom. Get up in the morning, commute to work, go through the motions, come home, veg out in front of the idiot box, go to bed... who wouldn’t be depressed? And these are the lucky ones who have a job.

For many people, life is drab. Housework is a chore. Kids are an unending stream of problems. Work is a chunk out of your life. And when you go on holidays, you come back so exhausted you need to recover from them.

Introduce creative activities. Here are a few examples:

• Whatever your work, find ways of doing it with enthusiasm, seeking new ways, learning new skills, aiming for new achievements.

• Attend a course. This could be anything from learning the skills for a new hobby to a Ph.D. My first client was a lady who enrolled at University for a degree in Divinity. That’s how I knew she no longer needed my services.

• Play music.

• Some people get a lot out of gardening.

• Cooking can be highly creative, even cooking for one person.

• Housework can be done creatively. Spend a couple of hours cleaning a room, then enjoy its welcoming feel.

• Outdoor activities like walking, cycling, fishing, nature observation can be highly creative if done in the right frame of mind.

• Then of course there are the activities usually thought of as creative: painting, making things with your hands, writing poetry or stories, composing music.

Where do you find the time for such things? Engaging in something like an item from this list gives you MORE time rather than less. This is because creativity recharges your inner batteries, and you’ll be more efficient at everything you do.

Social Connectedness

Megan worked as a sales assistant in a huge department store. She described it as being a trained pair of hands and an automatic smile. To customers, she was a thing that took their money. She had no contact with other workers except during the lunch break, and even then, she knew they were not interested in her as a person. All the talk was on superficial topics she couldn’t care less about. To her superiors, she knew herself to be no more than a number, someone to keep an eye on.

Irene worked in the same store. She loved her work, particularly the people aspect. She said some customers came regularly, and they always had a friendly chat with her. She’d watched their kids grow over the years. She took an interest in her colleagues, and several had become her friends, with frequent after-work contact.

Both these women came to me through the store’s Employment Assistance program. Irene came for chronic pain management, because of a painful lower back, and Repetitive Stress Injury (RSI) in both wrists. It won’t surprise you to find out that Megan came for help with Depression.

Research shows that a person needs to have close connections to other people. Being part of three (possibly overlapping) networks is the minimum, but more is better. I’m a loner, but when I learned about social connectedness, I counted mine. I was part of 20 networks.

Paul was the custodial parent of two daughters. His ex-wife had abused the girls, and he’d won sole custody, denying her access. He was also suicidally depressed. The only thing keeping him alive was that his death would impose terrible suffering on his daughters. When we worked together, the reason became clear: he only had ONE social network: he and his daughters. He had no feeling of connection to anyone else at all.

When you’re in the grip of Depression, you want to avoid company. Also, others won’t enjoy being with a grump. A third way Depression isolates you is by whispering that the people you care for are too good for you, and the best thing you can do is to separate from them.

Remember, whatever your Depression tells you, do the opposite. Remember, it’s doom-colored glasses that hide the good things and focus on the bad.

It’s important to note that I am not talking about introversion-extraversion here. People vary according to their need for being with others. The extreme extravert is a party animal who dislikes being alone and craves human company. The extreme introvert is a loner who prefers solitude, and is uncomfortable in many social situations. Most people are in between—about two-thirds are neither one nor the other.

You can suffer regardless of your place on the introversion-extraversion scale. And even extreme introverts need social connectedness. You could be on a solo round-the-world yacht trip with no radio, and be socially connected. This is because you’ll know there are people who think of you as important in their lives, and you carry them around with you in your heart. As advance reviewer TA Sullivan stated, if I go away, I am connected to those “whose life I disrupt; who miss me on a day-to-day or week-to-week basis.”

So, when your Depression tries to isolate you, resist by involving yourself with other people. Distract yourself from your woes by taking an interest in the lives of others. That’s what I did as a youngster: I collected “lame ducks” who needed my help, so I could worry about them instead of myself. Fight back by doing random acts of kindness, enjoy the play of little children. If face to face contact is more than you can cope with for now, use the internet.

Here is a secret. When you avoid people, it’s typically because you’re scared of being judged. Actually, most others are so busy being the stars in their own inner shows that they spend little or no energy in judging you. To them, you’re a walk-on extra. Instead, their attention is on assessing how others (including you) judge them.

If you go into a new situation, some people will ignore you. Ignore them. Some may react to you negatively. Their loss. But there will also be people who react with friendship and kindness. They are your future teachers and supports. Smile at them. Be open, by saying quietly, “You know, being here terrifies me. All I want to do is to run out the door, and I’m here as an act of courage.” If you have picked the right person to say something like this to, the reaction will delight and uplift you.

It’s far easier to move into a new group if there is a common purpose. This could be anything: church, a sport, hobby or skill, a course of study, activism to advance a cause... If you have a passion or an interest, find others who share it with you. Cooperate with them. Once there is a connection, go out of your way to be useful and of benefit to the others. Friendships will build.

The most useful group you can use is Toastmasters. On the surface, this is a group that enjoys public speaking, which I know you find scary. However, it’s actually group therapy for self-confidence and inner poise. Most members start with a strong fear of speaking in public. Within a year, they do so with verve. You can also achieve this.

Meaning

Two or three times a month, I get a desperate email from a young person. Here is the best of them, with only the name changed:

Hey, Bob, my name's Crissie, I'm 15, and I desperately need your help, although I have to admit, I feel guilty loading a stranger with my problems. I feel guilty loading them on anyone at that. Anyway, here's my problem: I have no joy for life. I don't believe in any god, I'm an atheist, and life seems totally pointless to me, and completely devoid of meaning.

I'm turning 16 next week, and frankly I'm amazed I've made it thus far without jumping in front of a bus. I feel numb, and worthless, and empty. I think I'm having what people call an existential crisis, and, now that I've reached it, it feels like the ultimate truth, that all those things I enjoyed in the past were distractions from the pointlessness and absurdity of life and existence.

I wouldn't care if I were alive or dead, and I've felt this way for well over a year. I feel like every day I'm alive is just a depressing wade through time, which doesn't exist anyway, it's just a concept, an illusion like everything else, like romance, and society, and purpose.

I want to be a psychologist when I grow up, if you manage or care to persuade me that there is something to live for, because I feel like I'm in touch with the madness. No one understands me, they can't see the bigger picture, they can't see their existence from a higher perspective, but I guess it's better that way, because then they can get lost—no, remain lost—in the oblivion, and not worry about these things and enjoy life. It's too late for me though. And I'm a mess. I'm impatient, and I can't have small talk, I can't bear to have to think about things that now seem completely irrelevant. Everything seems superficial and shallow, and I've lost trust in the world—but perhaps trust is a euphemism for naivety.