I already know why . . . as good as I'm ever going to know why. There is no mystery here. I know that I'm depressed due to lack of social connection. I hang back from social situations out of fear and lack of interest. That started in grammar school. No one at school bullied me. I never got abused. I have no trauma to report. There is not a he|| of a lot to process. I had loving parents.

I don't believe there's anything chemically wrong with my brain. Humans are social animals. Deprived of social connection long enough, anyone will become depressed. Prisons long ago discovered that solitary confinement was found to be as intimidating a penalty as being scourged. Connectedness to other humans is that important.

I agree with you 100%. I am not socially isolated because I am depressed. It's the other way around. Maintaining an inordinate distance from others is something I've done since childhood. I could get into a deep analysis of what may have contributed to my being horribly over-sensitive to rejection. That's really not a fruitful line of thought. What I learned going down that path is that it really doesn't matter all that much. Now is now. Professionals have tried to trace my mindset to some horrible maltreatment or trauma I may have been subjected to, and they fail to discover anything.

Monday, my therapist said, "Let's look at your childhood." I thought, "Here we go again." Well, she doesn't know me, so she does need to get a sense of my past. When I see therapists, they spend a long time trying to figure out what I already figured out years ago. If figuring stuff out were the answer, I'ld be doing great. I don't deliberately isolate myself. I simply fail to socialize, so I end up alone. I don't intentionally engage in the act of isolating. I just end up that way. That's simply what happens when you keep choosing solitary pursuits.

So why does a person, early in life, choose solitary activities? There already exists theories about that, and I'm familiar with them. I've had years and years to apply that kind of analysis to my childhood. Were there some dysfunctional family dynamics that impacted me? Sure. I can trace certain personality pathology back through generations to one of my great-grandfathers who was quite mean to my grandmother. I even find it very interesting to think about stuff like that. But you know what? You can ponder that stuff till the cows come home, and it won't change a damπ thing. It's simply not true that, if you understand why you behave a certain way, then that will be the key to change. Life has taught me that, often, it's not. It suits us to believe that, but it's just not true.

Doctors used to believe that, if an alcoholic got psychoanalyzed as to what led to the drinking, that would be the key to achieving sobriety. That approach was a miserable failure. AA came along and turned that thinking upside down. Alcoholics in recovery have told me that analyzing their psyches was of very limited value. For whatever reason, they got habituated to a means of relieving stress that was destroying them. They needed to get habituated to an alternative, healthier aproach to living. The suport of the AA fellowship has helped many people do that.

I won't gain much by further analyzing how I got so habituated to making the choices that lead to a "loner" lifestyle. Not that it isn't interesting to think about. But it's not fruitful. I already spend way, way too much time thinking.

I go shopping and get my haircut now and then. I interact with cashiers and hairdressers just fine. I have no trouble walking into a store or a salon and getting done what I need to do. I exchange appropriate pleasantries with the people I encounter there. But opening the door of the fitness center on Monday made me a nervous wreck. The thought of going back there to attend their yoga class has me almost sick to my stomach when I think about it. I just have to make myself go. I have to take the chance that it might not prove rewarding. And it might not. But, if I try enough things, I'm bound to find something better than staying alone in my apartment, surfing the Internet. I'm getting sick to death of what I'm currently doing.