What Is the Significance of Connection?

There are books that inform your work and then there are books that change your entire perspective. For me, Lost Connections by Johann Hari was the latter. It shifted the way I think about therapy more than anything I learned in grad school. When I feel unsure of my role or lost in the process with a client, I return to Hari’s central message: that depression isn’t just a chemical imbalance—it’s an imbalance of connection.

Hari argues that so many of us are suffering not because something is wrong with us, but because we’re profoundly disconnected—from other people, from meaningful work, from nature, from hope. And that idea has stuck with me in every session since. It’s why I believe my deepest role as a therapist isn’t to fix, or to offer answers, but to be a source of connection; a safe place where someone can be deeply seen, validated, and accepted.

When clients share the parts of themselves they’ve hidden or felt shame around—those raw, vulnerable truths—I often feel like that moment does more for their healing than any intervention or worksheet could. It’s powerful. It’s human. It’s connection.

Hari also offers a clear-eyed reminder: medications and therapy can be helpful, but only to the extent that our environments support our healing. If someone is stuck in a mind-numbing job or isolated from meaning and community, no pill can make that fulfilling. Instead, we need to work toward building lives rooted in joy, purpose, and real connection.

Lost Connections helped me see that therapy isn’t just about reducing symptoms—it’s about restoring connection, and in many ways, that’s a radical act.