anhedonia

That's a big word for the audience.

Anhedonia basically means you don't feel pleasure.

If you're a hedonist, of course, you're going after pleasure.

And anhedonia means that you can't feel pleasure.

Like, you know when you walk into a corporation and everyone's joyful and they're smiling and they're holding the door, you know the leader is joyful because it trickles, it trickles throughout the whole organization.

Anhedonia, a lack of joy, is the same way.

When you walk into a corporation and people are grumpy, you know the leader is grumpy too, right? So that's why it's important not just for you to protect your joy and to prioritize it, but for everyone around you, because it is contagious.

Two questions before I let you go, and thank you for-

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.

of life.

And there's actually something clinically that we call anhedonia, which has kind of become more popular in media these days, but we've known about it for years in psychology and the medical field.

Anhedonia, what that means is it's that you're not finding joy in the things that you used to find joy in.

So oftentimes it is a symptom of depression and or a symptom of high functioning depression, either one.

But, you know, that's what we often hear sometimes with high achievers kind of getting burnt out.

Conversations feel effortful, even moments that should feel comforting land with a dull neutrality.

Psychology calls this anhedonia, the reduced ability to feel pleasure.

Anhedonia isn't the same as sadness.

Sadness still feels.

Anhedonia feels like the absence of feeling.

This state often leads to withdrawal.

Plans get cancelled.

Right.

For MDD, the patient must have a depressed mood and something called anhedonia for at least two weeks.

Anhedonia, that's the loss of pleasure, right?

Yeah, exactly.

It's a total debilitating loss of interest in things you usually enjoy.

She was dealing with bulimia, she was self-harming, and she was experiencing a psychological state called anhedonia.

Let's define anhedonia because it is such a major hallmark of complex PTSD.

Anhedonia is the complete inability to feel pleasure or joy.

It is a total flat line of existence.

Feeling nothing.

You can start anywhere on this map.

Today, we're in the flatlands of Anhedonia.

This is the story of the longest stretch, the flatlands.

Days 60 to 120.

Two months of structural sameness, Anhedonia.

The cost of nothing.

Not a timeline.