Anhedonia

[Esmeralda]

I am new to this site and forum. I have been reading some of the contributions to the depression threads. One in particular talked about the difficulties of living with 'anhedonia', after trying a full range of different therapeutic approaches. Unfortunately I can't find the post again! I just wanted to say that I am very familiar with the concept of anhedonia - the inability to enjoy anything that once brought joy to you. I have major depression and have been living with it for most of my life. I have found it difficult to be really free of depression, despite medication, cognitive therapy, support groups, hospitalisation, ect, psychologist, psychiatrists and so forth. I also noticed a thread asking about the phenomenon of mood swings from the morning depression, to feeling better later in the day. I understand this to be the diurnal nature of some depressions - the daily rhythm of major depression, which tends to get better as the day progresses, being worse in the mornings. I know this rhythm very well too. At this stage I am not going to comment on how I manage these two s symptoms, but I just wanted to say that there is at least one other person in the forum that knows how this feels!

[Croix]

Dear Esmeralda~

I'd like to make you feel welcome here and hope you go on to say what you have found helpful. As you well know not everything is easy to treat or responds well. I have been undergoing treatment for a great many years and while sort of OK am not out of the woods.

From the sound of it you have been though the medical machine pretty thoroughly, I would expect there might have been some temporary wins, but overall the condition remains.

In my own case I've reached a sort of truce with the illness, I don't really expect to improve much further and structure my life around keeping symptoms as low and infrequent as possible. You would know from your reading here and elsewhere abut dealing with triggers, reducing stress, lifestyle, exercise and so on.

I guess a couple of the biggies for me are generating self-worth, which happens though family and employment, and rewards and distraction, a regular part of the day.

You did say you could not find a post, the search engine inside the bb website is not that hot, I always use Google. If I wanted to try to find that post you mentioned I'd type in at the Google search engine:

anhedonia beyondblue forum

This will list most posts containing that keyword, you can then use Google's drop down Tools menu to retrieve by date.

I hope you feel like posting again and saying more

Croix

[geoff]

hello Esmeralda, I'd also like to welcome you to the forum.
I really hope you can find the thread you were after because when this doesn't happen it annoys us so much, but if not then this could be the start once again.
When you think of it 'anhedonia' plays an enormous part of depression, because all that I used to love doing, now doesn't interest me, and if you asked me 30 years ago whether this could ever happen, I would have laughed at you and said 'no way possible', but at that stage we didn't know much about this illness, and if we were told it could also happen, 'not with me I'm too strong', wow how I was so wrong.
Once anybody and in this situation, it's you, depression falls upon you, it never leaves you, it stays, whether you might be getting on with your life in a satisfactory manner, then that's great, but you are still prone to fall into it once again, and please I'm not suggesting or wanting this to happen to you, that's something I could never wish upon anybody.
This type of depression is known as ' Dinaural Mood Variation', so if you want to google it, then it explains the details.
Hope to see you on replying to others or to continue this post. Geoff.

[Flick_SnotGrass]

Hi Esmeralda,

My name's Flick Snotgrass, tho' you can call me Flick for short 🙂

Until I read your Post I had never heard of the word "anhedonia". Thanks for the term.

I can't really imagine how it feels to have anhedonia the way you describe the symptoms, my heart goes out to you.

I just joined BB and you can read about my healing journey in the Hello and Welcome Section, it's called "My Healing Journey by Flick Snotgrass", or something like that.

You'll see I was born with an extremely miserable "genetic" disease from birth.

What I discovered, as I got my self better, was:

(a) "Never ever ever give up" Winnie the Poo

and

(b) keep experimenting.

So, in the spirit of 'experimenting', I wonder if there is a way of 'playing' with your diurnal rhythm?

You mentioned "I know this rhythm very well too. At this stage I am not going to comment on how I manage these two symptoms" so how do you manage those two symptoms Esmeralda?

What have you found works best?

Are there many ways for you to 'play' with your diurnal rhythm and begin to shift it a bit and then optimize to a new functional level as it were? If you get my drift.

My Prof at Uni was able to 'play' with a client's severe 'Manic-Depressive' Cycle so his client could be UP for Christmas....long story but my Prof was able to trick the chap's diurnal rhythm into missing a beat ~ and therefore a day ~ and thus was UP on Xmas rather than DOWN. I'd need to draw it for you.

Esmeralda, another thought, what have you NOT yet experimented with? e.g. neurofeedback, Hemoencephalography (HEG), heart rate variability, sunshine, fasting, dehypnosis etc etc etc?

Happy to brainstorm with you.

Have a significantly delightful afternoon,

Flick Snotgrass