People who experience anhedonia have lost interest in activities they used to enjoy and have a decreased ability to feel pleasure. It’s a core symptom of major depressive disorder, but it can also be a symptom of other mental health disorders. Some people who experience anhedonia don’t have a mental disorder.
Social anhedonia is a disinterest in social contact and a lack of pleasure in social situations. Physical anhedonia is an inability to feel tactile pleasures such as eating, touching, or sex.
It’s also worth noting that some scientists believe anhedonia isn’t always a black-and-white issue. You might feel no joy at all, or you could find that your positive emotions are dulled. In other words, it’s possible to still like eating chocolate ice cream or listening to jazz; you just don’t like those things nearly as much as you used to for reasons you can’t explain.
If you are suffering from social or physical anhedonia, the article here guide you 16 useful ways to deal with anhedonia.
Bringing back to life charm
1. Take balanced nutrients
A balanced diet supplies the nutrients your body needs to work effectively. Without balanced nutrition, your body is more prone to disease, infection, fatigue, and low performance.
A balanced diet is a diet that contains differing kinds of foods in certain quantities and proportions so that the requirement for calories, proteins, minerals, vitamins and alternative nutrients is adequate and a small provision is reserved for additional nutrients to endure the short length of leanness and you will feel in good health to treat anhedonia.
2. Have good sleep
Sleep deprivation can disrupt our cognitive functions and exacerbate depression and anxiety. Excessive stress can make it hard to sleep at night, so it’s so common for people going through stressful situations to suffer from anhedonia and depression.
It would help if you tried to sleep and wake up at the same time every night and day so your body can develop a habit of going to sleep every night even when you can’t stop thinking about your problems that are causing you to feel stressed out. Try not to look at your phone before you go to sleep and take a warm shower before jumping into bed.
3. Maintain sleep pattern
To maintain and set the sleep cycle, it is essential for you to wake up and go to bed at the very same time. It helps the body to set internal clocks and re-tune the body to get better rest. To keep the body in harmony, avoid taking naps at an irregular time.
Getting good sleep is very important for your optimal health. It boosts people to battle anhedonia and feeling out of depression. Night sleep helps your brain work properly and increase the ability to take challenges of daily life.
4. Exercise
Regular exercise can improve sleep quality and duration. However, exercising immediately before bedtime can have a stimulant effect on the body and should be avoided. Try to finish exercising at least three hours before you plan to retire for the night to better deal with sleep changes.
Exercising regularly will clear your thoughts and improve your self-esteem. Exercising every day for at least 30 minutes can help you cope with stress. Take your dog for a walk if you don’t like lifting weights. That way, you and your dog can get healthy together! Exercising increases endorphins production, so it’s considered one of the best ways to cope with anhedonia. Once you get used to exercising, make a proper routine so that you can become more organized. Having an exercise routine will keep you motivated, and it’ll help you turn exercising into a habit.
5. Take nootropics
Nootropics and smart drugs are natural or synthetic substances that can be taken to improve mental performance in healthy people. Caffeine is arguably the most potent nootropic you can find, improving your alertness and focus while quickening your reaction times. When combined with L-Theanine, which counteracts most the adverse side effects, this is the best nootropic for getting things done and staying alert.
To fight with anhedonia and depression, nootropics provide quick treatment.
6. Pay attention to purpose of life
Whether you’re looking to set daily goals or searching for your true calling in life, you have to know what it is you’re working towards. Various steps can be taken to help you discover your purpose such as considering what you’re passionate about, things you love to do, what you’re good at, and praying and asking God to lead you to your purpose.
Paying attention to our purpose shouldn’t be a chore or something to schedule on our To-Do List! It should be a daily practice. Start making progress a habit! When it’s that important to you, you will make time for it! There is a time for everything and while there is nothing wrong with engaging in leisure activities that are relaxing and entertaining, don’t do them at the expense of your goals. Goals don’t achieve themselves. We make them happen! Don’t neglect your purpose! Give your purpose the attention it needs so that you can live the life you desire.
7. Keep social interaction
Existing is hard. But having meaningful connections with the people around you can make life more bearable, especially when you’re going through stressful situations. Having people in your life with whom you feel comfortable being yourself is one of the greatest treasures of life. Try to talk about meaningful things with your friends and family and understand them on a deeper level. Ask more questions and try to be more vulnerable around the people you want to bond with, so they can trust you.
Sharing social interactions with loved ones can help you in overcoming anhedonia and fight depression.
Pursuit of remodeling life
8. Behavioral therapy
Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) will be a popular style for many sources of anhedonia. CBT is frequently successful when treating depression, other mood disorders, substance use disorders, and even schizophrenia, so chances are good someone with anhedonia will have a trial of CBT.
9. Aerobic activity
Running, jogging and high intensity workout that raise the heart rate. It is all about get your heart pumping. As your heart starts pumping faster, you’ll start breathing more quickly, and the dead feeling of anhedonia will slowly fall away.
What’s happening is that physical activity activates your sympathetic nervous system, the body’s prompt to switch into high-gear, and a stress response is born. The stress response creates adrenaline which amps up your entire body and counteracts anhedonia’s numbed feeling of emptiness.
10. Strength training
Strength training exercise keep your heart rate up and puts tension on your muscles creates a protein that is very useful. It repairs damage in the brain just like other proteins repair damage to muscles after exercise. It grows more connections in the brain. Hence, it is beneficial in treating anhedonia.
11. Meditation
Meditation is the act of focusing on breathing or immediate surroundings as a way to calm the mind, release stress, and relax the body. It can be used to treat the symptoms of anhedonia as well.
Studies have also shown a correlation with frequent meditators and a decrease in cortisol, which allows the brain to regrow and to create and process serotonin and dopamine which decreases anhedonia symptoms.
12. Practice yoga
Study has shown that the brain’s gamma-aminobutyric (GABA) levels are higher after practicing yoga. Higher GABA levels are associated with lower levels of depression and anxiety. To put it simply, just 15 minutes of yoga a day can start changing your brain chemistry and improving your mood.
Interventions
13. Look for medical issue
Anhedonia is caused by many personal, social, or psychological factors. A mental health professional can help you understand and navigate your emotions. Treatment that includes psychotherapy in addition to antidepressant medication is often more effective than medication alone.
14. Anti-depressants
People who take antidepressant medications (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs) may find that anhedonia improves along with the rest of their depression symptoms, but that’s not always the case. Sometimes these medications blunt emotions and make this problem worse.
15. Talk therapy
Anhedonia is the result of dopamine deficits because the brain has a compromised ability to send and receive it. And unfortunately, even with all the hacks above, it takes time to reverse that. In the meantime, talk therapy can help someone learn coping skills that help them deal with anhedonia. By asking people to reflect and recall things that were pleasing to their senses, activation therapy is essentially trying to jumpstart/reboot (or re-activate) the connections in the brain’s reward center.
16. Electroconvulsive therapy
Anhedonia is a core symptom in major depressive disorder (MDD) resulting from maladaptive reward processing. Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) appears to be an effective treatment for MDD patients resistant to first-line pharmacological treatments. ECT involves a brief electrical stimulation of the brain while the patient is under anesthesia.
Summary
Anhedonia is associated with an inability to experience pleasure can impact your quality of life. Contact your doctor immediately if you feel this way. Once you start treatment, you should be able to start feeling pleasure again. Anhedonia usually goes away once depression is managed. Psychotherapy is the best option you may avail along with the ways described in article that is also helpful.
Moving forward with Psychotherapy
Fortunately, Ahealo.com offers a global ePsychotherapy platform that allows clients to book an online anonymous private appointment with a broad skill range of psychotherapists at an affordable cost and desired schedule.
Alternatively, if you need to seek psychotherapy, be sure to check out web.ahealo.com. Ahealo is an online psychotherapy platform with a diverse range of psychotherapists for many different fields of mental challenges. Ahealo provides ePsychotherapy at an affordable price, confidential, convenient (through a web page 1-1 private video call), and at your comfortable schedule.
With these options, we believe your weight change issues can be resolved soon.
Stay well.
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