Brent Roberts, a psychologist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the lead author on that review of studies, was himself a little surprised that such a short burst of therapy could have such dramatic effects. He thinks it might be that when a person reaches their nadir and realizes they want to change, there’s something beneficial about having a warm, comforting presence there to support them. “[The therapist] sends an unambiguous message to you that you’re a valued person,” he said. Having someone in our corner, even if it’s because we pay them by the fifty-minute hour, appears to be one of the reasons therapy works. “Change is hard,” Roberts said. “It takes work, but it can happen.”

Todd, Part II

One way to revamp your social life is to simply make more friends. Hardened introverts might be relieved to know that there’s a ceiling to how many friends you can really have. “Dunbar’s number” is the amount of individuals that can realistically make up a social group—about 150, in the view of its namesake, the British anthropologist Robin Dunbar.316 That’s roughly how many casual friends, whom you see at least once a year, a person can maintain. But within that are concentric circles of bros, homies, and confidants. The innermost circle is a pack of three to five very best friends and family members. Then there’s a “sympathy group” of about twelve to fifteen,317 who wouldn’t necessarily give you a kidney, but would give you a lift to the airport.

But for many people, it’s reaching anything close to this number, not exceeding it, that’s the true problem. Making friends requires self-disclosure—revealing morsels about yourself, not just small talk—and time. (Indeed, people who engage in small talk—conversations about the news, pets, or sports—actually grow less close over time, one study by University of Kansas professor Jeffrey Hall found.)318 However, neither soul-baring honesty nor free time is an especially plentiful commodity these days.

Hall has found319 it takes about eighty to a hundred hours to turn an acquaintance into a real friend, and more than two hundred hours to really wriggle your way into someone’s “sympathy group.” Even the least intimate type of friendship, “casual” friendship, only formed after forty to sixty hours spent together. In other words, friendship requires the equivalent of working several weeks at a full-time job. Perhaps the reason we hear more about “best friends” from children, rather than adults, is that children simply have more time on their hands.

But still, it’s worth making an effort to expand your circle of support. For a look at why, we turn back to Todd, the tech worker who admitted to having no friends.