Isolation is hard, but I already knew that

The past month of national coronavirus lockdown has been hard on my family.

We have a kid with serious behavioral, psychiatric and learning disabilities and another kid with dyslexia. We are coping with the excessive demands of insensitive and disengaged teachers. We’ve been learning to cook from scratch faster than ever before. There have been a few weeks in there where supplies were hard to come by and we had to get creative with our prepper techniques.

But I hear a very different kind of suffering echoing across the internet. Other people are suffering from social isolation, a loss of control in their lives and a complete disruption of their routines. Anxiety levels are skyrocketing and clinical emotional problems are exacerbated.

For awhile I was a bit mystified, at times even dismissive. How can all these people be so wimpy? Most of them don’t have kids with complex challenges and no one is emailing them with threats of failing grades for an assignment that was thirty minutes late due to internet problems. They’re just stuck at home, alone, resting!

I always did have sympathy for the people stuck with kids in small city apartments, but oddly those aren’t the complaints you hear most about. By and large, the loudest wails of distress are coming from the privileged suburbs. Those who I expected to be most vulnerable seem to be stoically silent.

At first, I wondered if this was because they didn’t have access to the internet. I contacted a friend who is a single mother in the inner city and asked in depth about their well-being. She assured me that they were coping well. She can still go to work and her ten-year-old has been semi-parenting and supervising homework for the eight-year-old and the seven-year-old for years already. Homeschooling them and herself isn’t that much more. They’re used to hard times.

I shook my head in wonder and went back to my own struggle, feeling decidedly inferior to the ten-year-old in the inner city.

But as the weeks have passed and I have observed the struggles of others (and read a certain amount of psychological analysis), I realized something significant.

That social distancing that is causing so much havoc for so many people… I know it well. I’ve lived it for years as a socially excluded person with a disability. The amount that I leave my house has only decreased slightly, despite the fact that we’re on national COVID-19 lockdown with only essential supply runs allowed.

Photo by Arie Farnam

My social contact has only been reduced a little, since there was very little of it to begin with. The only change in my daily routine is that my kids are home and I can’t do my work because they are so overwhelmingly needy and their teachers are insanely demanding.

That loss of control in people’s lives… I have always lived in a world where I had very little power in the outside world and I was forced to make harsh choices to build a life I love in the small area I can influence.

For years the decisions of others to exclude or include, to harm or to take have hit me like successive waves that I was powerless to deflect. My only power was always in how I took the waves and what I did with driftwood that washed up.

And that disruption of routine and the resulting rudderless confusion… I remember when I was in my twenties and I first left the shelter of structured education. It was terrifying for a few years. I spent almost every day alone. My work was independent and no one was giving me daily feedback. I had to create my own structure, my own schedule and routine. If I got any reward or consequence for my work or lack there of, it was in terms of months, rather than minute by minute or day to day.

And it was hard. I recall the months I spent struggling against depression, sitting among the boxes in a little room I rented at the time in a city where I had few friends and no family.

I knew that my life was in my own hands, that I had to get up and do the work despite the isolation, that no one else would do it for me and no one would help me. It was paralyzing and demotivating and such a heavy load.

As I start to realize these things, my empathy grows in bounds for the people experiencing this for the first time. Suddenly, the people who were out in the free world, who had a social life and regular jobs and culture and community have been thrown into a life that is much more like mine.

I remember the six years I spent almost entirely alone—often on two-week bouts of lockdown and enforced rest—while I struggled with intractable and medically unexplained infertility. I remember the many resolutions I made to study something, to use my open-ended time wisely, to be calm and to practice good grooming habits. Day after day, month after month, I started new schedules and forced myself into healthier routines.

Then as an inexperienced, new mother of traumatized children adopted from Eastern European orphanages, with no women friends to advise me, I spent the baby days battling the demons of despair, guilt, shame, depression and extreme loneliness. Without the ability to drive, it was nearly impossible to get to mommy-and-me classes for toddlers and when I made the mile-long trek into town, other mothers told me that my inability to make eye contact due to my disability made me unacceptable for their group.

So, I made my own music circle with my two kids. I put up colorful posters on the walls. I had an art project scheduled for every day. I tried to teach my preschoolers to cook. I started early reading programs with them and learned to garden.

But it took years! I’m not bragging. I’m aching for all the people facing isolation just now for the first time. If it feels really really hard. That’s because it is.

I’ve been there. And I didn’t overcome it in a few days or a few weeks. I did overcome it, but it took years.

In the end, I did learn a lot of great skills. I can now make my own schedule and I get up happily before dawn, meditate and go out to tend to my garden and animals all before the kids get up. But I didn’t start out that way. I was a wreck, a mess, like a lot of people report being a mess now.

It might help to listen to those people you know who have traditionally been somewhat isolated. Ask them how they stay sane and healthy. If you’re struggling with this, consider that while whole societies being at home in lockdown is unprecedented, you aren’t really the first people to experience it. And those of us who have known isolation and didn’t succumb to extreme depression, addiction or unhealthy living have skills that you can learn.

I have read several self-care articles out there on the web that try to teach these skills and I remember when such things sounded very unrealistic to me. They tell you to keep to a routine, to try to set a time to get up, to shower and get dressed as you used to when you had someplace to go. They tell you to eat regular meals and make sure they’re healthy. They tell you to limit your time staring at social media and scary news reports on TV. They tell you not to beat yourself up mentally when inevitably you fail at all of this.

So from experience,, are they right?

Yup, they’re right. Routine helps. A lot.

Regular bedtimes and waking times help. Personal hygiene isn’t just for the physical health concerns. It really helps the whole situation. It helps you feel purposeful and gives back some of that sense of control. Healthy eating and healthy sleeping both have major psychological effects. And I can’t tell you how many times I’ve paid the unpleasant price for wasting half a day on social media.

But the thing I rarely find in these lists, the skill that I think I developed over time that has helped the most, is actually making a schedule for yourself with a purpose greater than daily survival in mind.

About ten years ago, I realized that my life was probably never going to change, that I was never going to be accepted and welcomed into the community and a wonderful group of friends. And somehow, against all the weight of years of depression and media programming that said friends are the sum total of a person’s worth, I decided to build a happy life anyway.

I started building it step by step, by deciding what I wanted in my life and scheduling it. I scheduled a daily spiritual practice and did it.

For the first few years, I didn’t manage to do it every day. Then there came a year that I did manage it every day, except once when I was really sick. For the next two years, it felt like an accomplishment. Then it became indispensable and something I would never voluntarily miss.

I’m close to that level on daily exercise, but not quite to the point where it is automatic. I have managed to get daily contact with nature, animals and gardening into my life. I’ve managed to make daily writing part of my life.

I now manage to keep a schedule for my kids schooling despite their vehement protests and natural disinclination. I manage to have regular and healthy meal times for the whole family. But it all started with scheduling a few things I wanted in my life, like spiritual practice and exercise.

If you’ve read this far, you are intrepid and I know you can do this. Focus on the essentials and on your core values.

Here is a method for developing a fulfilling life even when you’re in isolation:

1. Figure out a practical routine of waking, grooming, eating and sleeping that actually works for you in your given situation.

2. Set alarms and push yourself to stick to it.

3. When it falls apart, look at the routine and the clock and get back into it at that point. Don’t spend time and energy berating yourself for being lazy or lacking self-discipline. Like they say with meditation, just gently return to your focus.

4. Once those basics have been mastered, you will have somewhat more energy and less chaos around you. Use some of that mental space to think about your core values and what you really want in your life. If you have to work at the same time, consider your work to be one of the priorities.

5. Write down your daily routine with times when it works for you to fulfill it. How strict you are with those times depends on your personality and whether or not being relaxed about the times results in the routine being fulfilled or results in chaos. Learn from disasters and adjust the routine as necessary. There’s always another day to practice on.

6. Then choose one thing you really must reintegrate into your life. That could be the thing that provides income or it could be physical exercise. Both are essential. But choose just one for now, and write it into your time schedule. Try it for a few days.

7. Then choose the next most important thing and write that into the schedule.

8. As you add more priorities to your life, you’ll run into problems. Some things take longer than you think. You may start to experience real fatigue again and need to adjust your sleeping hours. Tackle each issue as it comes. There is nothing you can’t fix or at least improve.

9. When you have integrated the priorities you don’t want to live without, stop adding things to your schedule, at least for a while. Get the schedule down really well before adding optional extras. Then when you add something else, pay attention to the effect on your whole daily routine.

This is the basic method. Of course, it sounds easier than it is. If it was easy, everyone in quarantine would be fine. But I know from experience that it can be done. It can be done alone and it can be done with a spouse and kids. Each variation has its own challenges. The key is focusing on building a life that you enjoy, bit by bit.

A word about self-discipline: Yes, self-discipline helps. But society tends to view it as something you have or something you don’t have. Many people will fail at this routine again and again and think that means they lack self-discipline. The thing is that the discipline is the starting over every day. That’s the crux. Yes, there are people for whom sticking to the routine is easier and some for whom it is harder. Some of that is about tenacity but a lot of it is about whatever circumstances you find yourself in. The discipline part is failing and getting back at it again… and again… and again… and again.

A note about depression: Your propensity to sink into depression in isolation or due to failing at your routine is largely biochemical. You can’t entirely control whether you do or not. Healthy food, meditation, positive thinking techniques, contact with friends and (pleasant) family over the phone, exercise and sleep will all help ward off depression. Comparing yourself to other people with different biochemistry generally will not help.

A note about purpose: One of the greatest and least discussed antidotes to depression is purpose. You can’t feel purposeful very well unless you have mastered the basic routine, but once you have, it may help a great deal to choose something you want to accomplish during this quarantine time. It can be as simple as building some abs through a lot of exercise on your yoga mat in a small apartment, or it can be as grand as preparing applications for graduate school or writing that book you’ve always wanted to write.

If you are, like me, stuck in a situation where purpose is elusive because each day is still a massive struggle to get through even the basics, whether that is due to harsh physical conditions, crowded conditions or disabilities, you likely already know there aren’t a lot of simple answers. But keeping to a little bit of greater purpose still helps me.

Hang in there. Keep getting up, even when it feels hopeless and useless. The use is always in the fact that your life will be more enjoyable if you create your own routine and schedule, even if just vegging out may feel enjoyable in the short-term. You’ve probably done that enough by now to know it doesn’t actually pan out that way.

Stay in touch with those you love far away, stay awake inside yourself and build what you want your life to be like within the external conditions. These are the things I learned through isolation.

Climate doomsaying as an excuse to be lazy

And other guaranteed ways to make sure the oil companies win

It can feel utterly hopeless. The climate crisis is so vast that individual actions can’t really make any measurable difference. There is little sign that our political and economic leaders are willing to do what is necessary.

And even if they were, no one can guarantee that we haven’t passed key tipping points already. Some scientific models say we may have. Others say we will pass tipping points within a few years, long before any major economic changes can rectify the situation.

It is so easy to give up.

Creative Commons image via Pixabay

Why don’t I? Most importantly I don’t give up because of my sense of self identity and self respect. If I truly believed that the earth would be uninhabitable within 30 years, as some claim, I would not personally be able to “just enjoy life while I can.”

And frankly, I doubt that most people who express that nihilist view actually believe it either. There may be some who do, but to me a comfortable, entertaining and fun life without purpose would be hell. I don’t need a great, earth-shaking purpose but I do need some small incremental purpose. It is the core of who I am.

And secondly, I do have kids. I didn’t give birth to them, but I tried to. And if I don’t see any hope for survival beyond the next few decades, then I would have some serious ethical problems.

I spend a fair amount of my limited time free from the necessities of eating, sleeping, working and raising kids on being a climate activist, whether that is through my writing or more recently through helping out with a local Extinction Rebellion group.

It’s a challenge to stay motivated and feel like my incremental actions are worth anything. On the other hand, I want scientists to tell the whole truth. I don’t want them to skimp on urgency in order to spare people’s feelings. We need to know what we’re up against, even if that someday means knowing we have lost our chance to avert massive deaths.

But there is one response to climate change I find as infuriating and morally questionable as profit-seeking denial of science. That is doomsaying as an excuse to be lazy.

An example, through an acquaintance who is also a responsible and hard-working climate activist, I ended up in an online discussion recently which devolved into a group of people I didn’t know having a mass “doom orgy.” It was in response to my acquaintance’s post but didn’t appear to involve him directly. A few dozen people were doing that online ricochet-in-your-own-bubble thing where one says something inflammatory and six other people try to one-up the hysteria and ten more try to top that and so on.

Pretty much it was a group of people, supposedly supporting climate activism who were saying “It’s too late. No action will save life on earth now. It’s the methane thing. Anyone who doesn’t recognize that everything is hopeless now is just stupid and in denial…” and so on and on.

They were obviously enjoying this titillating moment of doom-wallowing. And it pissed me off as much as a bunch of hillbillies with monster trucks gunning their engines and yelling, “F… Mother Earth!” And both scenes have about the same atmosphere.

My response was to say, “I hope you all didn’t have kids.”

Because most of these people were older than their twenties and likely many of them did have kids. It wasn’t that I think they’d be terrible parents in general or that I wouldn’t want little copies of them running around. It’s just that I am fairly certain if they had kids, they wouldn’t actually believe their doomsday statements. They are merely spouting off for the thrill and the self-righteous superiority they feel.

People who have kids can’t take so much pleasure in predicting total annihilation within the lifetime of the next generation. Or if they do, I pity their children. Hence my somewhat caustic statement.

I could respect a person who truly believed that they had scientific evidence that everyone is going to die in terrible suffering and starvation in a few decades, if they didn’t have children. I can’t very well respect someone who says they believe that but then goes ahead and has kids anyway.

They’re doing “business as usual.” They don’t believe their own rhetoric.

And worse than that, their rhetoric includes statements like, “No action will make any difference at this point.” The person I directly responded to had been ridiculing people who work for green energy and engage in political activism to get better climate policies. I would have been laughed out of the discussion if I admitted to working hard as an activist for climate justice.

The point of this verbal flagellation over climate doom is to absolve oneself and one’s cohorts of any need to take action or put out effort.

Climate activists are sometimes called scaremongers. Throughout human history tyrants have used scaremongering to drive groups of people to action usually to fight or exclude some group they are told to fear. Scaremongering implies a lack of evidence or reality. As such, climate science isn’t scaremongering.

Doomsaying is a similar tyrannical tactic used for centuries but instead of action, it’s goal is to freeze people into inaction, depression and apathy, or at times into panicked, chaotic flight. in the face of a real and factual crisis. Doomsaying is as heinous as denial.

In this case, doomsaying is actually the more virulent and damaging ideology.

Climate denial today primarily affects those who know they are in opposition to science and facts. People who refuse to acknowledge climate science are unlikely to change their minds until they are personally facing survival threats. However, doomsaying affects people who are aware and who are taking at least some small steps toward a solution. It demotivates and freezes those who would act and lulls those who know the danger but are inclined to laziness.

And so yes, I called out people claiming to be climate activists in the midst of their self-perpetuating hysteria of despair.

And it isn’t even about evidence and who is scientifically correct.

I am not a climate scientist. It is a real profession. It requires years of university-level study. I am not going to do some reading and a bit of “experimental research” as so many so-called “activists” have and start declaring my own conclusions. I don’t make my own science anymore than I do my own surgery or build my own computer.

I read the scientific papers as best I can. I know that the outputs of big organizations are watered down, as they always are in any document written by a committee. I know that governments give out information with an agenda attached. But in the end, I don’t see hard evidence of utter hopelessness.

And for me to throw up my hands and go live a life of entertainment and creature comforts because “it’s all hopeless anyway,” I would need more than absolute, incontrovertible evidence. I would need to give up on my children.

An antidote to environmental depression

All I had to go on was a vague and anonymous Facebook notification. I followed my Maps app to the address but got lost when some of the Renaissance-era buildings weren’t numbered. A young Vietnamese immigrant with a child on her hip set me straight.

Finally, there was a sheet of paper taped to the mail box of a building in a narrow Prague street. A large Dagaz rune (which Ralph Blum called Breakthrough) tipped sideways was printed on the paper and repeated on one of the doorbells. It’s supposed to be a stylized hourglass, but my first impression was of the rune and a surprising good omen.

I rang, but there was no answer.

I gently pushed and the heavy wooden door creaked open. Inside was a dim hallway, like so many in the ancient city. A decorative railing ran around a spiral stairway and light filtered down from sunbeams coming through windows somewhere far overhead.

I passed a young man with long hair to the middle of his back, but then hesitated, glancing back at him. Prague is the kind of place where one might find new friends in a dimly lit stairwell.

“Are you with us?” he asked softly in Czech, addressing me in the informal grammar reserved for close family and friends..

Image via Pixabay

“Probably.” I grinned, “if you’re the meeting.”

“Go right up,” he nodded and the welcome in his voice was again almost shocking to my battered nerves, accustomed to the acrimony and judgement so rampant in today’s society.

The sunlit room upstairs was filled with more of the same, open hands reaching to bring me into the circle, smiles and enthusiastic voices. I had come prepared for cynicism, long arguments, social cliques, power trips, poorly hidden political agendas and all the other problems that have plagued activism circles for decades. This friendly reception was already more than I’d hoped for, but would it turn out to be just a shiny package for the same old dead ends?

I took a seat and watched as the meeting unfolded. Someone took the lead but then quickly passed the speaking role to another. Everyone was introduced in 10 minutes. The agenda was on a board with precise times that were kept without strain. Plans and methods were explained with professional clarity as well as with heart. We broke into groups to discuss specific projects.

I have rarely seen an activist meeting run so well, reaching goal after goal with no sense of rush.

Activism? Who has time for that nonsense these days, you might well ask.

The focus of this group is no mystery—taking real, practical action to force government agencies and industry to behave responsibly on the climate crisis. It was nothing short of our survival at stake and for once the activist proposals were not merely about leaflets or poetry slams or rallies. The work on the table was practical resistance to destruction.

Instead of being frustrated by a long, acrimonious meeting and incremental pace as I had in countless community organizations before, I had to question whether or not I was ready to jump into this swift flowing stream.

This was my first Extinction Rebellion meeting—out on the expanding fringe of the movement in Eastern Europe. And I had to hand it to them. Excellent organization. Solid tactics. Laser-focused goals. And the flexibility to learn in a new country.

Image via Pixabay

I have been struggling with deep environmental depression for years now. And a lot of that really is environmental—as in ecological. I grow my garden, hoard rain water, ride the train, recycle, try to speak up and all that. But it is clearly ineffective. For the past few years, I have looked for organizations to join off and on, but they were either inaccessible, just plain lazy or more serious about their donor’s goals than the real work at hand.

Keeping hope had become a chore. And a lot of serious environmentalists today have a lot of unpleasant things to say about hope.

So, is Extinction Rebellion just a bunch of well-organized naive idealists?

I might have thought so from just the one meeting. But deeper research reveals a strong foundation in realism and practicality. The movement is spread through local talks or lectures that summarize the status of climate science, describe the mounting effects of climate change and then outline the demands and strategy of the Rebellion. It’s a surprisingly anti-inflammatory, technical lecture to spread a revolution.

But even with level-headed words the scientific conclusions are pretty depressing. At the end of the talk, an opinion is given about whether or not we can still avert the worst effects of climate change even if we can generate the “political will.” The scientific jury seems to still be out on that. But there are plenty of reasons to believe we might not be able to stop a climate catastrophe that will seriously endanger our way of life and civilization no matter what we do today.

In the context of a motivational talk, this isn’t a logical way to convince masses of people. We are told that political and industrial leaders are ignoring the crisis and our best hope is to force them to pay attention and act through non-violent civil resistance. Yet we don’t even know whether or not it is already too late for them to avert disaster before they’ve even meaningfully started.

Still it’s real and honest.

Why do anything if the cause may well be hopeless? The Extinction Rebellion response is a question, “What does it mean to be human today?”

For me, it is about the quality of whatever life we have left. I have a choice. I can either live in a fog of depression and anxiety or I can do what needs to be done because it needs doing. Taking steps in the right direction is the only way out of depression I know of.

If that isn’t exactly a rousing pep talk, then so be it. Maybe the Rebellion is already rubbing off on me.

To my newfound co-conspirators in rebellion, I’ll give you some fair warning. I’m socially awkward, even a dork. I don’t do modern fashions. I can’t recognize faces and I can’t run as fast as I used to. I sometimes speak before I think and my daily life is pretty rugged at the moment.

But I have been in this kind of struggle before. I know about walking miles to distribute fliers and about herding cats. I know about long nights and the times when a lot of work goes for naught. I’m worth having around. I pack a good herbal first-aid kit and I’ve usually got food if you’re batteries are running low.

I have also always wanted to end my conversations and posts this way:

Love and courage! .

A path through the wilderness: How I beat isolation-fueled depression

What do depression, parenting, scuba diving, being a racial minority and riding a bicycle all have in common?

You don’t know what it is really like unless you have been there and done it personally.

Depression is a real and often serious illness. It is most broadly described as an illness causing pervasive, long-term feelings of sadness and despair to a degree that hinders daily life. People who have experienced it know that it isn’t easy to beat depression.

Every illness has a cause of some kind. Depression can be sparked by negative events, such as the death of a loved one, limitations brought on by accident or sickness, or prolonged unlivable or oppressive conditions. But grief is not depression and hardships often don’t lead to depression. Most often depression is at least partly caused by biochemical problems, which may have genetic, lifestyle or environmental roots.

Creative Commons image by Moyan Brenn

Depression is not “all in your head” or just something you can get over by thinking yourself out of the problem. But some thoughts can help. However, people telling you to think differently or that all you need is a positive attitude are pretty much guaranteed not to be helpful.

I know about this because I went through depression. My depression was mostly caused by a long-term problematic situation but exacerbated by my genetic tendency toward depression.

I can tell my own story, for what it’s worth. It isn’t a prescription for anyone else though. It’s just footprints in the howling wilderness that is depression, a sign that someone went this way before.

Depression and loneliness often coincide. Being alone and having little social contact can seriously exacerbate many types of depression. And yet people with depression often feel a desire to be alone, not because they don’t like people but because they need quiet to heal, because talk can easily wander into things that cause them pain, and because interaction requires energy. One of the major factors in depression is often a sensation of weight on the body or long-standing exhaustion.

Beyond that, people with depression are often not that easy to be around. Some look and act like what you’d expect from a sad person. Many don’t, but they can exhibit other difficult symptoms, such as irritability, anger, difficulty concentrating, fidgeting or hyperactivity, neediness, rejection of others and/or excessive, unnecessary chatter. As a result, some people with depression may end up more socially isolated because other people avoid them due to things related to the depression, often creating a vicious spiral.

My depression had some of that.

It started with bullying and social ostracism at school. I’ve written about the particulars in other posts. In short, I went through a lot of social exclusion up until about age twenty due to my vision impairment, different looking face and a-typical upbringing.

I had almost no close friends and very little social interaction beyond my family as a child and as a teen. I went through years of schooling in which I was always in a crowd and never allowed to participate socially. At the same time, I was hyper aware of constant “feel good” messages directed at people my age, claiming that friendship is the most important thing in life.

Messages meant to help struggling students stressed that academics and great careers don’t really lead to happiness or a fulfilling life. “The only thing that really matters,” every book, movie and counseling office pamphlet seemed to tell me, “is how many people like you.”

Mostly they didn’t come right out and say the word “popularity,” but instead used the nicer sounding term “friendship,” but I got the message loud and clear. My straight As, athletic skills, artistic talents, volunteer activities and everything else I tried to feel good about were all second best because of the social stigma that kept me isolated.

Over the years, I developed a deep depression—the kind that often goes undiagnosed. I used anger to fuel my energy, despite the heavy sadness that weighed me down. I decided that if I could not have friends, I would be the best in something else. I excelled academically, learned to write professionally and travailed the world.

I found that in distant countries where the culture was very different from my own, I was seen primarily as an exotic foreigner and my vision impairment and different face were often overlooked. I made friends, though due to the conditions of travelling these were often brief, if intense friendships. In the days before universal email, I corresponded with dear friends on several continents by letter, carrying my little green address book around as protectively as my passport.

Each chance to settle in a new place brought hope that here I would finally get it right and make lasting friendships.

That was another message I had absorbed. I knew on some level that much of my social isolation was due to factors beyond my control, but because well-meaning teachers had noticed my social problems in school, I had often been subjected to lectures and training designed to teach “social skills.”

I understood that implicitly, something was wrong with my social skills. In short, my isolation was also my own fault.

Some of those exercises attempted to correct “blindisms,” like my tendency to stare at my fingers while listening to someone talk because I couldn’t see their face, my inability to make eye contact and my difficulty in perceiving other people’s non-verbal communication. I learned not to stare at my fingers or other objects and to endure the discomfort of a world out of focus while I listened attentively. I learned to fake eye contact by looking intently but not fixedly toward where I thought a person’s eyes were. I learned to guess at non-verbal communication fairly effectively.

Other parts of this “social skills” education aimed to moderate the anger that came as a result of the isolation, essentially teaching me to be extra passive, extra nice, extra polite and to focus on other peoples’ interests while making small talk. Some teachers attempted to teach me to dress fashionably, smile demurely and feign normalcy. While I did reasonably well at the first type of lessons, I was not a star student in the second set.

For one thing, I was angry. For another thing, I had difficulty believing that appearances really matter all that much.

I’ve never heard of that last being something common to blind people. I know blind women who are fashion obsessed. But I found the fixation of most of the world on how a person dressed, their posture and even their facial expression to be ridiculous. It took a long time for me to come to terms with that unwelcome reality and to learn both adequate fashion sense and a basic grasp of popular culture.

Empathy for my family and few sighted friends convinced me to try to adapt to their world and curb things they said were an appearance problem.

Still, even as an adult, I was often alone. Due to the work and traveling I did, I was far from my home and family and while I made friends, they were often people who had busy lives and older friendships they cared about more. I was a peripheral person to almost everyone I knew.

When my chosen profession of newspaper journalism became mostly obsolete and I ran into significant health problems in just a few short years, my lack of a local social network became intensely painful again. By this time, I had many dear friends but most of them lived far from where I eventually settled, close to my husband’s job. We had moved to a small town and found the gossip mill to be as vicious as it had been in high school.

The terror of being alone returned. Days spent working alone at my computer were tortuous. I dreaded the approach of weekends alone. I had long since internalized the belief that being alone was a sign of failure and utter rejection. I frantically joined whatever my husband was doing or volunteered in community organizations to make sure I was not alone. And then I found myself miserable and exhausted among people I didn’t really know and couldn’t visually recognize if I did.

I sank back into deep depression and saw no hope of ever getting out.

Unfortunately, I didn’t even keep good journals during that period, so I don’t know exactly how things changed. I know that the circumstances didn’t change. I couldn’t afford therapy and because I maintained a basic level of daily routine through sheer stubbornness, I didn’t end up with medication for depression.

What changed was my assumptions about the purpose of life. Through a mix of extensive reading, spiritual practice and writing a memoir, I came to the conclusion that the core message I had absorbed in my childhood—as well-intentioned as it might have been—was wrong.

Friendship is not the only thing that matters. The number of people who like you or spend time with you is not the primary measure of happiness.

For some reason, our society tells children that in an attempt to make disappointments in academics, sports, competitions and even family conflict feel less bitter. But it is no more true than the hollow hope that money will make one happy.

The second realization came from taking the Myers-Briggs personality test, which showed that I am clearly an introvert, defined as a person who needs significant amounts of time alone. I knew that I often didn’t enjoy social occasions and often felt exhausted around people for long periods of time. But I had believed this was simply a failing on my part.

Once I realized that I actually needed solitude and I let myself think of all the things I loved to do alone—writing, crafts, studying herbs, making videos, reading—I felt an odd slow-motion liberation.

It didn’t happen in one day or even one month or one year. But slowly I decided to build a life in which I would be happy even if I was alone. I did not give up on social interaction. I still welcomed time with friends but I didn’t strive after it. I focused my attention on those things I could more directly control. I built my home around my interests and scheduled my time around what fulfilled me.

Recently, the question of how to work one’s way out of depression connected to loneliness was put to me on an advice forum.

My answer begins with examining the reasons why a person is alone more than they would like. This examination assumes that if the person is asking this question, they are not “just bitter and driving people away” as is one common assumption about lonely people. If a person is truly seeking social contact and interested enough to ask the question and look for ways to handle their own depression, the loneliness is likely not simply “their fault.”

So, there are three other possibilities:

1. You may be truly objectively isolated (living in a place far from other people or amid people where you are a member of a very small and rejected minority..
 
2. You may be an extravert but have some disability or other difference that makes social interaction difficult and causes other people to be prejudiced against you.
 
3. You may be an introvert, meaning that you really do need to have time alone, but you have developed the common assumption that being an introvert is "bad"  and being alone is a sign that you are a failure or a loser. Even if you don't think these things consciously, they may be in your subconscious. 

In the first instance, loneliness is an environmental hardship but it doesn’t reflect poorly on you. It may be a struggle to stay out of depression anyway. Keeping active, maintaining a daily routine and maintaining long-distance contact with friends can help, if the main issue is geographic or other physical separation from others.

In the case of discrimination, depression is harder to avoid. You may be physically with people but still excluded. Still there will be those who accept you. They may just be few and far between.

In the end, you are left with a somewhat more difficult situation. You are geographically separated from those who do accept you, but you can still maintain long-distance contacts and maintain your routine.

It is the third instance, that needs the most internal work but also the one that is the most solvable. If your loneliness stems mainly from the fact that you are actually an introvert, changing your thinking can significantly help. Realizing that solitude can be a good thing is powerful anti-depression medicine. It is unlikely to happen over night, but finding joy in your interests and activities alone can go a long way toward fighting depression.

My struggle with loneliness and depression was a combination of these three factors. I am an introvert, but not an extreme introvert. I need time alone to recharge but I can be very social and gregarious with people. I didn’t always understand that you don’t have to be shy or self-contained to be an introvert. I am talkative and expressive. I just get my energy and rest from being alone.

I took on the common western assumption that being an introvert is "bad"  and that the "key to happiness" is the number and volume of one's friends. As a result, I became seriously depressed. I thought I had to be social all the time to not be “a loser.”

I was terrified of being alone. When I was alone I was miserable, always thinking about why I had no option to be with someone. To avoid this, I ran community organizations, volunteered and got involved in all sorts of things. While this had its uses, I was exhausted and rarely enjoyed the social interaction. I was always under strain because I am an introvert by temperament and that means that I really physically need time alone to recharge, even when I didn't know it.
 
The key was understanding that being alone is not bad or a sign of failure, that I could enjoy my interests alone, that I needed solitude on a deep biological level and that some people would not accept me no matter what I did or how many “social skills” I learned. The first step was throwing off the stereotype I had absorbed from pop culture that says that your happiness is based on how many friends you have, on being one of those smiling faces in a big crowd on a Facebook photo and getting a ton of "likes" under it.

I learned to live in a way that I truly enjoy rather than in a way that I thought I was supposed to enjoy. Your way may be different from mine but the key is finding what it is, what makes you happy and what fulfills you.. If you are at least partly an introvert, you will have interests that can be pursued alone.

You may have been discouraged from doing things alone and warned that if you “shut yourself away,” you will never have any friends. That is only a danger if you see being alone as a failure and a sign of rejection. If you are enjoying yourself and allowing the solitude to refuel you, you will likely reemerge ready to take on the social world on a regular basis.