Dear noname:

You are welcome. You mentioned “the collective suppression of pain”- as I read this, I came up with another term, the collective infliction of pain: individuals within our human society inflicting pain on each other, in so many ways, within families and everywhere else. It makes sense to first attend to preventing future infliction of pain, and second- to the expressing pain already inflicted.

“how we live, disconnected from nature, other people, and ourselves is one of the main ingredients for our suffering”:  Disconnection => Sickness.      Connection=> Healing.

Recently, while communicating with another member, I came across a Wikipedia entry on “Social Isolation”, here are parts of it that fit very well (in my mind) with what you expressed over time about your personal experience: “True social isolation over years and decades can be a chronic condition affecting all aspects of a person’s existence. Social isolation can lead to feelings of loneliness, fear of others, or negative self-esteem. Lack of consistent human contact can also cause conflict with the (peripheral) friends… Social isolation can begin early in life… Substance abuse can also be an element in isolation, whether a cause or a result…lonely children are more susceptible to depressive symptoms in youth… Socially isolated children..  are more likely to be psychologically distressed in adulthood”.

As I understand it your explanation in your recent post, you are saying that your belief that you are not good enough/ not lovable is the source of your depression. Solution: change this belief to I-am-good-enough/ I-am-lovable and you will feel “more motivated, more willing to take positive social risks which will eventually turn into those external supports I need”.

My closing thoughts for this post: the simple solution to disconnection/ social isolation/ lack of external, social support seems to be: to connect with people. But what happens when the person so needy of connection is also angry at people he seeks connection with? He connects some (selectively or not), then gets angry, breaks the connection, and so on. Anger makes a seeming easy solution- an impossibility.

anita

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