reach out

I’ve blogged before on connections. I’m increasingly aware that it’s what I feel I’m about – trying to reduce people’s isolation by encouraging connection, and in the process reducing my own. What I notice tho is that the time I need connection most is the time it’s hardest to push through the fear, and try to reach out. So presumably that’s the case for at least some other people too. I’ve been reading about depression recently and was interested by this summary of a book by Steve Ilardi who “argues that the brain mistakenly interprets the pain of depression as an infection. Thinking that isolation is needed, it sends messages to the sufferer to "crawl into a hole and wait for it all to go away". This can be disastrous because what depressed people really need is the opposite: more human contact.”

I’ve had a couple of people recently send me brief but incredibly powerful messages, and knowing the impact they’ve had on me, spurs me on to continue – I do believe a word of encouragement goes a long way, a smile from someone as they pass brightens my morning.

My current ‘trick’ to not taking rejection personally is to have a stab at imagining (either wildly or sometimes more sensibly) what might be going on for the person who doesn’t connect. I find it far too easy to take it to heart and think someone doesn’t like me if they don’t respond to my email or friendly hello in the street. But now I tell myself maybe they’ve dropped their mobile down the toilet so can’t reply, or the neighbour who I repeatedly greet but am ignored, it’s completely possible he is deaf and can’t hear me, or maybe he’s just scared of friendly people.

This enables me to keep on pushing out of my self doubt and into the much sunnier place of interconnection. If anyone has other top tips, do share…