I didn’t know that depression isn’t a mood. It’s a set of conditions that cause a whole series of thoughts and behaviors to happen over a long period of time, often things that are wildly different from one another.

Since patients are not yet consciously willing or ready to recognize that the “old self” and “the way things used to be” are outdated, they are not aware that their depression is signaling that major change is required for successful and evolutionary adaptation.

These days, loneliness is the new cancer – a shameful, embarrassing thing, brought upon yourself in some obscure way. A fearful, incurable thing, so horrifying that you dare not mention it; other people don’t want to hear the word spoken aloud for fear that they might too be afflicted, or that it might tempt fate into visiting a similar horror upon

What strikes you when you come out of a deep depression or get close to a depressed person is the utter self-absorption of misery.