anhedonia

If you didn't have it, life would be horrible.

And people who don't have enough of it, they suffer from one of the most common aspects of clinical depression, which is known as anhedonia, the inability to feel pleasure.

Anhedonia, it's got its own word, of course.

You know, one of the characteristics is if you go to the doctor and you say, you know, everything I used to like, I don't like it anymore.

That anhedonia ordinarily means that you have a deficit of dopamine.

Maybe showering feels like an expedition, noise feels sharper, conversation costs more, and skills used to rely on are suddenly buffering like the world's saddest Wi-Fi connection.

So, what is happening here? ADHD motivation? Anhedonia? Autistic burnout? Depression? A deluxe combo platter that nobody ordered? Today, we're going to name the experience.

Look at the brain and body underneath it.

Remove the moral judgment.

because dopamine is involved in multiple processes, including learning, anticipation, effort, and salience.

The science is more complicated than the sad little dopamine tank with a leak.

Anhedonia is different.

It means a reduced ability to feel interest or pleasure.

And it's not something to ignore.

Anhedonia shows up across mental health conditions from substance abuse to dementia to schizophrenia to depression.

It's something that we need to learn how to detect.

So Genevieve goes into this long period after the restaurant closes where she's feeling depressed.

He describes flattening of affect, the loss of pleasure in things he used to enjoy, the slow strangulation of his relationship with his partner, who appears in earlier entries as a person and disappears by the latter entries into the background like a piece of furniture.

Anhedonia, withdrawal, sleep disturbance that is not just situational.

The diagnosis is forming on the page, and Kate does not quite have the framework to recognize it.

Then comes the climactic case, the laden straw that would give even the most long-suffering camel a prolapsed disc.

A Parkinson's tremor is the inability to perform functions that we all take for granted that are driven, at least partially, by dopamine because of the pleasure link.

And by the way, there's a condition called anhedonia.

Anhedonia means without pleasure.

Hedonism, hedonia means pleasure.

An means without.

Anhedonia, like hedonism.

Anhedonia, it's a disease, a pathology, a symptom really, of Parkinson's.

And Parkinson's is associated with depression.

And then I'm hearing about some other domains that contribute as well to a diagnosis such as cognitive impairment, inability to think clearly, sleep problems, yeah, a general sort of slowing cognitively and motor, so movement, and often suicidal ideation as well being another sort of sub-factor here.

But the core would be the low mood and the anhedonia.

Anhedonia is the inability to feel pleasure.

And then, you know, one from a cluster of other potential symptoms.

Yeah, and so if doctor is hearing this, then they write out that prescription, you know, it might be major depressive disorder.

different parts of your brain involved in memory learning and decision making but what's unique about this research study is it's the first one to be able to link it directly one to two between childhood stress slash trauma and anhedonia, which is what you're talking about, which is a form of depression, which is what all the researchers in this space have indicated as well.

Severe childhood stress is indicative of depression.

Anhedonia is a type of depression, meaning you don't

actually experience

joy anymore.

That was why I felt nothing.

And it's also called anhedonia.

Anhedonia is our inability to feel pleasure.

It's often connected with depression, but it can be something that continues on for like quite a while after you quit using substances because it takes a while for the body to re-regulate to learn that small levels of dopamine are what we're going to be expecting now.

And for those things to actually feel good.

Having negative emotions, depression, anxiety, even anger or irritability.

Anhedonia, we've talked about this word before, not getting pleasure out of activities that have traditionally been joyful for you or happy for you.

Feeling more detached from other people and having difficulty experiencing any kind of positive emotion.

A person going through traumatic stress might find it hard to laugh or be joyful in a given moment.