Exploring Anhedonia: The Search for Joy and Connection

Exploring Anhedonia: The Search for Joy and Connection

SPEAKER00: This is The Light Inside, I'm Jeffrey Besecker. We've had a truly remarkable journey throughout 2023, the year being nothing short of extraordinary, as we've expanded the horizons of our listeners, diving deep into the realms of our subconscious and unconscious behaviors. We've explored the ups, the downs, and everything in between that defines the human experience. In our quest to unravel the most challenging questions presented by our behaviors, we've amplified the depth of our messages, shedding light on the intricacies of our humanity. In a season of love and light, a time of joyful celebration and community, we extend our warmest wishes for the happiest of holiday seasons to you, our cherished listeners. However, we acknowledge that for many, this time of year can be one of great challenge and loneliness, leaving us feeling a little empty inside. In the spirit of reflection, we revisit our top downloaded episode of 2023, exploring the often misunderstood emotional experience of anhedonia, a journey into the search for that love that truly lights us up inside. Concluding this season, we find ourselves right where we started, grateful to share this powerful message once again. It's a fitting end to a season dedicated to uncovering the depth of our shared humanity. As the festive season surrounds us with cheer, hope, and merriment, we encourage you to cherish the time spent with family, friends, and loved ones, and remember to reach out to those who might need that spark of light. We understand that the holidays can be a time of mixed emotions, and we want you to know that you are not alone. Thank you for joining us in 2023, and we look forward to our return as we welcome in the coming year. Until then, may your celebrations be filled with warmth, love, and the opportunity to cherish the moments that matter the most. Happy holidays, and we'll see you in the new year. Now on to the show. We'd like to offer a shout out to our affiliate matching partner, Podmatch.com. Podmatch is the revolutionary podcasting matching system driven by AI. As an industry leader in podcast guesting and hosting, they are a go-to solution for creating meaningful podcast interactions. Podmatch.com makes finding the ideal guest or host effortless. Stop by and visit our affiliate link today at www.thelightinside.us. Our emotions ride the rollercoaster of life, shaping our experiences with their ever-changing currents. They inform our decisions, color our memories, and guide our senses through the world. When emotions are absent, we're left bewildered, adrift in a sea of confusion, and longing for the spark of hope that ignites our connection to the vibrant tapestry of our human existence. And for those who experience anhedonia, for a brief instant, none of this exists. This is a solemn reality author Tanith Carey knows all too well. Tanith, I'm excited to share this conversation with you today, looking at a condition called anhedonia. In your book, Feeling Blah, you detail how it robs us of our joy and steals our light, leaving us feeling as if we're sleepwalking through life. Can you give us a brief overview of how you personally experienced anhedonia and how this condition impacted your life?
SPEAKER01: Okay, so I first came across Anhedonia in my own life. I'm an author and I was expecting some news from my agent and they rang me and they said, yeah, the book deal I'd been waiting for, it was going to go through. It was more money than we expected. It was everything we'd hoped for, for a book deal. And as I was on the phone, I was going, yeah, that's great. Fantastic. Great. Yeah. Brilliant. But then as I put the phone down, I realized that it was like a disembodied version of myself. And I actually didn't feel the joy of what I was saying come through me. It was like I was sort of acting it out, but I couldn't feel the really good news. I couldn't feel the joy. After that, that was about 10 years ago, I started to get really curious and I tend to write as a journalist about what I need to learn. And I started to notice this feeling, this kind of like blah, kind of unable to access this kind of good feelings more and more. So, you know, I love Christmas, but on Christmas Day, I just couldn't really be in the moment. I never felt pure euphoria. You know, I just wasn't entirely present. You know, I'd be at parties or even nice times with my family. I've got a lovely husband, gorgeous children, and they'll be having fun, but I just wasn't there with them. So then I think that very much like feeling blah or feeling numb or emotionally flat lining, it tends to be a bit of a guilty secret because we know a lot more about mental health now, but like We tend to think, well, what am I moaning about? You know, there are a lot of people who are a lot worse off than me. They might be depressed. They might be like, you know, have a really serious mental health disorder and hold on. You know, I've got all the things I'm supposed to want. But yeah, why aren't I feeling happy? But you don't want to say that because you sound incredibly ungrateful. So one night while my partner was asleep next to me, I secretly Googled in the dark and I just thought, okay, I want to know because especially after we came out of COVID and everyone was expecting, couldn't wait to get back to it. And it was kind of post COVID and I just felt the same. I didn't feel very excited about anything. So I Googled the question. I said, why aren't I enjoying my life? And then I did a load of research and then gradually up popped this word anhedonia.

SPEAKER_00: Wow, COVID was already challenging enough. I can only imagine how difficult that must have been for you. Let's start out by looking at one definition of anhedonia. Can you explain what anhedonia is and how it often relates to emotional avoidance and dissociation?

SPEAKER_01: And anhedonia is a word for, and it was really interesting anhedonia because it's great because even when you hear it, if you've never heard it before, you have an idea of what it's about. It's like from the Greek and it's from without joy, you know, the opposite of hedonism. And it is the loss of enjoyment and the loss of motivation to do the things that you used to love, you know, and also the inability to feel joy. And I realized there was this whole bank of research out there. And I was like, well, you know, I write on psychology, you know, I'm reasonably well-versed in psychology, but I never heard of it. And what struck me was in the modern world, we talk so much about joy at one end of the spectrum and sadness and depression at the other. But like, what about the kind of some more nuance in the middle there? What about the feelings of overwhelm and lack of joy that you do get in the modern world because you're just so inundated with inputs and burnout and all the rest of it? So I just thought I really wanted to bring this word out into the more general discussion, because I think it's the missing word in our mental health discussion or one of them anyway.

SPEAKER_00: You mentioned how we so often throughout our society are programmed to kind of stuff those emotions down as a condition pattern. How do you feel that might influence someone's ability to connect when they're experiencing hendonia? You mentioned that whole aspect of feeling like I have to distance myself from this as part of the underlying effect.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah. I mean, I think when you're in anhedonia, you're not connecting with what's happening or with the people around you really. I think that's what's happening. I mean, you know, I sometimes I would even, I love my children, but sometimes I would even struggle to be in the moment with them because you're just kind of, I think I would say there are many, many reasons for anhedonia. In the book, what I do is I explore the various different ones, and there might be a cocktail of reasons for each person. Some of it's biological, some of it's environmental, and some of it's to do with your childhood and your expectations of joy. And so what I did was like, for example, let me just go back to my personal situation, for example, was I realized that some of the reason I couldn't feel joy in the moment and connect, as you point out, was I had disassociation. Disassociation was like what was from my childhood. And this was a journey I went on in the book where, you know, I came from a background where there was a lot of chaos, a lot of of warring parents, being moved countries, divorce, acrimony. So what happened was that I hadn't realized this until I was 55 or something. In moments of great emotion, I was disassociating because when I was a child, if I felt great emotion, I would take myself out of my prefrontal cortex and then into another place where I would feel like I was looking at myself down a long tunnel. So one of the reasons I realized that I was unable to feel joy as an adult was because I've been wired to do this as a coping mechanism as a child, so I wasn't connecting with people. So I talk in the book about how I married my husband 25 years ago, and I remember walking down the aisle, and there was this lovely man waiting at the altar with me, and he's literally got tears in his eyes. And I'm looking at this, and I cannot take it seriously, and I'm like, I'm not there. I'm just kind of, I can't enter into the emotion. And it was only afterwards that I realized that that was dissociation. So in order to protect yourself from any sort of moments of big emotion, whether positive or negative, that's what you tend to do. So some of my journey has been to ground myself when I noticed that. So there are many different elements to it. But yeah, sorry, does that answer your question? I don't know. But yeah, anhedonia is about disconnection. Yeah, it is.

SPEAKER_00: What a disconcerting feeling to experience. From that perspective, what are some of the more typical ways an individual might experience anhedonia and how do they first begin to notice how it surfaces?

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so I think it would be, as I did, you're like, oh, OK, well, everything's going OK. You know, I'm ticking loads of boxes. I've got the things I'm supposed to want. But, you know, you're there and you're not really enjoying it. The world doesn't feel like it's in full colour. Maybe you feel like you're looking at your life through a pane of frosted glass. It's like you know that there's something you should be feeling joy, but it's just not coming. So it's almost like your reward system is not really circulating as it should do. So there are various reasons for that. And yeah, I guess think your scope, like, you know, I remember when I was in anhedonia, if I laughed, I'd be like, who's that? Do you know what I mean? I just didn't laugh very often. I was quite a heavy presence. Do you know what I mean? Whereas now, I think when you get to the bottom of anhedonia and you let those feelings flow, then you lighten, you gradually lighten. So I think people who hear anhedonia know what I mean if they are in it or they've been through it or, you know, it's blah, apathy, lack of motivation, meh, feeling like a zombie, emotional flatlining. It's all those things. It's like, you know, you may not even cry at appropriate times because you just feel your emotions feel blocked.

SPEAKER_00: Do you feel from that perspective that it's sometimes hard to kind of pinpoint some of those underlying symptoms and where self-diagnosis might be kind of a misleading path to go down sometimes?

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I agree. I think that we can all do and that's whoever we are, whatever state we're in, is to improve our emotional vocabulary, use our interception. to notice how we really feel, what bodily sensations we feel as we are in certain situations, and I think having more nuance in our description of mental health. I mean obviously some people will be able to work this out for themselves, others won't. I mean I'm a trainee gestalt therapist so I mean obviously I would heavily recommend anybody who feels like that because And Hedonia is also about becoming the whole person as well. So, you know, if you feel you need help understanding what's blocking your access to joy and full emotion, then obviously I would totally recommend that anybody gets that help. I mean, some people are more able to access that than others, you know, or access these feelings in themselves, you know, so it takes practice. I consider myself quite an emotionally aware person, but I mean, it took me the book and reaching 55 before I got here. So I'm hoping the book will speed it up for a few people.

SPEAKER_00: And we've mentioned throughout the course of our program, the importance of introspection and introspection, how the two are correlated and how that kind of forms the basis for our self-reflection.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, I mean, noticing your emotional states and how to manage that. I mean, that's one of the greatest skills that we can develop in ourselves and pass on to our children. So, yeah, it's like awareness, isn't it? Awareness and just a willingness I mean, I find it really interesting as a training therapist, sometimes you speak to people and they just have no idea how they feel. They just can't describe it.

SPEAKER_00: Naming our emotions. That can be one of the more challenging roles and aspects, I feel, of emotional regulation. Most of us in a typical scenario have not traditionally grew up with that language or framework to name those emotions.

SPEAKER_01: Absolutely. Yeah, I agree. So my husband, for example, he grew up with none of that. Being married to me, I think sometimes if we're divorced as children from our authentic selves, if we're told what to think, for example, or told how we should feel, then sometimes in early childhood, we just don't get the benefit of that. And then we start to kind of put in various coping mechanisms and defense mechanisms. So for him, it's like people pleasing and just not really being able to recognize his needs and meet them. sort of mean, whereas I mean, I had a very different childhood where I kind of brought myself up. So I was able to do that. So, yeah, we all come from a different place, but I think that's always possible, you know, with work, with practice to just try and tap into those feelings. And if you need help, then get some help to help to do that.

SPEAKER_00: In that regard, it's interesting to see how we each kind of develop those emotional languages based on that conditioning and receiving things such as naming our emotions, certain emotions, right or wrong, guilt and shame around certain emotions and how that itself then might become kind of a reflective pattern of dissociation. Absolutely. Yeah. Start to repress those situations and stuff them back again.

SPEAKER_01: Absolutely. Shame. I mean, my gosh, it came so much. And it's also very difficult to get through shame, isn't it? That's when I think an awareness of shame, like how you're just closing down or defending yourself against that and deflecting back. That's when I think sometimes you do need a professional to help you break through that.

SPEAKER_00: That was a pattern for me specifically growing up in an environment where emotion become that expression of anger. Then dealing with that guilt and shame myself. Here I am, I'm not realizing as a child why I'm triggered. I carry that through into adult life and repressing that back. So I've had my own journey with that.

SPEAKER_01: Did you have a very authoritarian form of parenting growing up?

SPEAKER_00: I did in one regard. Well, actually, in both regards, both parents surfaced in different ways. But yeah, I would say there was a lot of authoritarianism there that throughout its course, I've had to kind of learn to manage and navigate throughout life, you know, how to shift toward a more healthier perspective.

SPEAKER_01: So did you have to learn an emotional vocabulary then yourself?

SPEAKER_00: I had to learn a broader emotional vocabulary and learning those underlying stimuluses, you know, because that one emotion of anger was the one that always stepped to the forefront. A lot of it was implicit memory.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So anger was your defense mechanism or to hide. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: So looking at that path of Anhandonia, we're going to kind of roll this back a little bit. We ventured off a little side path there. thing because we've gotten to share some very real experiences. Since our show is focused on the unconscious patterns of behavior, let's look at the psychological pathway first, if we might, returning later in our conversation to the connection to the physiological side of things. Can you share with our listeners the role emotional intelligence plays on the psychological side of Anhandoni, now that we've kind of ventured into that ballpark?

SPEAKER_01: Well, I would say generally is like people don't even know that there's a name for this or some reason for this. So I think that even though people didn't took nothing else away from the book or the podcast, the fact that they know anhedonia is a psychological state and that they can address it is progress and awareness. In terms of like what I did in the book, I did a lot of neuroscience. So I interviewed some of America's top neuroscientists. Because my point in the book is, in modern life, we're talking about all we want to do. If you say to someone, what do you want to be in modern life? They would say, oh, I want to be happy. But yeah, you go up to that same person and say, well, what's happening in your brain when you are happy? And I would say 99% of people don't actually know what is happening in their brain when they feel good. So from a psychological point of view and a neuroscience point of view, one of the central chapters in the book is a description of from the moment you want something and you want something pleasurable, what happens in your brain's mesolimbic reward pathway all along? What is that journey of that dopamine around your brain? Okay, so What I'm trying to do there is obviously the brain is a highly complex organ and obviously we've had to oversimplify it and not even neuroscientists know exactly how the brain works. But a simple explanation of how pleasure is made in your brain, I think, is a real advantage in the world we live in now because I think that The point I make in the book is that the brain we have now is the one that was designed for us to help us survive 100,000 years ago when we were hunter-gatherers. It is a brain designed for short, sharp spikes of cortisol in high survival situations. Now what we're doing with our brain now is we overwhelm it with constant cortisol jags. Our cortisol and our stress levels never get a chance to return to normal. So also what I wanted to do in the book was from a psychological point of view was explain the kind of how to get the dials a little bit more even on that dashboard of our brain. And actually that this is not always out of our control and that we can do things to tweak those dials up and down ourselves. So that's the other thing. What was your original question? Sorry, I've gone off.

SPEAKER_00: Looking at the role emotional intelligence plays, and I feel we've kind of tiptoed into that from the beginning of our conversation, you know, looking at the role higher emotional intelligence plays in our ability to recognize and name our emotions first and then also form those healthy coping mechanisms, especially in response to our stressors.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, exactly. So, I mean, that comes back. Emotional intelligence is EQ, isn't it? It's like kind of, it's not what we were talking about. It's like interception. It's like noticing what your emotions are, recognizing why they're there. I mean, as you say, at a deeper level, you know, what is triggering this emotion? Well, what is the core need? What is the defense mechanism which is making me react in this way? So, I mean, anhedonia is, it's more of a symptom. It's not really an emotion, do you see what I mean? So I guess what you would say is that you'd have to look at what's happened to you emotionally that's caused this numbness. Why is your brain in overwhelm? How are you overwhelming your brain? You know what I mean? It's like, as I say, it's a symptom rather than a kind of an emotion in itself. It's like an absence of emotion. It's sort of like sometimes in the book I call anadonia like depression without the guilt and the pain. Do you sort of mean?

SPEAKER_00: You mentioned that role that our environmental conditioning, our family units, our experiences play in programming a lot of that language of our emotionality. You know, we also can look at the role past implicit memory plays. We're somewhat recording in our brain, in our nervous system, those things that have kind of triggered us and storing those later on, projecting them back out towards our outcomes. Yeah. Looking at that from the level of then becoming an ego filter or an emotional filter where it's that lens of protection coming in.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, that's a good point. I mean, I talk in the book also about cheraphobia, which is fear of happiness. So, you know, if as a child, as I was, you know, you didn't let yourself be happy because something could happen that was like an adult could take it away from you or something very unpredictable could happen. So what happens is that you don't let yourself slip into joy because you fear it's going to be snatched away from you. So rather than save yourself from disappointment, you wire yourself not to allow yourself to languish in feelings of joy. You know you protect yourself. So I thought that was a really interesting thing that I had never heard before, because I always remembered, like, I was always scanning for threats. The other thing about my childhood, and you all listeners might relate to this, was, you know, as a child of quite a sort of vicious divorce, I was also hypervigilant. So I was also hypervigilant for threats. And so that made me constantly not be in the moment because I was always looking for the next threat. Because, you know, one of the biggest enemies of joy is anxiety and is stress. And is that inability to be in the moment because you're always worrying about what's happening next? Is this moment going to be taken away from me? What do I need to be aware of? How do I need to protect myself? So I think, yeah, that can definitely come from childhood. And I had to address that as well. And also it's like the role modeling that your parents and your family give you, like, you know, is joy, is it plentiful in your family? Do the adults in your world know how to enjoy themselves? You know, are they kind of workaholics who are using workaholism as a defense or coping mechanism for their own childhood? You know, how much joy was in the home where you grew up? You know, how much was role modeled to you? It was play in your house, you know? So that's also a big factor.

SPEAKER_00: We look at that role from that aspect of some of the conditioning we receive, you know, just buck up and be happy. What do you have to feel bad about sometimes that guilt and shame again coming in?

SPEAKER_01: I agree with you. Yeah. Yeah. Like, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And I also think if you as a child, you don't have your needs met and you do not feel listened to or, you know, if you cry, you're told you're being manipulative or you're turning the taps on or to man up or to just get on with it or do what your siblings do. Or maybe you get the implicit message from an adult like, oh, I don't really have time for this. You're taking up too much room. You know, all of those things will also impact your emotional vocabulary and your ability to kind of let the joy flow and as you say you know cover up with shame and guilt because in order to feel joy we have to be in an authentic space don't we really?

SPEAKER_00: We mentioned this previously but I'm going to go ahead and frame it with the question what role does emotional trauma play in the development of anhedonia and how might it influence an individual's perception of pleasure and reward in that regard?

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, that's a good point. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think that, as I say, like whatever defense mechanisms we put in place as a child, because, you know, a lot of our personalities, we think it's our personalities, but actually they're defense mechanisms. If they are defense mechanisms that were meant to, I mean, for example, Workaholism is a defense mechanism. It's like if you didn't feel important enough or you didn't feel worthy enough as a child, you might try and seek it through your job or by overdoing it or constantly seeking validation through your work. And it's very difficult to, I think, if you're a workaholic, as I was actually, to feel joy because you're constantly like, oh, I can't go out and have fun because I have this deadline that I have made sure that I have to keep myself busy and validated. So, yeah, so I think you need to work through the reasons why you're not feeling joy.

SPEAKER_00: We just wrapped up a pertinent episode on this topic, similar to this topic, on the role of happiness addiction, toxic positivity, where we become somewhat conditioned to then constantly seek that dopamine hit and reward rather than allowing our emotional cycles to happen, where we then start to use that happiness as a form of emotional suppression.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah. But is it real happiness or is it just a cover up or a sticking plaster? I mean, it's impossible to be happy all the time and our brains aren't designed to be happy all the time and it wouldn't be a desirable state anyway. I mean, it's supposed to be up like this, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00: Up and down. From an energetic level, you know, that's our natural ebb and flow. Absolutely. We're getting ready to do some episodes on that coming up into our fifth season here where we're talking about healing energetics. It's a very relevant topic to portray because when we study nature, there's the same pattern of energetic fractals that just simply repeat over and over and over. It's the same pattern.

SPEAKER_01: Exactly. Yeah, that's a really good point. Yeah, absolutely. But I mean, I think modern world has sold us a lie that we're supposed to be happy all the time. And I kind of chart this in the book. It's like kind of, you know, starting in the sixties when we had Instamatic cameras and like, but whenever anybody's pointed a camera at you, you're supposed to stay smart. You're supposed to look happy. You know, the Victorians didn't bother doing that. Do you know what I mean? But like, and then advertising It sold us this lie that if you have this product, you will be happy. Then it showed a lot of people looking happy in ads and stuff like that. Somehow, laugh tracks on comedies that everyone's supposed to be laughing the whole time. I mean, life was never supposed to be like this. I mean, I talk in the book. It's like our hunter-gatherer ancestors first laughs were a signal to the tribe that, oh, we're safe now. The saber-toothed tiger has gone away now. It's a form of relief. They were trying to survive. They weren't trying to be happy all the time. That's the thing about our brains. Our brains are not happiness generators. They are survival machines. We seem to have gotten to this point where we think, oh, if we're not happy all the time, there's something wrong with us. There's nothing wrong with us. It's just like that is emotion ebb and flows, you know what I mean? But my point is that emotion should be allowed to ebb and flow freely and not feel blocked and suppressed and pushed under. So any of your emotions, not just joy, but like anything, you should be able to feel the full range.

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SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's a really good point. So basically, when you're in anhedonia, you lose the motivation to do the thing that would make you feel good. So definitely, if you're ruminating a lot, and you've got anhedonia, then you're sitting in your room, the same thoughts are going around and around and around again, but you are missing the drive to go out and and break yourself out of that pattern and to pivot and to do something that will make you feel good. So yeah, anhedonia is definitely not going to help. I mean, I talk in the book a lot about behavioral activation, which is a research-based approach for anhedonia. Some people kind of get a bit irritated by it, but the research shows it works. And that is the idea that do whatever used to make you feel good, do it, even if it's just for five minutes at a time, and do it consistently until the good feelings return. Because if we don't do the things that are going to make us feel good, of course we're not going to feel any better. If we don't feed our brain positive inputs, we're not going to feel any better. So breaking free of anhedonia is about realising that instead of we should be made happy, we have to go and make our own happiness. You know what I mean? We have to go and do things. Like I did a reel this week and I was like looking at some glimmers, you know, the kind of little moments of joy that you notice throughout the week and then you notice and appreciate. And I looked at all my glimmers for the week and I realized they had all been things that I had consciously got out of the house to do, to go and seek. You know what I mean? If I'd been in my room, if I'd been in this room now, I wouldn't have had that happiness. But you know, I went to the park, we went and picked some blackberries. I went to an art gallery show, Sometimes you do have to go and seek happiness. It's just not going to happen to you. We have I think it's a happiness takes a little bit more conscious work than we've been led to believe.

SPEAKER_00: So, yes, reinforcing belief in gratitude, finding those enriching moments.

SPEAKER_01: One of the interesting things I learned when I spoke to Professor Kent Berridge, who's one of the main neuroscientists about the reward system, is that joy and happiness are not one thing. They are actually three things. They are the anticipation, because dopamine is actually the neurochemical of anticipation, not actually of reward. So the anticipation of something that you're looking forward to, the appreciation of it in the moment, so that you are in the moment with it and you can languish and sink into those good feelings. And then after that, the memory of what you did, what made you feel good. So you want to go and do it again. So I know that gratitude has become a bit of a corny word and all the rest of it, but like, you know, writing down at the end of the day what you really enjoy doing so that you do more of it in future is actually a pretty wise move. And I mean, I find when I do Gratitude and I don't even want to put Gratitude in the book. I don't think I actually use the word because it's become such a cliche, but the science of Gratitude is just astonishing and what it can do for you and how it can change your mood and your way of framing the world. So, yeah, I think, you know, you brought up Gratitude and I agree with it. It's like, what did you enjoy today? And just crystallizing it so that you want to do it again.

SPEAKER_00: What a wonderful way to simply introspect and jot down what creates value and meaning for you. If you don't know what creates meaning, if you don't revisit it often, we tend to forget. We tend to push it back. We tend to focus on the other things.

SPEAKER_01: Absolutely. And of course, you know, all the survival mechanisms that made our brains the most superior on the planet are like, for example, we have a negativity bias because obviously, you know, when we were 100,000 years ago, wandering across the tundra, we had to take more notice of the threats than the good things, because if we wanted to stay alive, we still have that negativity bias. So being aware of the brain's natural tendency so that we can work against them is really, really, really important. I mean, I think what we have here is we have like a very ancient brain in a very overstimulating modern environment, and then we're wondering why we're not happier. I think the plus side is that thanks to fMRI scanners, we can now see how emotion is made in the brain, and we can harness the neuroscience so that we can get our brains on side. What's happening at the moment is we're falling into a gap here. That's why mental health in the first world is in free fall. Since the 50s, every generation has gotten less happy. So it's time to kind of harness what we know about happiness and how emotions are made and actually use it to our advantage because at the moment we're not and our brains are kind of losing out which is why a lot of us are not as happy as we should be.

SPEAKER_00: And as we change and evolve and adapt, we're also finding out the miracles of our central nervous system. We're also able to witness how that action plays out. We're also able to kind of witness our field of energy. Absolutely. Even how that connects to our vibrational frequency and our experience of the soul. Yeah. We're going to also lean into in the near future. Feeling that back, can you discuss the link between anhedonia and maladaptive coping mechanisms and how how these coping strategies might perpetuate feelings of helplessness and self-victimization at times.

SPEAKER_01: Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, yeah, you do see many people in anhedonia. And I mean, that's part of the problem with anhedonia is they don't see a way of getting out of it. That's the kind of, it is, there's a hopelessness and a despair about anhedonia, which is, which really means why it needs to be talked about more generally because people who are stuck in it just don't see a way out. That's a really good point. The book is here to say that if you know what this is and you have a toolbox, you can pick your tools and then hopefully, bit by bit, your brain's reward circuit, which has probably been interrupted by something, which I talk about in the book, whether it could be burnout or childhood trauma or overwhelm or even things like diet and hormone shifts, it's to kind of find out if you know where your anhedonia is, then you can start to address it and you can start to do the things that make you feel better so you can gradually move out of anhedonia and the good feelings will return and the dopamine reward circuit will get back on track. I mean, that's what it's kind of about. I mean, most cases of anhedonia are your brain's reward circuit is not working well. You know, you're not getting the reward, you're not getting the free flow of the dopamine through various different reasons. So if you can find more, that's a really cool problem to address. But most people are just seeing the symptoms of that, aren't they? And then blaming themselves. You know, I don't want people to blame themselves. There are lots of different reasons that are outside you. It's not your problem. You know, like I said, I felt guilty that I felt like numb like this. I don't want people to feel guilty. I want them to feel like empowered that they can do something about it.

SPEAKER_00: And then they're not alone. We look at that aspect of healthy boundaries, how we're relating both from our introspection and then how we're also projecting out at others. Our self-concept playing an important role in that relationship. We develop the ability to also step beyond that framework with a healthy psychological distance. What steps from your perspective, Tanith, can we take to maybe improve that self-esteem and self-worth when we're experiencing these symptoms of anhedonia, where we feel somewhat disconnected?

SPEAKER_01: Well, the first thing is to see that it's to stop blame, because I mean, blame is a big contributing factor and guilt. It will tip it into depression. So that's even even more intractable situation. So I think this to kind of lift that kind of there's something wrong with me. I shouldn't be moaning. This is my fault. Why am I so miserable? Why am I such a miserable person? I'm no fun to be around. So I think just letting go of that and then being more solution focused. I think is really helpful. Because I think that, you know, you're no fun to be around. Then you're in a feedback loop and then you feel like people don't want to be around you and you stop going out. So I just think what helped with me also was to kind of reparent myself and then to go back to the kind of authentic, joyful child I've been. Because, I mean, as a very young child, I've been a very joyful little girl. I've been kind of I was the kid who'd like, you know, sing on the plane or, you know, dance spontaneously. But like something had got in the way. So I just think that remember that when we came out, into the universe. We were joyful, authentic whole beings. To try and get back to that place by looking, maybe, if you can, at what got in the way. What happened for you where you no longer feel that joy? I think that's really important. Because it's there. It should be there, isn't it? I mean, it is natural for humans to feel joy. I'm not saying it's a constant state, but it is part of our emotional repertoire. So I think that's the main question. And what can I do about it?

SPEAKER_00: That sense of inner turmoil and conflict can be a very stressful experience for all of us. Let's kind of segue, if we might, into the more physiological side of anhedonia now. How from that regard, first and foremost, does chronic stress play a role in intensifying anhedonia? And what are some of the effective strategies for managing and reducing our stress so we may not creep into that realm?

SPEAKER_01: Well, I would say burnout is one of the main contributors to anhedonia because it's basically cortisol overload. And as I point out in the book, once cortisol is spiked in the human body, it will stay in your body for an hour, whereas dopamine, once it's spiked, will only stay in your body for five minutes. So what's happening is that we are so overloaded with micro-stressors like deadlines, the 24-hour news cycle, exposure, the comparison culture, social media. All these things basically mean that our cortisol levels are constantly high. And then of course, we have no boundaries around work, so anybody can get a hold of us at any time at all that they want. So basically, we never have a moment for the cortisol levels to truly reset because we've always got our phones in our hand or we're always looking at a screen. So burnout is really what happens when that becomes relentless and your brain basically starts to kind of metaphorically close down. And then you start to become cynical. Your range of emotion becomes narrower. You just feel like a zombie, like you're going through the motions. And so I think that if you are aware of your burnout. I mean, again, that's about interception. So for example, one of my reasons for Anadolu was I was a national newspaper journalist in the UK. I had numerous different editors. I had two young children. I had constant deadlines. Everything I had to write had to be accurate. It was just like I was interviewing loads of different people. I had so many demands on me that by the end of the day, I was just completely burnt out. I couldn't feel anything. But now I would take steps in order to kind of, I would notice. So if I have a hatch on a scale of one to 10 and like where one's feeling really good and 10's feeling really stressed, once I get to a six, it's gone up to a six, then I know I need to take steps to kind of reduce the load before I get higher. And I stopped being able to help myself. So again, it's about realizing, I think also in families particularly, it's about sharing emotional load. I think sometimes the work we do in families is a little bit uneven and we tend to take lots on our to-do list, but we don't take things off our to-do list. And then we start doing stuff and we think no one else can do it, so only we can do it. So I think sometimes you just need to step back and really look at what you really need to be doing, what's good for you and just rebalance. um so that you don't become overwhelmed in that state which steals joy because you know you're no use to anybody if you're burnt out anyway so i don't know what's driving it might be a workaholism it might be your feeling you need to fulfill others you need to provide but like i guess to try and understand what's going on there for me that kind of resonates with polyvagal theory and the concept of the autonomic ladder you know the autonomic ladder is basically measuring that degree where our energy is at where our level of stress is at

SPEAKER_00: Yeah. In our optimum state of operation, we're up there in ventral vagal activation. Veins are in alignment. Things are in flow. Things come to us and we manifest them easily. Hmm. Our energetic levels are activated. You were in our best self, dare I say, as we dip down, you know, are looking at that concept. Is your cup half full, half empty? Are you pouring from an empty cup? Yeah. As we move down those levels of activation, you know, the more we get kind of activated in our emotion, the more we overextend our energy. We move down that ladder to the bottom into dorsal vagal activation. In that state, we're triggered, fight, flight, freeze, and then at the very bottom, shutdown. That's it.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'm so glad you're taking that approach because I totally agree. I mean, you know, the head is not just a sort of a lollipop in the end of the stick, you know. We are all nervous systems, aren't we? And if we just try to do it in our head, that's not enough.

SPEAKER_00: Traditionally, we may not have had all that data present for us. to kind of maybe somewhat substantiate that stance. You know, we're just now learning a lot of this.

SPEAKER_01: I think it's an incredibly exciting time, really, because I'd had talk therapies, but it just went around and around. It's only when I had somatic more gestalt therapy that I could see it in my life and my body as a whole. And that's why all the modalities I'm training in gestalt was actually, because I thought people like Gabor Maté and all this is completely new, but actually it was in gestalt therapy. So you know what I mean? So I think this thematic approach is incredibly useful. And like, you know, the holistic psychologist, Nicola Prayer and all these people like that, and Peter Levine, it's just exciting, really.

SPEAKER_00: So looking at that role of the physiological aspect of anhedonia, what role do neurotransmitter imbalances play in contributing to anhedonia? You know, we're kind of making that bridge between the head and the body. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: I mean, obviously neurotransmitters is very, very complicated and the balance is different in everybody. But like, you know, modern life is not particularly kind to the healthy flow of our neurotransmitters, for example. I mean, we're kind of like we can get anything we want within pretty much five minutes. So our dopamine circuits are always getting spiked. Anna Lembke has been very good on this. It's like when everything is supposed to feel good, nothing feels good anymore. Even when we get the things we think we're supposed to want, the pleasure goes down and down and down. We're not getting dopamine in measured releases, are we? We're just getting micro spikes all the time. She talks about going on dopamine, taking a break from it so that can reset. The other thing that contributes to an imbalance in our happiness hormones is also our modern diet. So we now know that 90% of serotonin is made in the gut, but we tend in America and the US to eat a lot of processed foods, a lot of inflammatory foods. And we now know that not only can that interrupt the microbiota, which contributes towards the serotonin, but that inflammation that it causes can also reach the brain and can also interrupt the smooth running of the brain's reward system. So that's another thing in modern life, which is making it more difficult to feel joy. So it's just it's coming at us from every different angle.

SPEAKER_00: We look at that role of stress and how that also creates some of that inflammation and imbalance.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, many of our lifestyle illnesses like diabetes and obesity, I mean, these are also inflammatory illnesses. So then you have a really interesting thing there where, you know, and then you have the government saying, oh, you must do this to do that. You know, if you're obese, do this, do that. If you're diabetic, eat that, eat that. But then if you have anhedonia as part of that, then you haven't got the motivation to make those lifestyle choices. It's really interesting. Also with COVID-19 is that the research now shows that anhedonia is now listed as a symptom of long COVID because obviously viral illness, the body responds, the body causes inflammation to fight off the virus. And that inflammation can also reach the brain. So then we have in the UK, for example, we have a lot of people who just never came back to work because they lost the motivation. They didn't know how to get out of that. You know, I mean, obviously that's not the only reason you don't, but it's certainly not helping if anhedonia is a symptom of your long COVID. So I just think there needs to be more of a discussion about its role in how we're functioning as a society. We need to be taking more care of our brain's reward system because we're either overloading it with dopamine or we're overloading it with stress. And then what happens? Cortisol suppresses the action of dopamine. So like I say, the dials are all out of sync. You know, that's just why we're not feeling good.

SPEAKER_00: From my own experience from long COVID after, you know, we had COVID, I had that classic brain fog and trouble remembering. One of the interesting side effects for me was I have a history of gout, you know, started about two years ago, starting to have a little history with gout coming out of long COVID or through long COVID. I got gout in my right knee to the point where I couldn't walk for two weeks. Wow. was by the doctor's assessment triggered by some of those inflammatory effects of COVID. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01: You know, I mean, sometimes it's imaginatively when I sometimes when I say some of this stuff, people are like, really, where are you getting this from? Research is all that, you know, I mean, if you read Edward Bullimore, you know, he's I think he's a professor of neuroscience at Cambridge. You know, the studies and the brain scans show that inflammation can also affect the smooth running of the reward system, you know? And, you know, I guess also people go, what you eat is going to make you like, yeah. But unfortunately, yeah. I mean, we now know about the gut brain connection, don't we? So it's more body, isn't it? You know, it's not just what thoughts we think it's our lifestyles. And also the other thing is that a lot of people will report anhedonia in middle age because we have hormone shifts. So when the estrogen levels in women go down, that also has a direct knock-on effect on the production of dopamine. So you are going to feel a little less joyful and you're also going to feel a little less able to cope because cortisol is more exposed as the estrogen goes down. So you're going to feel a bit more stressed, you're going to feel more anxious, more self-conscious. So I just think we just need to know about this incredible chemistry set inside our brains and use this knowledge to get that chemistry set a little bit more in control than we've been led to believe it is.

SPEAKER_00: We are energetic multi-dimensional beings living in a somatically embodied experience. You must be energetically aligned with me today because discussing hormonal imbalance was my next line of questioning and how that might influence women who are experiencing their menopausal stages. Through those menopausal interactions, aren't thyroid issues also a common occurrence?

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you're absolutely right. It was one I was going to bring up because basically a lot of thyroid imbalances is mistaken for low mood and depression. So I think it's, you know, it's also really helpful to, you know, go and get your physically checked out. And also, if you're going through a period of anhedonia, think back about your health. Like, have I been through an illness and I haven't quite got over? Is this linked to another illness I might be having, for example? I mean, what I also found really intriguing was that antibiotic overuse, because basically antibiotics When overly used, they can also affect the microbiota of the gut and they can also affect the production of serotonin. But why don't we think about this? We're not thinking enough about happiness in the whole. We're just thinking about it as a kind of whether or not everything's okay psychologically. It's a lot more complex than that.

SPEAKER_00: was just watching a program last night called Inner Worlds, Outer Worlds, looking at our microbial biomes. I think I'm saying that right, but how that's nothing more than an energy system. When that chemical imbalance first happens, then so to erodes our energetic exchange. So to erodes that energetic interaction with what we're gaining our sustenance and nutrition from those food sources.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's a good point. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, I tend to sort of use food as part of my energy. Like, no, it's obviously all food is energy, but what I think very carefully about what I eat and how it's going to make me feel and how it's going to make my brain function and how it's going to affect my mood. So I don't just eat to feel full. I eat to feel good. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. So that's been very liberating.

SPEAKER_00: It's also interesting to see that correlation with eating disorders or eating as an emotional coping mechanism that can become a vicious cycle to me where one adverse pattern feeds the other adverse pattern.

SPEAKER_01: Absolutely. Yeah. But you know, as with any eating disorder, it's like, what are you trying to address? I guess, you know, I mean, I mean, in my work, I'm constantly about like, thinking about the layers, you know, you think you've got to one layer, then you need to get to the next layer and all the rest of it.

SPEAKER_00: Kenneth, looking at recent research into neurodegenerative diseases, it's interesting to see how anhedonia surfaces at times as a result of these conditions. Could you share more about your findings regarding this effect?

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so I mean, obviously anhedonia is a big symptom of Parkinson's and also schizophrenia. So I mean, to be honest, in the book, I didn't go that much into that because I felt that was a very kind of specialist area. So it certainly is a symptom of those two things. I mean, obviously in Parkinson's, it's about dopamine dysregulation, isn't it? And any kind of dopamine dysregulation will affect your brain's reward system. Schizophrenia, I'll leave to the experts, but yeah, no, totally.

SPEAKER_00: And it's crucial then to notice that inflammation there again starts to pop up. Yeah. As one of the core underlying factors, it interacts and has been shown to lead to both Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. There again can also lead to that connection to our healthy diet and any toxins that might be in that diet. We'll just vaguely put that out there. That might open the door for another episode down the road. I'm glad we've acknowledged that. No, that's a very interesting point. Looking at the process of neuroception and our neurological state, traumatic brain injuries are also significant for an increased potential for anhedonia, as our past guest Keegan Hadley shared, resulting from his years of playing semi-pro football and having experienced multiple instances of traumatic brain concussion. Could you reiterate from your perspective how traumatic brain injury might influence anhedonia?

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely. And also when you speak to a lot of people think who are in very kind of deep anhedonia that they've been over prescribed antidepressants and that has thrown off their reward system. There's a lot of people who feel that that is an issue as well. Again, I didn't go into that because it was just like probably too much for this book. But yeah, I know that is something that other people do need to look at if they are really, really just stuck, very badly stuck. The other interesting thing I came across was a lot of people who were heavy users of porn also reported anhedonia because they were just basically overloading their bodies with massive dopamine hits until it stopped working for them. It didn't just stop that they stopped feeling the pleasure of looking at porn, but that extended to everything else as well. They didn't feel joy in anything. And also I think what's really interesting about anhedonia is it can affect different sensitive experiences. So it can affect your taste, so that can dial it down. It can affect your appreciation of music. It can affect your sensual touch feels and your appreciation of sex. So it's all these different elements to it. It's like a kind of mosaic, you know,

SPEAKER_00: And it's kind of a cornucopia then, kind of a Cascadian effect between hormonal imbalance. You've got these sensory imbalances and it stands to reason then how we kind of numb out and check out that emotional interaction.

SPEAKER_01: That's a really good point because I remember, I mean, my daughter's a classical musician and I would go to her concerts and I would be there looking at something incredibly moving music. And like, you know, I'd remember like if like when I was younger, when I heard that kind of music, you know, literally you'd have that kind of the hair standing up that tingly feeling. And I also noticed that I was in anhedonia when I couldn't feel that kind of the chills music that was incredibly beautiful. And I knew that I was coming out of anhedonia when I could feel the chills again. So that's a really nice, simple indicator for people like, how are they doing? How is their pleasure circuit working? Do you know what I mean? Because at the end of the day, it does. You're right. These are all manifestations of the reward system cycle in your brain, not working that well. so of course you're not going to enjoy sex as much, of course you're not going to enjoy music, but it just might be a marker that you know you need to do some work to protect that and nurture that mesolimbic reward pathway in any way that you can.

SPEAKER_00: For me it's kind of interesting to look at that and associate with what we regard as existential pain or the source of our suffering in life. I'm just going to earmark that because I feel that's a pathway we might potentially look at in the future. I think that's an opportunity for us to open a door and explore. In that regard of looking at pain, are there associations with chronic pain itself that might be related to anhedonia?

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, anhedonia is a symptom of chronic pain, basically, because of course it's very difficult to be in the moment or when you have that pain, which is like a total nagging and takes you out of the joy of the moment. So yeah, it's very, very pervasive anhedonia, definitely.

SPEAKER_00: It's interesting to look at that level of chronic pain and there again, you know, we're working within the brain circuitry and neurotransmitter systems. We're dealing with medications that sometimes suppress those interactions. We're also dealing with medications that then as our system kind of interacts, we're going back to some of that inflammation. We're getting tie-ins there. We're also seeing where then kind of we learn that pattern when we turn to that pattern of numbing the pain, sometimes on the harsh end where it becomes addiction.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's true. And of course, like in pain, your body is reacting with the cortisol response and cortisol dampens down dopamine. So yeah, it's all related. You're right. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, definitely. This has been so insightful today, Tanith. To wrap things up, can you highlight a few points for us to consider before we go and suggest some potential outlets for treatment for someone who might be experiencing anhedonia?

SPEAKER_01: Well, I would say, you know, you need to work out what your reasons are. And they like you. We've covered so many of them today. And I think you need to kind of find your top three and which are manageable or which can be helped. So, you know, like if your anhedonia stems from a childhood fear of happiness or disassociation, then, I mean, you're going to have to go do a little bit of kind of going back into your childhood, maybe doing some reparenting. maybe being the kind of the safe, warm adult that you needed to comfort you then. I've certainly found that extremely helpful. If you think it's to do with a hormone shift, you've noticed it in like, even as a man in andropause or a woman in menopause, we know there are ways for not everybody, but for a lot of people to go and get that hormone situation rebalanced. So, and you know, there's a lot of research that shows that HRT is linked to improvement in mood. I think that it's really important to do things that get those dials a little bit more in sync. So for example, you know, knowing for me that dopamine is the molecule of anticipation, I just do something really simple. Like I, every week I make sure I have something to look forward to. and something that's new. Because the human brain is also wired for novelty and it's also wired to anticipate. So then I do something with my husband, we'll go to somewhere we haven't been before. And I also feed my brain positive inputs. I was lucky that I was in dysphoria, I was probably mildly depressed, but I wasn't deeply depressed. So I didn't need medication. And as I say, the book is not for people who are deeply depressed or need medication. This is for people who are getting on with life, who are everything seems to be going okay, but they are just not enjoying it as much as they probably might have hoped, or they feel there's some room for improvement, you know? So it's feeding your brain positive inputs. It's curating your life, I think as well, curating your social media, speaking to people who inspire you, following social media accounts that are positive. If you're going to be on social media, it's like curating your life, you know? Does that sound simplistic? But it is simple, but yeah, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_00: There is simplicity and beauty woven within all of life's complexity from my perspective. I want to thank you for sharing this very eye-opening perspective with us today. I know this is a hot topic for me now because I'm just now discovering it and it's just now coming into my radar. So thank you for bringing this to light for us today, Tana.

SPEAKER_01: It was a pleasure. Very interesting, wide range of conversation. I really thank you for that.

SPEAKER_00: Thank you for sharing your brilliance with us today. Namaste. The light in me acknowledges the light in you, dear.

SPEAKER_01: Oh, thank you.

SPEAKER_00: Tanith and I discussed how anhedonia has surfaced as an often overlooked symptom, leading to a decline in our emotional and mental health. We also shared how this misattributed phenomena can lead us to lose meaningful connections to our emotions. We explain the many different ways the psychological experience can surface, and the role it plays in our physiological health as well. Overall, this episode underscores the significance of introspection, interception, and emotional intelligence play in self-reflection, emotional regulation, and the cultivation of healthy coping mechanisms. However, in the face of anhedonia, amidst this desolation, there remains a flicker of hope, and the return of emotions in the symphony of our feelings. Despite the difficulty of seeing a light at the end of the tunnel, a vibrant tapestry of human existence is always waiting inside. If you found meaning in this show, please share it with a friend or loved one. And as always, we're grateful for you, our valued listening community. This has been The Light Inside. I'm Jeffrey Besecker.