Anhedonia and how to deal with it?

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Yea. I've never felt there was a grand purpose in life anyways. I tend to feel best when I'm so absorbed in something I start to forget my own existence. I don't get any motivation from planning out my life. The things that are supposed to be important and lead to self-esteem are dreadfully uninteresting to me. When I'm out and about I see a lot of people doing things that are mindless and intolerably boring to me. I can't imagine being them. Antidepressants don't fundamentally change that. They only make it easier to distract myself with things I enjoy and not feel guilty about it. That's the only thing that makes me feel better, distraction.

Antidepressants stop working if you try to stay on them indefinitely. They work for a couple years at most then stop. I'm also terrified of what they're doing to my brain. I dread going through withdrawals when I have to quit. I have fears that I've been on the toxic s**t drug Effexor so long I'll be permanently sick when I try to go off. I know I'll have to go extremely slow to not feel awful. Right now I have these periods where I'm nauseous and fuzzy headed for no goddamn reason and I'm almost certain it's the drugs. There's no way I'm going to just keep increasing the dose. That seems f*****g insane. I'm on a really high dose and it just makes me feel sick, fuzzy headed, nauseous, uncomfortable in my own skin in a way that's impossible to describe. The scary part is I might feel even worse decreasing the dose, but I've pretty much run out of options.


It's funny. Sometimes pushing myself makes me feel better and other times it makes me feel worse. When it's unpredictable how I'll feel its hard to want to do anything. Nobody is motivated to put energy into things when they feel no better from them.

Ive been on the same prescription for three years and it still works fine.

I suffer from anhedonia and its rough. What I try to do is do SOMETHING, anything and then try and name a feeling associated with what I am doing, like quantify it. Did I totally not feel anything? Most times, it's not true. I did feel something even a little bit. So I name it and say I felt a little happy doing x. Or I felt good doing x. I find that naming the feeling helps in connecting that part of the brain with the action. Sometimes it takes a warm up to start feeling something, anything. Over time you get better at naming your feeling and the anhedonia diminishes. You have to start with the things that you USED to do. One of the best things to do is exercise. That one is hard but when you push through you can name how you feel afterwards quite easily.

Not feeling strong emotions is good. It means you can be more productive

I just came across this old post. I'm currently doing awesome, actually, but I do remember when I was experiencing these feelings and there was nothing productive about anhedonia. It wasn't that I had no feelings - it was that I had no ability to feel pleasure whatsoever. It took a lot of sustained effort to do ordinary things and whenever I had any motivation, it dissipated very quickly.

I've heard that anhedonia can be split into several categories. Most of the people here talk about having motivational anhedonia, but I think I almost exclusively had consummatory anhedonia. Basically, I was just constantly feeling pain and I couldn't do a damn about it. Fortunately, the feeling did pass over time, but sadly there was no immediate relief. I think it was simply a case of faking it until making it. It f*****g hurt like hell, but I guess it was worth it. I'm still here and still getting on, so I must be on a roll, here. Touch wood I don't have another episode anytime soon.

I completely disagree. Without emotion, why would you bother doing anything? Fundamentally, pretty much all human behaviour is either to avoid something unpleasant or experience something pleasurable. If you don't feel strongly about anything, you won't want to do anything either.

Productivity comes out of feeling emotions that drive you to be productive, such as a love of the work or of accomplishment, or a fear of negative consequences for failure. Not out of a lack of emotion.

In fact, pehaps you are right

I guess that's what's so terrifying about stuff like addiction or depression or anything that affects your emotional reward system. You can't just will yourself out of something like depression. It takes constant reinforcement and retraining your brain to respond well to rewarding stimuli.

It's also frustrating because people that have never experienced that kind of depression may not be able to comprehend how that is possible. To be fair, having emotions and being fuelled by them as a motivating force is so intrinsic to the human experience. I guess experiencing depression for the first time is (I assume) a bit like a colour-blind person experiencing red for the first time.

Lose the guilt and shame and you might be surprised at what lies underneath.

Not really sure what this means. Care to elaborate?

I had recently suffered from Anhedonia and I could not even take medicines for it because I am already taking a lot of medicines for my physical -health related issues. When I came to realize that it is Anhedonia, I told this condition to my husband and some relatives. Most said it is the side effect of the health related medicines that I have been taking. Well, I am not sure about that . But then after 2 months or so, I saw that my Anhedonia is going away. Did I do something special ? Not really. But I did sit in the sunlight ( indirect sun rays that comes through my windows ) every day, in mornings and maybe it helped. Then I watched some 90s movies-it helped too. I forced myself to be aware. I took leisurely walks for 40 minutes every night. These are the things I did. I am not very excited right now, but not depressed either.
Sometimes, small changes help a lot. I had Anhedonia earlier too, in my school days and later in my University days many years ago. Sun rays and being with nature helped me then. Anhedonia comes in phases in my life.
But I think some little changes in daily routine helps one to deal with it. Not sure about you, but in my case, I have to force myself to get some fresh air and sunlight and do something I love/enjoy everyday, like watching movies that touch the soul.

Well as a child it was sheer will-power and actually believing everything would fall in place and make sense when I became an adult and pushing myself unhealthy amounts...I still attempted suicide at 15, then I was going to therapy which helped for a while, but I think it was more of a placebo effect looking back....so then it was focusing on getting into college but during this time there was some specific trauma which resulted in full blown PTSD. For a while I just drank a lot all the time....eventually found Cannabis works better with much less side effects and risk....so that is what has been helping me keep going since I was around 20, though it still took a while to get out of the habit of drinking regularly and at the age of 25 no desire to do that anymore but occasionally I still like a drink or beer but not if I am in a bad mood/upset usually that does not work out well(and I end up drinking more than I should) so just not worth the risk anymore.

Anyways though some would say marijuana makes people lazy, I find it helps me get motivated for daily tasks and improves my mood so at the very least everything isn't so dull and exuasting. There is also music, without that I also doubt I'd still be here if I was not able to hear music anymore I don't think even the marijuana could alleviate that pain it's bad enough when the anhedonia significantly effects that as well...and I cannot listen to music for a couple days...I can't imagine that being the rest of my life.

Its not exactly easy to keep going...I don't always lack pleasure in essentially everything, but I do feel like that frequently and it is one of the more difficulte/dehibilitating symptoms. Not to mention most people don't quite understand it...they figure its the same as when they don't want to do something or are bored and something you just have to 'work through' well there is nothing to work with when you're experiencing anhedonia....and at least in my case its not just not being able to enjoy anything or get any pleasure out of things, its also a very empty feeling.

I don't know how accurate what I'm going to say is, (I just don't know anymore what I experience and have experienced it seems.)

I find that when I'm anhedonic, it is because I have given up on something because I was unable to obtain it, in broad strokes. This results in feeling shame. Guilt results from the immediate failure of something that other people expect, where the shame comes from feeling like it is just me. When this happens, and when I have based most of my life around accomplishing something that I then find I cannot do, anhedonia is like a coping mechanism. Feeling nothing is better than feeling like a failure. It is also an intermediary emotional response to having a whole sense of purpose and being taken away from you. The guilt and shame however just keep coming back when I re-try to do the same thing that I did before, and the process begins again. The cycle must break somewhere, and if you can avoid shame or guilt for either failing or for not doing something or for doing the "wrong" things with your time and life, I think it becomes easier to enjoy everything.

Where it is hard is when the anhedonia becomes like an excuse for not doing something, it becomes the cause of not doing something instead of the opposite way around. Like, if I do not feel anhedonia, then I don't have a good reason for not doing this thing, so therefore I must maintain this crappy state of mind or else I will have to do that thing. The reality is more that I don't know the reason why I am not doing that thing, but some part of me feels like it must fill in a reason, because if I don't have a reason, then I am simply lazy and then guilt and shame return. If I manage to not have the shame of not doing something be the control of my being, then the overwhelming anhedonia goes away because it is not necessary, and it might actually even be easier to do that thing that I have such a damned hard time doing, for whatever reason. But there's still a pretty good chance that I will not do that thing, and I then have to tell myself that it's not wrong to not do that thin for the cycle to not start.

My facilitator told me to work on my mindfullness yesterday. I'm supposed to walk barefoot in the grass and smell the blooming lilacs. I enjoy lilacs, but I don't think a lot of professionals understand what it's like not to be able to experience pleasure.

Personally, I would find that to be most uncomfortable. First of all, I'm not a fan of walking barefoot in grass (particularly if it's very pointy grass) and I get very bad hayfever and can't stand the smell of flowers. I'm not sure how that's supposed to be therapeutic.