You’re doing things.
The day moves on, and various tasks are accomplished. It even appears as if you’re together from an outsider’s perspective.
However, internally, there is a different reality:
There is no excitement, no desire, and no pleasure.
This is not spoiled.
Most often, it’s not laziness either.
What we’re talking about here is a modern split showing up in more and more people: Anhedonia.
A diminished capacity to derive pleasure…The taste for life wanes…The colors fade.
Nowadays, the term anhedonia transcends the status of a mere word. It is increasingly taking on the character of the emotional weather of a whole generation.
First of all, let’s clarify what anhedonia means.
Basically, anhedonia means:
Things that used to bring you joy, no longer do.
* For example, your favorite musical track is nice, but it doesn’t stir you.
* You put in a lot of effort, but you get no real sense of achievement.
* You consume food, but it simply serves as an energy source.
* You look at others, but you don’t really feel connected.
* You engage in physical exercise, but the spark you used to get is missing.
Furthermore, anhedonia is not always sadness.
Sadness is characterized by pain.
Anhedonia generally leads to emptiness.
You may be observed making such statements as:
“I’m not being horrible… It’s just that I don’t feel good.”
This statement might be the most wicked line of our time because it is invisible. Because it sounds manageable. Because it just silently gnaws at a person’s insides.
Psychological explanation: What is it that explains the massive rise of this condition?
Generally, anhedonia is not a solitary symptom. Most of the time, it is the body’s signal going off.
1) Chronic stress: The mind is in a state of constant high alert
The issue today is not simply too much work.
Besides the fact that the brain is saturated with work, the work also keeps coming to the brain.
When a brain is raging with the threat mode for a rather long time, it is taught a very simple lesson:
First, survive. Then, have pleasure.
Chronic stress deprives the pleasure system of its direct pleasure component, as the pleasure system has to do with safety. A nervous system that is unable to breathe will be unable to produce taste.
2) Burnout: Not just energy meaning burns too
Burnout is not only about being tired.
It is burnout of the meaning.
At some point, it isn’t your work that you are supporting but you.
You keep doing that and eventually, you lose the joy and only the sense of duty incarnates:
I have to.
3) The reward system: They expect the reward, but it never comes
A reward in psychology is described as a combination of two elements:
* Wanting (desire, quest)
* Liking (joy, contentment)
Sometimes with anhedonia, one of the elements goes missing, sometimes both.
You can desire but not experience any emotions.
Or you lose your desires completely.
Anhedonia is the way that one can be a person who is functioning outwardly while being dead inwardly.
4) The attention economy: Pleasure has turned into something that gets consumed very quickly
Our world is great at selling:
Fast dopamine.
Short videos, notifications every moment, immediate rewards…
If the brain gets used to these little rewards the whole day, it takes a lot of time for real-life rewards to start appearing.
Therefore, slow things books, deep conversations, effort, relationships, creation are no longer as shiny in the brain’s reward centre as before.
This is not a crime against morality.
It is the mathematics of the nervous system.
5) Social disconnection: Human beings experience one type of pleasure by another ones
Sometimes anhedonia has social roots:
* You see people, but pleasure is absent.
* You text, but it lacks warmth.
The reason being is that the human brain operates via biological rewards: smiles, touch, shared laughter, and presence together.
Disconnection increases = pleasure decreases.
Pleasure decreases = disconnection increases.
It creates a vicious circle.
6) The relationship with depression
Anhedonia is the major indicator of depression but is not the same as depression.
Besides that, in depression, symptoms of low mood, hopelessness, guilt, changes in sleep/appetite, etc. may be observed.
Being fine in appearance can mean anhedonia.
That is the reason it can be very harmful as it can stay unnoticed.
The philosophical question: Why does pleasure disappear?
And now, the part that really hurts.
If you reduce anhedonia just to a chemical one, you turn the individual into a mere machine.
If you consider it as purely a meaning problem, spiritually, you refuse the material world.
Actually,
Humans are biological entities that also require meaning.
And anhedonia is basically illustrating this:
People nowadays are either overstimulated or tired and yet they are living empty lives.
Because life is not only about doing things.
Life is also the capacity to identify with whatever you do.
In the context of anhedonia, people don’t do this kind of placing.
They simply drag themselves along.
If everything exists, why does nothing taste like anything?
It is not abundance that creates taste.
It is contact that creates taste.
Contact with yourself
Contact with your body
Contact with other humans
Contact with nature
Contact with what you create
The modern world, on the other hand, has limited contact and increased display.
As display increased, contact decreased.
As contact diminished, taste vanished.
That is anhedonia in a nutshell from a philosophical point of view.
Anhedonia is not a shame. It is a signal.
You eventually have to inquire:
* How long have I been on autopilot?
* Do I recall my last real joy?
* Do I fear not feeling pleasure or have I become so tired that I am not even aware of not feeling it?
The reason the most secret part of anhedonia is this:
After a while, you even get accustomed to the lack of emotions.
You start considering it as your character.
No.
It isn’t your character.
You are simply run down.
So what choices do you make?
That is not an article that merely advises you to be positive.
Toxic positivity is definitely not useful for anhedonia.
What will do is much more straightforward. It will be truthful.
1) Don’t wait for pleasure wake up the circuit
When you stop only because something does not feel good you further silence your circuit.
It is not always necessary that the first goal be be happy.
It can just be to thaw what has gone numb.
Small, real moves:
* Ashort walk + daylight
* Moving closer to a stable sleep rhythm
* Brief social contact (not crowds safe contact)
* Moving your body (not for pleasure for your nervous system)
2) Reduce the stimulation, increase the depth
If you constantly feed your brain with fast rewards, life’s rewards will seem less bright to you.
Therefore, sometimes the solution isn’t more.
Here are some examples of less:
* Less screen
* Fewer notifications
* Less speed
* More single task focus
3) Without meaning, taste rarely returns for long
Anhedonia is more than just dopamine. It could mean loss of meaning.
Ask yourself:
* Since when have the things I do stopped feeling like they’re mine?
* Since when have I been keeping up with everyone except myself?
* Since when have I been living the life I manage, not the life I actually want?
These questions are really hard.
Nonetheless, dealing with anhedonia unfolds in fact through taking the steps across these questions.
4) Professional support
It may matter a lot if this situation has been going on for a while, has a significant negative impact on your functioning, and is accompanied by other symptoms (sleep, appetite changes, severe hopelessness, social withdrawal) that you receive professional help.
Sometimes what is at the core of the issue is depression, anxiety, trauma, burnout or a medical problem.
Sometimes, a loss of pleasure is our inner life pointing out to us: You’re in the wrong place.
I’m not saying this to make a romantic quote out of it.
I’m saying that this matter deserves our attention.
Because anhedonia is a voice inside that shouts:
“I don’t want anything.”
However, most of the time, it actually says:
“I don’t want to live like this.”
We are currently experiencing the era of anhedonia.
People are exposed to more than ever, but their feelings decrease.
Their words increase, but their physical contact diminishes.
Their activities multiply, but their lives shrink.
If you have been uttering the phrase, “I am doing things, but I don’t really get any pleasure,” you have company in that thought.
Because life isn’t only a process that continues.
Life is something that’s felt.
And feeling can return.
Slowly. Honestly. Without forcing. But by taking it seriously.