anhedonia

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just wondering if there's anyone else reading this who struggles with depression, and specifically anhedonia, and if so--how do you cope with it? can you share any strategies that help you through times like this? feeling hopeless is bad enough, but not being able to enjoy ANYTHING at all is its own unique kind of hell. none of the things that i normally do to soothe myself (hot baths, exercise, long walks, chocolate, yoga, reading a good book, etc etc) make any difference when i'm feeling this way. things i normally love like my favourite music make me feel absolutely nothing when i'm in this state, and i can't stand it. anyone have any experience with this?

it makes you feel like some kind of phantom, like you're barely here at all. it's awful

I get that. That's when I cut because I don't know if I'm alive or a ghost. I have yet to come up with an effective coping strategy for it.

Well, I was going to ask if anhedonia was another term for dysthymia but I can tell from your description it's not completely the same. I spent most of my childhood,adolescence and young adulthood in dysthymia but I was able to give myself small brief pleasures. I would look at it from a neurological angle rather than a psychological one. It's as if your dopamine receptors are not being activated (layman's view-I know ). Are you taking any medication?

i'm bipolar as well as being on the spectrum so yeah--valproic acid to stabilise, wellbutrin for depression, seroquel for "agitation" (i'm bipolar II so i don't get full-blown manias) and imovane occasionally when i can't sleep. i've always been compliant with taking my meds, and i am careful not to miss doses and always take my pills at the same time each day. unfortunately my brain chemistry doesn't respond well to meds and never has, so i only get partial relief from symptoms. sometimes i still get sick, especially when under a lot of stress, and this time of year is perilous anyway because i also tend towards SAD. i will never be asymptomatic and i had to accept that a long time ago. there just is no magic pill for me. i've been through the gamut, several times over. so i have learned to cope with my episodes the best i can.....but sometimes it still gets to me (the anhedonia quite specifically) and i feel like i have no fight left in me anymore. today is one of those days.

i used to cut when i was in my teens. now when i get like this i can't even get up the motivation to harm myself.

I get anhedonia during the fog events that we have here in California's central valley. Today a storm passed to the north and all we got was a complete but thin overcast, similar to a fog, and I felt yucky the whole day. I tried driving which usually cheers me up, but I ended up in Woodland (about 15 miles from home) where I had a cheap burger at a depressing fast food place frequented by filthy people and then just came back home and moped. It must be awful to feel like that all the time. At least during a fog I can drive to Placerville and get sun, but not today. I LOVE rain, but no rain today, very still and dry. No fireplace use today, by law, and when that happens it's a recipe for blah. SAD is a big part of it, you probably have severe SAD which sucks. I don't have SAD during rain, just fog. So yeah, consider me sympathetic.

Starvingartist,

Do you have a psychologist? I am assuming you are seeing a psychiatrist due to your meds, but some DBT(Dialectical Behavioural Therapy) may be in order. My Therapist uses a bunch of different techniques with me and 2 that she uses are from DBT - "radical acceptance" and "mindfulness".........INFINITELY hard but rewarding nonetheless......

I have found they work as I have also dealt with mental illness in the past and now we are using them to assist with the symptoms of AS. Open to discussion if you like.......feel free to PM me.

Take good care........I can so feel what you say.

Micchsta.

I'm much the same way. I don't necessarily experience a complete lack of pleasure, it's more like there's a lack of substance to the pleasure I do experience. I miss the deep satisfaction I used to experience.

Lately it's been so bad it's tough to get out of bed or shower. I feel that when I get some kind of spark, something that stimulates me and gets me thinking, this offers a temporary relief, at least until I tire of a particular activity. Other times though I don't even have the energy to attempt much of anything.

At times like that I usually figure that the more time I can spend away from myself the better. I'll get that, and I'll get some rather sulfrous existential depression that flares up from time to time (ie. the walking under water sensations, sadness beyond saddness seeming to consume me either as I was falling asleep or as I was waking up, etc.). Being out with friends helps, doing something that specifically is an additive process that ads to my future potential helps, also I've noticed that the more I forced myself to be less and less idealistic about the outside world - the less often and the less panicked these hits became, if anything I feel like I've had them a lot less in the past couple years and its mainly been because of that. The most important things though are internal adjustments, changing what you're willing to feel as result of external stimuli, and to change your emotional framework without having to supress your emotions you need to change the framework on which you evaluate life and thus changing what emotions are triggered by what. Some things about your self are imutable, some things you'd never want to change - that's fine, though almost anyone has at least a few angles that they realize bring them pain and nothing else, modes of thought that were born ready to be thrown over the side.

I experience anhedonia. It's horrible. I can't think of anything I want to do. Life is just to be gotten through. I don't care if I wake up in the morning.

I've been on antidepressants for 15 years without helping. I just started ECT for the severe depression. I've had 5 treatments and don't feel quite as bad as before, but I still don't feel good enough to say that the treatment is working. But from the research I've done on ECT, I think you might want to ask your psychiatrist if you'd be a good candidate for it.

Yep, for almost four years now!! There's nothing like this, anhedonia is a b*tch like no other.

I have it most of the time. I don't feel human. Helping other people helps because if I can't make myself happy, then I can make someone else happy. Another consolation is the thought that it is temporary. My depression does relapse sometimes.

I feel sad when my mum says 'I just want you to be happy' because I don't know how.

I have had times of complete ahedonia in the past. You sound a little like me, I may or may not be BP type 11, but I've had lots of different mood states, been in a really bad way for months currently, but psychiatrists disagree about what's wrong with me. One thinks BP type 11, other thinks something else but hasn't figured out what.


Aaaanyway, I don't know if this will help, but in the past (when I have had complete ahedonia as you described - no pleasure in anything at all - not reading, watching tv, eating, anything) what helped me was to have a central focus outside of personal pleasure.

Personal pleasure was impossible, and futile really, but obviously I needed to get through the period and keep my health and sanity intact as I knew it wasn't permanent (my mood state would eventually change again). So what I did was narrow all my energy and focus onto practical achievement - a.k.a. in my case, uni work. It didn't matter if I experienced no immediate pleasure from doing it, because I knew it served a practical purpose, and I was making progress towards self improvement and overall achievement, which was a drive that was beyond and outside of pleasure seeking.

I don't know if this will help you, but it did really help me.