The Loss of Joy: Anhedonia

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The Loss of Joy: Anhedonia

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Disorders - Depression

Written by Richard O'Connor, PhD

Monday, 02 February 2009 11:59

Anhedonia is the technical term for the inability to experience joy. When people are in the depths of depression, nothing touches them, not the most intensely pleasurable activities, not the most familiar comforts. They are emotionally frozen. In this state, people either have to get professional help or simply wait for weeks or months until the depression lifts by itself; nothing is going to make them feel better.

Less dramatic than anhedonia but a much more pervasive problem is a condition that doesn't even have a clinical name; it's the gradual withdrawal into isolation and indifference that can mark the beginning of depression. Robertson Davies called this condition acedia; it's akin to the deadly sin of sloth. But it's not merely laziness, it's a gradual closing down of the world. As depression makes us lose interest or pleasure in ordinary activities, our range of activities constricts. We stop taking chances, we avoid stimulation, we play it safe, and we begin to cut ourselves off from anything that might shake us up — including loved ones. It's the gradual poison that sinks into marriages and makes people vulnerable to affairs. It's the hardening of the attitudes on the job that makes for petty, passive-aggressive bureaucracies. It's the withdrawal from our own children that leaves them questioning why we bother to live.

I worry that the symptomatic relief of depression provided by medication or brief therapy only helps a person regain a previous level of functioning that was depressed to begin with. Acedia, the absence of feeling, makes for empty lives, and it seems to be on the increase. Putting anger, guilt, and shame in their place is not enough for recovery from depression; we also must take responsibility for learning to feel good. We might prefer to play it safe, to avoid or control all emotions, but we simply can't; it doesn't work; our selves and our relationships deteriorate into brittle, bitter, vulnerable shells. While learning to feel may be temporarily upsetting, in the long haul it adds richness and meaning to our lives.

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Hmm..

Over the winter, I felt an increased need for carbohydrates and was just absolutely miserable. I thought it was SAD, but I had reasons to feel horrible so that couldn't be distinguished. More recently, it's been extremely difficult for me to find pleasure in music. If I do, it's for a day and only because of the intense parts (chorus or often the bridge of a song). I've also become indifferent about the foods I eat, never being in the "mood" for certain products. Convential sex also doesn't appeal to me. This can most accurately explain my issue, and I'm pretty fucking confident of it. But it's extremely confusing, especially as a teenager, and I just wish some "happy pills" can let me find pleasure in something.

Taniya , July 26, 2009

a life woven with unseen hazards

I found this looking for "environmental depression". I wasn't really thinking it was a life phase more a bad place with bad people in that you can't really escape because they're related to you. My depression got so bad due to the one thing I had that I loved most in the world that kept me going, which was a novel/series I was writing. Having finally come to trust computers I'd stored well over 400 pages worth of beautiful text I was still puzzling together and doing research on. Then someone I'd call NPD created a situation so that the electricity in my sanctum went out and I couldn't do it anymore.

Over the next three years I found out what real depression was. First your sad all the time and crying and then the lights go out. You don't enjoy anything anymore. Once in a while you'll have a laugh but your insides don't quake with the joy you once knew. I had a lot of hair so when I lost 75% of it in 6 months no one took it seriously except a couple doctors. Sure, everyone goes through this, you will always hear. Then when they discover you have no sex-drive all of a sudden they consider that serious! :/

So, now after 3 years, I've moved to a better neighbourhood and only communicate with the spare relations I have that understand how horrible everything really was, at least enough not to try and solve it like a sitcom. My thrills of joy still haven't come back but I'm hoping. Things don't look quite so gray now, but I still don't enjoy music or reading or even movies much at all. I wrapped up my therapy with an intern because that had gone as far as it could go. In any case I got out finally. I'd realized that I'd stayed home because I was never really taught to take care of myself.

I learned something VERY VALUABLE. When someone tells you that you have to do something all on your own? Forget it. Try learning to drive without someone to help you. Try learning anything without some human interrelation. If it's not a woodland creature biting you to tell you to stay away, than it is another human person who is helping (or hindering) around the clock! If it weren’t for my husband and my mum, I would have never gotten where I am.

Z , July 31, 2009 | url