if you've ever had depression you know how it can sap any sense of reward
or enjoyment or pleasure out of life it's something we call anhedonia
and in today's video i'll be talking about what you can do to overcome anhedonia
hi everyone in today's video i'm going to be talking about part two of this mini series on
anhedonia and talking about ways to help cope with this really troubling
and upsetting symptom of depression but before i get into that just a couple of disclaimers to
go over i'm a registered psychologist in the province of british columbia canada and this
video is for informational purposes only it is not intended as a substitute or replacement for advice
from your doctor or mental health professional now with those things out of the way let's start
talking about how to cope with anhedonia so as i've talked about in a previous video anhedonia
is a common symptom found in depression and at its core it's a loss of interest and pleasure
in almost all of your usual activities so things that you used to enjoy doing things that you used
to feel really motivated and excited about doing you just don't enjoy anymore you just don't get
any sense of pleasure or reward out of and so the question becomes if you're experiencing anhedonia
what can you do about it so i don't feel any pleasure or reward out of these things
how do i bring that pleasure and reward back into my life so the first step and it might sound a bit
strange or a bit uncomfortable to take this step is is actually a step of acceptance
to accept what anhedonia is and to accept that if you're experiencing anhedonia
that you can't force yourself to feel anything oftentimes when i'm working with my clients
they get really down on themselves they get really upset with themselves
uh for having anhedonia right so i'm dealing with a parent and they don't enjoy they don't get
any sense of enjoyment or reward out of playing with their children anymore and they get really
down on themselves and they tend to beat themselves up over the fact that if they
were a good parent they wouldn't have to try and force themselves to enjoy playing with their kids
i find that clients will beat themselves up over the fact that they don't really want to
go out with their friends they don't have any interest or desire to go out anymore and they
they get down on themselves for not returning text messages or phone calls or declining invites
to do social activities because they just don't feel like it well if you have anhedonia
that's what's driving this lack of interest or pleasure it's not a character flaw it's not
something wrong with you that you don't want to do these things it's a symptom of depression and so
part of this and the first step is to kind of give yourself a break if you're experiencing anhedonia
so somewhere along the lines we picked up this notion that that mental health
and mental health difficulties were kind of a character flaw or a sign of weakness
and the way out of it is to just be stronger well if you're experiencing anhedonia you can't just
be stronger you can't just force yourself to feel things because if we had control over our emotions
we would never choose to be depressed or anxious we just always choose to be happy
and satisfied but we don't control directly how we feel and so the first step in overcoming
anhedonia is to accept that it's there and that um it's part of the depression and not
a sign of a character flaw or not a sign of you being a bad parent or you being a bad friend or
that there's something inherently and characteristically wrong with you
so that's the first step accepting the anhedonia so understanding what
it is understanding that it's a symptom of depression and not uh something wrong with you
so once you've done that once you've kind of accepted that and aren't beating yourself up about
having the anhedonia the second step is to just focus on behavior just doing an activity so if
you used to enjoy painting and you get no sense of pleasure or reward or interest in painting anymore
the way to overcome the anhedonia is to just start painting again and to do this in small steps um
and i've done a video on goal setting to help give you a model for understanding how you can actually
set up these these realistic practical goals even if you're not feeling motivated to do these things
so the idea is to resume painting and it may just start with you know what spending five minutes
painting and you may feel nothing while you do it you may not enjoy it one bit but the key is just
keep focusing on doing it because that's what you have control over just focus on the doing
not the feeling right this is where people will often get tripped up is that okay i'll do the
five minutes of painting but in that five minutes of painting i want to experience that that spark
that i used to have and so i do the five minutes of painting but i don't experience the spark
it's a failure no it's not a failure because the goal and the focus is just on doing the behavior
just the five minutes of painting and you do that for a little bit and then you maybe bump it up to
10 minutes of painting and then 15 minutes of painting and you give yourself opportunities
to re-engage in these behaviors re-engage in these activities that you used to enjoy doing
that you don't enjoy doing anymore so that's the second step is um so you've accepted the anhedonia
the second step is to just start engaging in these behaviors in these activities again and
the third step in terms of overcoming anhedonia is perseverance perseverance and continuing
with doing these activities that you used to enjoy even though you don't enjoy doing them
so this is where a lot of my clients will start to push back on me and will say okay look
i can mindlessly just sit down and paint for five minutes i can return
the text message to my friend or even go out for coffee with my friend once every couple of weeks
i can go for that 15-minute hike in the forest but if i'm not enjoying it
if i'm not having any fun doing it if it feels like a chore or it feels exhausting
to do why should i continue to do it isn't the point of these activities to enjoy them
yes the point of the activities is to enjoy them but this is how you bring that enjoyment back
so the metaphor i like to use to explain what's going on here is to imagine one of
those old-fashioned water pumps and you've got this water pump at the top of a well
and there's water way down and you want to try and bring that water uh up to the the spout of
the old-fashioned water pump and so uh when you first start the water's right down at the
bottom of the well there's no water sort of has gone up the pipe the the pump hasn't been primed
and so the idea is you have to pump the handle of the water pump
and as you're pumping the handle of the water pump there's no water coming out
well there's no water coming out because the water is at the bottom of the well
and so it's going to take a lot of pumping to draw the water up the well but the more you pump
the more you're doing that work it is actually bringing the water up even though you can't
see it even though you can't see that it's doing anything these are actually critically important
steps in order to get that water to come out from the well and so you keep pumping and pumping and
pumping and you're thinking what is the point of doing all of this pumping i just need the
water i just want the water but i'm doing this pumping and i'm not getting any water
the more you pump eventually the water will come but you have to do all that work without any water
in order for you to finally get the water to come out at the spout at the uh at the top of the well
it's the same with these types of re-engaging in activities that you used to enjoy doing
to overcome anhedonia you may do these activities and feel nothing
while you do them you may not get any sense of enjoyment out of doing them but eventually
if you persevere if you continue to just engage in these activities eventually
the reward the pleasure the enjoyment and the motivation will return you just need to prime
that pump and it may mean doing things that you should enjoy and not enjoying them at all but keep
doing them and persevere in continuing to do them eventually the reward and the enjoyment will come
and so i i think it's important to think about recovering from depression and recovering
from anhedonia as kind of a a series of changes that happen at different times
so think of it kind of like a train the engine of the train is your behavior your behavior is
what pulls this train forward so the behavior is the first thing to change you engage in the
activities you start going for regular 15-minute walks in the forest don't feel anything at first
but then gradually over time as you continue to do this what i find typically happens is people
start to experience and to start to re-experience a sense of enjoyment in it so the enjoyment or
the pleasure in the activity returns or starts to return being pulled by the behavior so the second
car of this train is that sense of enjoyment or reward so while i'm doing the activity
i enjoy it so um as i'm going for this hike i start to notice that you know what it is
nice to get out into the fresh air and i start to feel that sense of why i used to enjoy doing this
but i can have that enjoyment while i'm doing the activity but still not feel motivated to do
the activity so when i'm outside of or when i'm not engaging in that hike i may still feel like
i don't really want to go for a hike i just i just don't have any motivation or interest in doing it
but eventually the more you do it the more you change the behavior the more you engage in the
behavior the more the sense of the reward or enjoyment comes where you're doing the behavior
eventually then the third car that gets that gets pulled here by this train is the sense of
motivation and drive to want to do this so the anhedonia lifts in kind of like three stages
one is the behavior then the next step the next thing that tends to lift is the enjoyment while
you do the behavior and the next thing that tends to lift after that is the motivation and interest
to want to do the behavior so um this is a really important understand because for a lot of people
they have this perception of why we engage in activities how motivation and behavior works or
motivation interest works the idea is for most people they think i'll feel motivated to do
something and when i'm motivated to do something then i'll actually do it so for a lot of people
their understanding of motivation is the motivation comes first
then it's followed by the action but what we know is that that's kind of backwards it's actually
action that happens first and the motivation follows the action so um one way of thinking about
it is if you've ever played a musical instrument right so when you first start to learn to play a
musical instrument you're probably not all that motivated or interested in doing it maybe you
are at first maybe you like the idea of playing the trumpet or playing the piano i really want to
engage in playing the piano but when you first start to do it
it feels kind of awkward or uncomfortable or you realize you're not really good at it or it doesn't
sound really good it sounds kind of terrible and it's so much work and it's so much effort and you
don't really enjoy doing it you don't really want to do it but the reason you're doing it is because
your piano teacher is coming over uh in a few days and you have to practice this otherwise the piano
teacher's not going to be particularly happy with you and so you're engaging in playing piano but
you kind of have to force yourself or push yourself to do it because it's not really that
inherently rewarding or enjoyable at first because you don't really know what you're doing
but over time as the more you do it the more you practice it the better you get at it
the greater sense of confidence in your ability and the more confident in your ability the more
you feel like you're actually progressing the more you feel like you're actually getting better
well what that happens then you start to enjoy it and you start to look forward
to doing it and so the motivation actually begins to occur at that point and you start
to look forward to practicing piano rather than something that you used to dread
or used to just have to do in order for your piano teacher not to be upset with you
but over time the motivation has now come and so you really look forward to it and really
enjoy it so motivation does not precede action it's actually action that precedes motivation
and that is the key to overcoming anhedonia it's the behavior it's the action it's the doing these
activities that used to be enjoyable that's going to bring back the motivation but it takes
acceptance of the anhedonia it takes effort in terms of the behavior and it takes perseverance
in terms of continuing to do that behavior even though you may not enjoy doing it
but understanding that the reason you continue to do it in spite of the fact that you don't enjoy
doing it is because eventually the water is going to come from that well eventually the reward and
the enjoyment is going to come back eventually the motivation and the drive is going to come back so
those are the key steps in terms of overcoming anhedonia and so if you want to learn more about
um goal setting and how to actually change your behavior or to re-engage in these activities
in a way that's sustainable uh check out the the goal setting videos because they
can really help give you some practical steps for what to do there so i hope this video has
been helpful in terms of giving you a sense of how to overcome anhedonia i'd love to hear your
thoughts or comments about this so please leave me some comments in the comments section down
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thank you for making it all the way to the end of this video and i will see you in the next one