Anhedonia Doesn't Have To Steal Your Future!

the most uncomfortable place to be in the entire world is your own mind when your feelings are not working properly if you've been here before you might know that I'm talking about something called anhedonia which most commonly is a symptom of depression anhedonia occurs when what's called a reward pathway in our brain gets disrupted your reward pathway is a series of neuronal transmissions in other words chemical signals that pass through your brain cells that allows you to feel emotions like Joy when you're doing something fun or excitement when you have something fun coming up or achievement or accomplishment after you've completed a task or a goal or or a to-do list item of some kind we aren't always able to feel these things and when the feelings that are normally present in our mind fade or even disappear entirely for a period of time all that is left is our thoughts I found myself thinking about this the other day after I saw a Tik Tok video about something called the I don't know if I'm saying this correctly an echoic chamber you guys might know what I'm talking about it's this like basically giant underground bunker that apparently was built by Microsoft for some type of Sound Engineering or sound testing purposes and it's it's literally the quietest place in the world it's like this giant underground Studio I guess you would say it's this huge room deep underground with just an insane amount of of noise cancelling or sound deadening treatments and Equipment inside of it and apparently it is so quiet in there that you can scream and not hear yourself so apparently this place is so quiet that you can hear it's kind of gross but apparently you can hear your own bodily functions like you can hear your heart beating you can hear your food digesting you can hear all the stuff that happens inside of you because there's no other sound to drown that out those are literally the because they're internal so they're the only things that are not affected by this like Echo prooof environment that you're in and apparently people cannot stand being in this this chamber for like more than a few seconds I guess in most cases because it's just so eerie and uncomfortable and unpleasant to not hear anything except for what happens inside of you so of course the first thing I thought when I heard that is that's that's just the physiological version of severe complete in hedonia that's what that is it it's when essentially you become closed off to all output from the world like it doesn't do anything anymore and that made me think it was probably time to do some more content on anhedonia so if that little metaphor makes sense to you you probably are going to understand what I'm about to say here but ANH hadon can literally steal your life from you because it creates this Chain Reaction which I've talked about on here before where once things if you're in a period where nothing is feeling good to you where you don't look forward to anything or don't enjoy anything a very natural consequence of that is going to be that you stop doing those things because essentially at that point you feel like you're working for free I'm doing these things I'm getting no emotional reward from doing these things therefore I do not wish to continue doing these things and and that's often where our lives when we're dealing with and I'm I'm just going to say depression I know there's other reasons people experience in honia but I'm going to assume you know if you're following this content at this point it's probably because you you understand the experience of depression so when you're in a depressive episode and you stop doing these things you stop in some cases doing anything right sometimes we stop interacting with people taking care of ourselves sometimes we stop eating I mean it can get that bad it it just starts to ruin your life you're in this downward spiral that that seems like there's no way out we've explored a couple other loopholes to that before but there's a brand new one I want to talk to you today and it relates to time frames there's a way that even in the midst of that complete void of reward that complete absence of positive feeling that you can still keep your life going and that it will eventually pay off for you so let me introduce the concept first then I'm going to give you a couple examples and then at the end we will really like solidify strategy that I want you guys to try here the concept is when we think about doing something like you think about going out with your friends or watching a movie or taking a vacation or something like that the time frame that we're thinking about when we try to determine will I enjoy that thing or not will that expenditure of time and energy and attention be worth it will I get as much or more from doing that thing as what I put into it we typically only think about the moment when we're doing it we think about it's technically the future when you're thinking about it but it's what will be the present when you're engaging in the behavior hopefully that made sense so again you're thinking about going out with friends the question you ask yourself is will I enjoy the period of time that I am with those people I know you may not actually be narratively asking that question in your head but when you try to decide should I go or not that's essenti that's the underlying question that you're actually trying to answer right is it worth it that question is a mistake because it is only considering one of the three time frames in which an experience can bring you Joy any experience that you may do in the future can bring you Joy while you're doing it that's the obvious one I don't really think I need to explain that anymore do you does it feel good while you're doing it that that's the question there some things bring us joy or excitement or other forms of reward before we actually do them and I'm sure you've experienced that right you've been excited to do things that haven't happened yet because you thought they were probably going to feel good or you thought they'd probably be a good experience or sometimes when we're really deep in the depths of a depression sometimes one of the things that keeps us going is like I got that concert in a month or I'm going to that convention in two months and I really don't want to miss these things and so even though I'm not enjoying my life right now I'm going to stick around a bit longer because I want to make sure I get this experience I think this experience even in the midst of this Darkness I'm in I think that day that week that moment whatever is going to be a good one so you can get reward from just anticipating an experience right the third one that I think this this is the real takeaway message from this episode the third time frame is after and you can enjoy an experience after it has happened even if you did not enjoy the anticipation of experience or the experience itself so even if in other words leading up to it you weren't that excited about it and you went and did it it still didn't feel good you may still experience an emotional reward from having done that thing later on in your life it might be the next day it might be the next week it might be months or years later but it can happen and we typically fake to consider that third time frame we usually only focus on the present sometimes present and the anticipation and if we don't see much possibility for reward we usually turn down the opportunity I'm not going to look forward to it I'm not going to like doing it therefore I'm not going to do it this is how we end up in those Vicious Cycles where we basically just don't do anything because our brains trick us into thinking nothing is worthwhile and we don't consider the third time frame I know that this is a little little bit of an abstract idea so I'm going to give you two examples here of how this can get disrupted and how you can overcome it so anxiety tends to disrupt anticipation of reward the most this they all flow together to some degree but if you have a chronic anxiety disorder what you probably know is when you make plans the P even even if it's something you really want to do something you're really excited about something you're passionate about the period of time between having made the plan and actually doing the thing is often an unpleasant period of time right because you start to stress you start to think about all the things that could go wrong or you know all the ways you might make a fool out of yourself or what's going to be difficult about it and often with anxiety we don't enjoy the buildup to even positive or Pleasant events even if we believe we are likely to enjoy the event itself give you an example of this a few weeks back we planned to trip to Chicago for my daughter's birthday our daughter's birthday I should say she doesn't belong only to me because she really loves aquariums and the Shed Aquarium of course is one of the greatest aquariums in the world and she'd never seen it so it seemed like a no-brainer I currently live in a city of about 125,000 people and that's honestly about my limit I'm not a city guy um I don't like driving in cities I don't like parking in cities I don't like walking in cities I like big open spaces and acreages and forests and lakes and long roads with few cars on them I'm a country guy that's that's my comfort zone right and so even though I knew that this was going to be a good experience not just for her but for all of us I knew we were going to enjoy it I did not experience a lot of excitement or joy in the period of time between scheduling this Chicago trip and actually getting there mostly I experienced stress about the Logistics of the trip itself you know are we what kind of count what kind of traffic are we going to encounter did we pack everything honestly that's more my wife's job but um these are all things you know these are all things that can get messed up right these are all the things we worry about when we've got something big coming up so I don't even necessarily have a lot of anxiety in most situations these days once upon a time I did but my average anxiety level is pretty low on a normal day but driving through downtown Chicago at night is not a normal day for me you know some people live there I don't and so I had a lot of anxiety thinking about doing it and then even more when we were actually doing it so we got there Friday night did the aquarium stuff on Saturday the actual experience of it was mostly enjoyable it was a really good time and I knew it was going to be I wasn't doubting that but I had to like overcome I to climb this mountain first basically this mountain of my own stress about the traveling there about dealing with the toll roads and and you know where did we stop for gas how often all the kids need to pee all this all this stuff you got to plan right and so I only really enjoyed it in the moment I didn't I didn't get to enjoy that excitement my kids did because they didn't have to drive right so you know every day that got closer to the trip they are getting more and more excited I'm not but the actual day was good so anxiety tends to Rob us of the joy that comes from that time frame that first third of it and because of that we often end up not doing things right even if we know the event itself will be good we think about all the leadup all the build up all the stress we're going to feel between now and then and sometimes we decide it is not worth climbing that mountain I know the view at the top would be beautiful but the climb is just too much and I'm just not up for it sometimes when we are able to focus on how much we know we will enjoy it when we do it when we get to the top of that mountain when we finally see the summit and look around and say man look what I just did that that's going to be worth it so sometimes you can use that knowledge to push yourself past it sometimes you can't now sometimes the opposite happens and this tends to be more related to depression right sometimes we are looking forward to something and we do think or we do hope that it's going to be a good experience we are counting on that we are trusting that and when you get there when it starts and you finally start to you know finally in the moment that you've been waiting for for who knows how long and you realize I'm not feeling it and it's not because there's anything wrong with the experience like this looks the way I thought it was going to look the things that I thought was going were going to happen are happening but I'm just noticing nothing is really connecting inside of me right now I'm I'm looking at what's unfolding around me and I'm logically understanding that I should feel really good right now but it's just not there maybe it's only a fraction of what you thought it was supposed to be maybe it's not there at all that's the anhedonia kicking in and that's the depression disrupting your ability to enjoy the present moment now I suspect many people watching or listening to this experience both depression and anxiety and if that's the case then you get that really nasty overlap of I'm probably not going to enjoy the buildup to it because of my anxiety and I'm probably not going to enjoy it even once I get past my anxiety what's waiting for me on the other side of that anxiety is depression and anonia so even if I push myself through all the stress and all this burden to do this thing I'm still not going to get much out of it but you probably noticed that the time frame that's not factored in to either of those equations is that third time frame that I was discussing with you earlier the future the emotions you experience in the future when you look back on things you have done in the past are not the same emotions that you experienced when that thing was happening you need to understand this if you want to have any chance of dealing with depression and anxiety and anadon you can have emotions in the future about things happening right now that will be different than what you're feeling right now and it can go either way it's probably easier to think of examples when you have less Pleasant emotions in the future about something so for example you might have really good memories with somebody that now make you really sad to think about because that person is gone maybe it's a friend who you lost touch with maybe it's a family member who's passed on maybe it's a partner who you're not with anymore and these were good memories like they're not Memories when they're happening but you know what I mean these were good moments when they were happening you enjoyed them they brought you pleasure they brought you Joy and now because that person is gone or your circumstances have changed when you look back on this experience you feel grief you feel sorrow you feel loss you feel sadness you don't feel the happiness that you felt then but it can go the other way too you can experience happiness or Joy or achievement or accomplishment in the future about things that didn't feel good when you did them you need to factor this in if you don't want anhedonia to be able to destroy your life so let me give you an example of this one too and then we'll wrap up with some practical applications when I was 17 years old my father and I spent about nine months planning a scuba diving trip and something you should know about me a couple things you should know about me I love water I love fish and mid to late adolescence was the absolute worst time of my life and so essentially the circumstances here were this was a dream come true vacation being planned for me in the midst of one of my darkest periods of life so it was this there's this interesting overlap of this amazing thing happening at a time when I felt awful in my life felt awful and we we had to do all this buildup right so we had to we had to take lessons and get certified and um figure out where we're were going to go and like what kind of dive we wanted to do what kind of stuff did we want to see my dad took care of most of that but I did have a I did have a hand in that process and I remember not feeling that excited about it not because I didn't think it was going to be fun but just because I was thinking about you know the plane ride there and I was I was literally nocturnal at this point in my life so I was like what I'm going to be asleep during the day well he's going to want to do stuff and then I'm going to be awake at night just in a hotel room by myself with nothing to do while he's sleeping like how how is this even going to work so leading up to it I I I had more stress than excitement or joy and then you know we we did it so we fly there we get there and there's a moment I remember so distinctly which was the first day so we get on this charter boat we go like three four miles out in the ocean in the Florida Keys to some coral reef we get in the water and I'm not even we're not even under the water yet we're just floating on the surface right I got all my gear on we're just getting ready to get started and I remember just looking down in the ocean as I'm bobbing there in the waves and just seeing hundreds of fish of every color you could imagine just this unbeliev unbelievable natural beauty like I had never seen anything like that before and my logical brain was in awe and was like oh my gosh that is an Inc inredible site that is so cool and I actually this is a little weird but you might you might get it I felt that thought get to like like start in my brain and get to like where my emotions would happen and I anticipated this feeling of like awe like or Joy or reward like like wow what an amazing thing this is and it just stopped like it hit a brick wall and I I remember in that moment thinking like oh man Even This can't get through to me right now this is a dream come true and I'm aware of it even this can't break through that wall what am I going to do there's a few pictures of me on that trip um I might try to add them to the YouTube video just put them on the bottom here because they're it's a little bit funny to me now like it's it's not funny because we're literally in this paradise looking place right this wonderful tropical environment and then there's me my long black wet hair I was in kind of this goth phase my hair was wet because we were in the water obviously just pale as can be looking as depressed as a person can be like in paradise and it's just this crazy juxtaposition but it matched perfectly what I felt inside that the discrepancy between my surroundings and what I looked like was the same discrepancy occurring inside of me between my logical mind and my emotional World basically and it wasn't this is crucial other people in your life won't always understand this but you need to understand this about yourself it wasn't because I didn't appreciate it it wasn't because I didn't appreciate all the hard work that my dad put into planning this trip or or the expenses that went into it I'm sure it wasn't cheap it wasn't because I didn't appreciate the incredible natural beauty that surrounded me I appreciated and was very consciously aware of all of those things throughout the trip in fact I kept reminding myself of those things over and over and over again in an attempt to break through to my heart and to make this incredible experience feel like what I knew it was supposed to feel like and it just didn't work I don't actually remember exactly how long we were there for I want to say it was maybe three or four days it was a fairly brief trip and there really weren't a lot of cool stuff happened like that that thing I described just now that was just the first day I mean I remember we did we did a charter fishing trip we caught some really big grouper um a Mor eel swam between my legs that one actually scared me a little bit too but it was also kind of cool like there were a lot of amazing things that happened there were a lot of highlights it was a great trip but at no point did it reach my emotional world at no point during that trip did I feel this explosion of joy that I knew should be there so stressed leading up to the trip didn't really get much out of it when I did it waste of time right waste of money wasn't worth it no not true not true at all because when I look back on that trip now I feel incredible Joy because I I remember it it was such a memorable experience that even though I wasn't feeling the feelings I should have been those images there's certain just flashes of things that happened in that trip that were so memorable so memorable that they just stuck in my brain there they're core memories that I will carry with me for the rest of my life and now that I am in a different place emotionally than I was then my life is a lot different at 40 than it was at 17 I still have access to those memories they are still in my mind and I am now in a place where I can pull up those memories and replay them in my brain and experience the feelings to access the emotions that I should have had then it's a lot like when you're a kid maybe you remember listening to a song or watching a movie or reading a book that was a little too advanced for you and and you didn't really you didn't follow the plot or you didn't really understand what it was about and maybe you re-experienced that thing as an adult and you're like oh that's what this was about I get it now it's a lot like that feeling if you know what I'm talking about you can have an appropriate emotional reaction to things from your past even if you didn't have it happen even if you didn't experience that emotion During the period of time when you were experiencing that event I really hope that made sense I know it's kind of out there if it did if if it didn't make sense leave a comment and let me know and I'll try to use my text words to explain it better um if it did make sense then here's what I want you to try to do with that information when you're when you have opportunities to do things during a period of high depression or high anxiety or both I want you to keep that third time frame in mind I want you to try and okay this is asking a lot big leap of faith here okay but use me as if you relate to me use my story as an example because that means you and I we have some things in common right I want you to try to believe maybe even trust oh let's say be open to the possibility worst case scenario that at some point in the future you will be in a healthier place and when you are in a healthier place you will be able to go back and experience some of the emot tions that should have been present during the experiences you had in periods of heightened depression and anxiety if you can keep that in your mind and if you can believe in that and if you can still get yourself to do things during this phase of your life knowing I may not feel it right now but I hope that I will be able to later then you are basically investing in the future you're you're creating these emotional opportunities that you are going to cash in on later it's like putting money in a mutual fund you're probably not going to touch that money for a while it's not it's not going to help you pay the bills you're not it's not gonna really bring you a lot of Joy or excitement you know it goes they move slowly but you're trusting that at some point in the future you're going to be able to cash in on that investment you made that's what you're doing when you still engage in in experiences that have high potential for reward during periods of time when you cannot feel that reward if you don't do that what you're going to end up with you're you're you're G to end up with a period of time in your life that looks like my life from ages 14 to 18 which is you end up with a black hole you end up with just kind of this blank space in your life where there should be experiences but there's just not much because you hardly did anything memorable for that 4-year period of my life I remember almost nothing almost nothing now there are probably many reasons for that too like I also wasn't taking good care of myself I wasn't sleeping well I wasn't eating right I was very sedentary um I wasn't managing substances as well as I should have so my my brain wasn't very healthy so some of it I'm sure is that my brain wasn't able to encode Memories the way it probably should have but that's not the only reason the other reason is I didn't do anything thing I I had very few experiences worth remembering and so it's all just a big blur of nothingness and I just have this Gap in my life where good stuff should be and I know now that although I wouldn't have felt much differently about my life then even if I had been doing a lot of things that could potentially feel good I would feel differently about my life right now I would have more happy memories to look back on I would have more of a sense of having lived in adolescence I I barely feel like I lived it like there's just nothing there so I hope that this makes sense to you like I said if it doesn't let me know and I'll do my best to follow up on it um this is a newer idea that I've been I've been kind of running through my head for about a week so anytime I have a new idea I always have to kind of like Let It Bake for a while first and I'm always a little wary that I might have taken it out of the oven too quickly so if you feel like I did today you can tell me and and I'll work on improving this idea but as always I hope you got good value out of this and if you did please take the time to share like leave a comment you know do whatever you can do to uh to help me get this message out to more people because that's all I'm trying to do you may notice I'm I'm not selling a course or or a product or anything like that I'm I'm literally just trying to help that's my only goal and you can help me by just putting my word out there to more people that's all I'll ever ask okay best of luck to you take care

Channel: Dr. Scott Eilers

Views: 397,400

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Id: FSast09qq1A

Length: 26min 58sec (1618 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 04 2023