Anhedonia is the inability to feel pleasure.
I've struggled with depression almost all my life, however Anhedonia has only been showing up during my late 20's but I've always overcame it. Up until recently it has now cemented itself in my life and for the first time ever I have no idea on how to even go about "beating" it.
I've seen a lot of people struggle with the notion that someone can't really seem to care about much about anything in life. After all there has to be some things you find enjoyable,right?
In my case I can pinpoint the exact time and thought when Anhedonia hit me. It actually struck me during a time that I was getting past a lot of my depression and making a lot of great progress. But you know depression, it has its way's of really trying to screw you when you think you've managed to beat it. I'd been making a lot of art and even getting into music , just finding new ways to be creative and consume my time with a lot of positive and engaging activities. Until one night I was jolted awake as my heart was pounding and this thought of pain staking reality hit me that all I was doing was wasting my time and everything I was doing would never make me any type of career as I had hoped. It never worked in the past too well and will never work in the future.
No big tragic life events, no deaths or extreme suffering.. Just a thought was all it took to break me down.
The next day I was back into depression but in the back of my mind I've been through this before and I thought I could bounce back out of it..days, weeks, months went on and I knew that at this point it was really serious.
Anhedonia is like a soul sucking entity . Day by day a bit of you leaves and after a while you start to give up hope on just about everything. Music becomes noise, small videos that were little enjoyable pieces to watch while eating just become boring nonsense. Everything starts becoming zombified. Working out is now just moving limbs, yoga is now an anxiety inducing activity while meditation is outright boring .
I've tried a good amount of things without any success. It always feels as if my mind resorts back to the reasoning of why try anything when there is no outcome? I know its not right, but it's as if there's default mode that always goes back to "nothing will work out". I've managed to do a few projects that I've actually completed but I'm not really anywhere near the skill level I should be at.
I've been talking with other people suffering from Anhedonia with pretty much the same results. I see the same thing, medication, exercise, diet, drugs, nootropics, activities, etc all with almost no improvements.
I have to wonder if it's just the reality of life we are all experiencing and not seeing the results we wanted. Maybe the brain seems some type of repetition and fools you into thinking that failure is the only expectation you will have. Those thoughts over time get stronger and form more connections in the brain making it even harder to break the pattern.
What I also think makes this symptom deadly in a way is that it ends up ruining social connections which ends up isolating you in your own mind and creates an endless cycle of negative thoughts. A lot of people want to post on their Facebook and instagram their thoughts on when someone passes, but when an actual friend is suffering it seems as it is a turn off to be around "downers" and people that may seem "negative". I know in my case I don't even have a handful of friends anymore and it saddens me that there are many others out there going through the same struggle as me.
Whenever I do go out it becomes a bit dissociative to me as I feel like I am on the outside of a zoo looking in to see all these people going on in their "life" while I am left on the outside not being able to relate or join in. However I am glad I found this Steemit site and it sort of feels in a very small way that I can some how sneak back in just a tiny bit. On many sites we have to stay anonymous for a number of reasons and the bad thing about that is that no one really knows the real you. Where as on Steemit I'm using my real identity and just putting myself out there..maybe no one will read these posts, maybe some will think I'm a loser or hopefully it may help.
If some of you that have actually managed to make some big progress over Anhedonia can post some comments below to help me and others that may see this post.