Why You Can’t Feel Joy (And What To Do About It)
When I first heard of the term anhedonia, I was as happy as someone who experiences anhedonia can be.
Suddenly there was a name for what I felt (or didn’t feel), and it felt like validation years in the making.
Anhedonia is defined as the inability to feel pleasure.
As someone who has struggled with depression on and off for most of my adult life, I just assumed I couldn’t feel things like joy and happiness because of said depression. I did not realize that anhedonia may be its own diagnosis entirely.
I have to credit the book High Functioning: Overcome Your Hidden Depression and Reclaim Your Joy by Judith Joseph for helping me understand what anhedonia means.
This book breaks down a lot more than just anhedonia and provides some practical tools for combating it.
My therapist, however, is the one who really helped me understand why it formed in the first place.
My Journey
I have been going to therapy on and off for years, but recently found a practitioner that has made a night and day difference in how I understand my mental health. He challenged me from day one by asking a question that broke my brain.
“What purpose is your depression serving in your life?”
I was shocked. I had never considered that an illness I struggle with was serving me in some way.
Suddenly all those books I’ve seen, read, and listened to about how trauma is stored in the body and manifests as disease made sense, but that’s a topic for another day.
If you struggle with anhedonia, or think you do, try asking yourself this-
How is anhedonia serving you?
For me, the answer became more clear by exploring things that have happened in my past. I don’t feel things like joy and pleasure, because if I let myself feel those things, I could get hurt.
Maybe you feel like the good things in your life get taken away.
Maybe you feel like you’re constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Maybe you are living in a constant state of stress and your body just cannot connect with any emotions.
Or maybe you’re like me, and its more subtle; maybe you turn everything into an item on a checklist, so even things that should bring you joy just become something you have to do.
Thus, taking the pleasure out of it all.
If any of this sounds familiar, or if you in general feel like you struggle to find joy in your life, you’re not alone.
The good news is that there are some things that can help.
Treating Anhedonia:
The book I mentioned in the intro, called High Functioning, is a great resource for coping with anhedonia and high-functioning depression as a whole. This section is based on the framework laid out there, as well as some other practices I have personally found to be helpful.
The Five V Framework:
Validation: Acknowledging and accepting past traumas and current pain, recognizing that these experiences can contribute to anhedonia.
Venting: Allowing for the expression of bottled-up frustrations and anxiety, which can build up in individuals who are often suppressing their feelings.
Values: Identifying and prioritizing personal values, which can provide a sense of purpose and meaning, counteracting the feeling of emptiness associated with anhedonia.
Vitals: Monitoring the six vital signs of emotional functioning (sleep, nutrition, exercise, social connection, work/school balance, and positive experiences) to ensure overall well-being and address potential imbalances.
Vision: Planning for and celebrating successes, milestones, and everyday joys, helping to create a sense of hope and anticipation for the future, which can help combat the lack of motivation and enjoyment associated with anhedonia.
For more in depth information on this framework, definitely check out the book- not sponsored, I just loved it. The audiobook is fantastic.
Other Helpful Habits:
When we are constantly in a state of stress, it can be hard to connect with our emotions at all, which is why taking steps to complete stress cycles can be so beneficial.
I learned a lot about the stress cycles from a book called Burnout and other books on mental health and trauma, such as The Mindbody Prescription.
The TL;DR: Our bodies have not evolved to handle the stressors of the modern world, which basically means your body may not know when a stressor has passed the way it would if you were being attacked by a tiger in the wild and managed to escape.
Here are some ways that signal to your body it does not need to stay in fight or flight:
Meditate or breath deeply for a few minutes
Move your body for about 20 minutes, up to 60 minutes
Be creative; paint something, write something, tell a story
Get a hug from a loved one
All of these things act as a flag to your brain that there are no threats, which allows you to complete stress cycles lingering in your body, and will allow you to connect with what you are feeling easier.
Which should help with experiencing things like pleasure and joy.
Note: if you have been living in a state of stress for a long time, you may have a lot of stress cycles to complete, so be patient and keep working at it.
Do you struggle with anhedonia or high functioning depression, or feel like you are constantly stressed, on the verge of burnout? The resources I shared and linked in this article may help, please feel free to check them out.
Therapy is also a resource that I cannot recommend enough, but I know that not everyone has had good experiences with the practice. Do what works best for you.
I am not a doctor or a therapist, but I do hold a degree in psychology and read a ton on the topic of mental health and wellbeing. That being said, none of this should be taken as medical advice.
My goal is to share information that I have found helpful on my journey to mental and physical wholeness in the hope that it may help guide others to live happier lives.
If anything in this article helped you, please feel free to share or otherwise support this work so that I can continue dedicating my time providing information meant to improve your wellbeing.
*Disclaimer: I link all products I actually use in my articles if possible, and some products I mention may contain affiliate links. I may earn a small commission if you make a purchase—at no extra cost to you.
