What to Do When Nothing Feels Good

Listener Maro from Argentina wrote in and noted that recently, he hasn’t been enjoying things the way he used to. It’s as if nothing really matters anymore. Like most of us, he asked Dr. Google for information and discovered a new term: anhedonia.

So what exactly is anhedonia? Well, if hedonism (the concept, not the clothing-optional resort in Jamaica) is the pursuit of pleasure and gratification, anhedonia is its opposite. The brain’s ability to feel joy, satisfaction, or enjoyment gets put on mute. There’s little to no motivation to see friends or do the things we love. It feels like there’s nothing to look forward to, plus what’s the point, anyway. All in all, anhedonia feels like the moment in The Wizard of Oz when Dorothy steps from her black-and-white world into Technicolor, except in reverse.

Anhedonia can be a part of PTSD, substance abuse, schizophrenia, and even Parkinson’s disease, but the granddaddy of anhedonia is depression. A study in The American Journal of Psychiatry found that 95% of people with major depression reported a loss of interest or pleasure—a virtual vaporization of joy from their lives.

It’s not random that the study used those two particular words: interest or pleasure. Those two concepts are actually quite different and illustrate how anhedonia packs a one-two punch. How? Well, it turns out there are two types of enjoyment: anticipatory, also known as “wanting,” and consummatory, also known as “liking.” 

In anhedonia, both wanting and liking are muted. You can’t see the reward or pleasure at the end of the road, so why bother going down it in the first place?

Think of the difference between looking forward to a vacation and actually being on vacation. There’s the excitement of planning and imagining what you’ll do and how you’ll feel beforehand. But then there’s the pleasure of the moment—how you feel when you’re finally on the beach with your mojito, riding up the ski lift, or hiking down the trail in search of a blissful lack of cellphone coverage.

But in anhedonia, both wanting and liking are muted. Without “wanting,” you may not look forward to things or feel unmotivated. You can’t see the reward or pleasure at the end of the road, so why bother going down it in the first place? Without “liking,” you may take no joy in things...

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