I believe most definitions of depression don’t do it justice.  For me it is a pervasive psychic pain, so inhumane that at its worse, I curl up into a tight ball to escape it, but there is no contraction powerful enough to crush it.  Fortunately, I spend only about 3% of my time there, although at some points in my life it has been much more.  Approximately, another 15% of the time the pain mixes so intimately with anxiety, I can’t stop moving, but I can’t accomplish anything either. I can’t sit down I can’t focus, it’s as though my psyche has jumped up and is trying to escape the pain by running and hiding from it inside myself.  As you can see it’s totally an inside job.  At some point I will reach the shuffling stage, where I drag myself around trying to fix everything, on the exterior, I believe is deteriorating or out of control, another 15% of the possibility of enjoying life -vanished.  After a cycle of this or some combination anhedonia is a relief, although it holds no joy or comfort.  It is a step up out of the morass, where I can turn back into the robotic producer of results, provider of services, caretaker, organizer, teacher, all those things that make me look “normal” most of the time.  Normal, take a shower, put on my makeup, dressed up and smile-as normal as I get, but not very rewarding.  Who lives to look good?  At this point, I guess I do, about 65% of the time.  So, if you’re adding we’ve covered 98% of the terrain of my life.  Of course, if that’s all there was, I would only have a depressive type diagnosis, however, my behavior the other 2% of the time, has earned me a bipolar diagnosis. That’s when I’m energized, alarmingly social and behaving in a manner that would shock my mother, to say the least.  In fact, I’ve been known to shock myself.  Although I put myself in some extremely dangerous situations, during these forays into the other world, it’s the anhedonia that’s killing me. Overdosing on nothingness with no hope of escape. More meds please.  Diane

I love technical info:

Acute stress reduces reward
responsiveness: implications for depression
by
Bogdan R, Pizzagalli DA.
Department of Psychology,
Harvard University,
33 Kirkland Street, Cambridge,
MA 02138, USA.
Biol Psychiatry. 2006 Nov 15;60(10):1147-54. ABSTRACT

“BACKGROUND: Stress, one of the strongest risk factors for depression, has been linked to “anhedonic” behavior and dysfunctional reward-related neural circuitry in preclinical models. METHODS: To test if acute stress reduces reward responsiveness (i.e., the ability to modulate behavior as a function of past reward), a signal-detection task coupled with a differential reinforcement schedule was utilized. Eighty female participants completed the task under both a stress condition, either threat-of-shock (n = 38) or negative performance feedback (n = 42), and a no-stress condition. RESULTS: Stress increased negative affect and anxiety. As hypothesized based on preclinical findings, stress, particularly the threat-of-shock condition, impaired reward responsiveness. Regression analyses indicate that self-report measures of anhedonia predicted stress-induced hedonic deficits even after controlling for anxiety symptoms. CONCLUSIONS: These findings indicate that acute stress reduces reward responsiveness, particularly in individuals with anhedonic symptoms. Stress-induced hedonic deficit is a promising candidate mechanism linking stressful experiences to depression.  http://www.biopsychiatry.com/anhedonia.htm  “If you would just beat the crap out of the ___ who is threatening to shock you, depression would be unnecessary!   Diane

Remember when you had a dream of what you wanted to be when you grew up.  Someone or something had impressed you-a cowboy, a firemen, a doctor, a nurse.  Dreams are made of inspired energy and inspired energy moves people toward goals.  I never considered what I wanted to be when I grew up.  I was a child with no dreams, no aspirations and goals. Nothing felt exciting or rewarding.  I had few friends, but it didn’t seem important.  I went to school because my mother made me go to school.  I went to church because my mother made me go to church.  But wherever I was there seemed to be nothing for me, nothing that had meaning, value, excitement.  I took piano lessons and I was bored.  I took violin lessons and I was bored. I took clarinet lessons – I was bored.  My mother finally quit bothering me with lessons.  I didn’t feel lonely, because I have never had any particular desire to be around people, except to meet basic needs.  In my world, everything has been nothing forever.  The only way I know there is something different, something much better, on a few occasions, once for a couple hours once for a couple weeks and once for two months I have broken through to the real world where good feelings are available. 

Then there is the constant watching of people doing what is called having fun and not understanding why, even when I am participating I’m just watching, because “fun” is just a subjective feeling that I don’t have. I’ve tried all kinds of sports, adventurers, moves, changes, experiences and diversions. Most of them were okay, and most of them I have no particular interest in repeating.  Sometimes a line from a song runs through my head, “57 channels and nothing’s on”,  “57 channels and nothing’s on”,  “57 channels and nothing’s on”.  It is hard to have this condition, but I can imagine it must be so much more devastating to have been normal, to have been able to participate and lost it.
Diane

Welcome!  This whole site is devoted to anhedonia.  I believe it is the most undertreated and the most fatal symptom of mental illness.  So let’s start with a comprehensive definition, pieced together from various sources. 

Anhedonia