Do You Experience Pleasure?

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I very rarely experience pleasure or satisfaction in my life. This malaise is making it difficult to keep on my homework, some French literature paper I really have no desire to do but have to do anyway. It seems the only sure way to feel pleasure is physically: for example, by eating good food. I do not experience pleasure that enables me to keep at something very often at all. It makes for a very empty life. It seems I'm closing myself in because ever my desire decrease as I experience less pleasure. I feel like I'm turning into ice—freezing.

On the rare occasions I do feel pleasure, it involves being with other people, yet my social skills sabatauge me here. Failure is frequent. On my own, I just don't get much enjoyment out of the ways I pass the time; the only relief is to make cheap jokes to puncture the malaise. I just find my existence so empty and flat. It lacks the interesting elements that are necessary for a happy life.

The things I like don't make me very happy. Everything is boring. BLAH. I'm in the same situation: I need socialization with other people but can't get enough to satisfy. So I spend a lot of time here on WrongPlanet answering posts even if I don't have much to say, or chatting incesantly with people on AIM.

This sounds very familiar to me.


I felt this way through most of my teen years. I didn't get enjoyment from most of the things other people did: activities, games, what I considered pointless entertainment, socialization, etc. I, too, felt like I was going dead inside.

Similar to you, it affected my school work. I felt like it was pointless. I managed to get good grades and fool everyone into thinking I was really into my studies, but it was only a front.

The thing that changed that for me was finding my special interest (read, "perseveration platform"). I started making movies, and developed a passionate interest in writing and directing feature films. As far as I can tell, the trick is to find something that makes your heart pump faster. For me, it wasn't so much a great source of pleasure as that I felt purpose.

I can think of two possibilities for you. One is to look around--if you haven't already--to find something that really interests you, and jump on it and get to living.

But if that's not working, then look into physical problems. Low energy and feelings of pointlessness and lethargy can come from all sorts metabolism problems, mineral deficiencies, thyroid problems, etc. And as far as I can tell, we Aspies are particularly susceptible to these malfunctions. (I had to deal with one.)

But to answer your initial question, I'm not sure whether I feel pleasure or not. But with purpose, I feel like I can live a good life and make it day to day without a lot of pleaure.

I feel like that right now. Its so hard to try to do my school work. Its so meaningless. But so is everything else I do.

Music and food keep me happy. When I think pleasure, I usually think of music and/or sexual pleasure. Arts (especially performing) is what make me happy;singing, acting, comedy, instruments, poetry, stories, bad doodles, etc. Doing all these things is what gives me pleasure. No matter how much I screw up with them, they'll always be there (unlike people).

Ditto what AlecZander said.

(holds back dirty joke to escape wrath of mods.)

No, I understand completely. Someone once told me to look for the small things, and they will keep you going. This advice stopped me from almost going 6 feet under.

She actually used an illustration of sesame seeds. She meant the little 'pleasures' in life to keep us going, like stepping stones.

Yes, I experience frequent bouts of pleasure and giddiness. Just get me talking about Psychology and I'm flapping.

I am a typical female: I experience things very strongly, sometimes. So, yes, I experience stong pleasure, but also, rage and depression.

The only pleasure I get out of life is stimming,doing my hobbies(which is reading,writing,singing,and drawing),playing w/ animals,and helping others.

-SpaceCase

Oh,and being w/ friends.

-SpaceCase

Yes, sir.

Define "pleasure"

*looks it up in dictionary*

Oh yeah, that. I'm still unsure. I do experience satisfaction and at times what I guess is happy, but joy? ectasy? love? what are those?

I've got nothing to benchmark the feeling too so I cannot say objectively.

No no! We can experience intense pleasure *slaps hand to rid mind of innuendos* if need be. Find the things you enjoy. Work on those. The feeling you get when working on them is called pleasure. You ENJOY working on it.

I've done the "do things I enjoy" and yes I enjoy doing them.

To call it pleasure though doesn't fit for me. I think it should be a stonger feeling than just "yes I like doing what I'm doing at the moment"

I think I may have issues with emotional response, but here is the conundrum:

How can you say definatively what an emotion should "feel" like for the average typical person?