{"id":4456,"date":"2018-09-10T16:19:44","date_gmt":"2018-09-10T14:19:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/?p=4456"},"modified":"2021-01-18T18:00:11","modified_gmt":"2021-01-18T17:00:11","slug":"anhedonia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/2018\/09\/10\/anhedonia\/","title":{"rendered":"Anhedonia"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve been going through a phase of depression. I’m familiar with the signs and symptoms, and how they manifest for me specifically. (I keep a checklist of my idiosyncrasies that don’t get covered on the standard lists. I get disproportionately sensitive to and upset by bad smells, for example.) It has happened before, and it will happen again. Until now I have always managed to deal with it by working with a therapist, focused on cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT)<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This year it has been different, and worse. It kinda snuck up on me. (Or rather: it probably always sneaks up on me. This time it just came from an unfamiliar angle.) April was when one piece of realization clicked into place. I read Cate Huston’s blog entry Whose Expectations are Those, Anyway?<\/a>, in which she talked about Gretchen Rubin’s Four Tendencies<\/a> framework. It’s an understatement to say that I’m not a fan<\/em> of reductive personality summaries, and I should withhold judgement until I’ve actually read the book. But the brief description of the “obliger” type fit me distressingly well. I was distressed.<\/p>\n

Obligers respond to expectations from other people. They struggle meeting their own expectations.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Expectations<\/em> is something I have always struggled with, specifically: living up to what I imagine<\/em> other people’s expectations are for me. It’s a key point I keep coming back to in therapy, year after year. At its worst, it chases me out of jobs: over time I become so terrified that people will expect me to be knowledgeable, that I can’t open my inbox for fear of what my colleagues might ask of me. I get scared of being visible on chat, and of receiving text messages, in case a friend wants to meet up for lunch. My value system associates being a good person with helping other people, and being generous with my time and attention. But I’m not very good at setting limits to how much of myself I give away, or at telling when I’m all used up.<\/p>\n

Looking back, I’ve been in a constant state of “used up” for quite a while. There are reasons I got into in that state. The hard emotional work of the last couple of years was necessary, and I don’t begrudge it. But I’m in my mid-40s now, and I don’t have the energy of a 20 year-old. I also didn’t (don’t) have the boundaries and emotional defences in place to deal with saying “no” to requests that are perfectly reasonable for the people asking them, but are more than I feel I can handle. I’m very good at concealing my feelings, and putting on a show of being just fine: Of course I’ll help. I may be stressed, but I’m dealing with it. I’m working hard, but staying cheerful.<\/p>\n

Pretending to be me.<\/p>\n

2018 was all about stumbling on, feeling ever more burned out. The negative thoughts piled up and up, and made it hard to concentrate on everyday tasks. Interruptions would upset me, and irritations would quickly grow into simmering anger. Keeping a lid on my feelings, and putting on a brave face \u2014 both in person, and on chat \u2014 kept taking more effort, until it felt like that was all<\/em> I was doing. Just like when you repeat a word over and over again until it loses meaning, the smiles I faked and the cheer I portrayed became disconnected from actual emotions, and associated with mere pretense.<\/p>\n

If I watched a movie, I could say<\/em> that I enjoyed it, but what did I mean by that? Did I actually feel anything resembling pleasure? No. I was making a robotic assessment of its qualities, and translating that into what Martin would have said. When I visited Edinburgh, I would go to familiar restaurants and caf\u00e9s. I would order my “favourites”, because that’s what Martin does, and wonder if this blend of sweet and umami is what “tasty” felt like. I went to concerts because Martin already had a ticket and I shouldn’t waste it, not because I wanted to go. (What does “want” feel like, anyway?) And then I stood there seething whenever someone inevitably came and stood in front of me, blocking my line of sight.<\/p>\n

And then lying about it. Was I looking forward to this or that? Yes. (What does “looking forward” even mean? I don’t understand.) Do I love you? What does love mean? Am I feeling anything right now? I don’t want to be hurtful, but I don’t want to say something I’m not sure is true. For months, the only emotions I genuinely<\/em> felt were fear, dread, disgust, and “do not want”, and these are exactly the things I don’t generally talk about. So I didn’t talk. I kept myself flat, and I shut down.<\/p>\n

(This is probably why I found the TV show Travelers<\/i> so compelling<\/a>. The theme of sudden personality change, and how the people around them react to it.)<\/p>\n

When Scott Hutchison<\/a>, and Anthony Bourdain<\/a> committed suicide in May and June, their deaths hit me hard. I don’t have suicidal thoughts. There are so many things out in the world to do and see and hear (even though I might not “want” to do them right now), that I’d be really annoyed if I died before I got to them. But during depressive episodes I do want things to go away, or to end. I go to bed abnormally early, just so I can stop being conscious. And I wonder what it would be like to walk away from this life, leaving everything behind. Even though I don’t act on it, realistically I have that freedom. I wonder if Scott Hutchison and Anthony Bourdain acted the way they did because they felt like they didn’t<\/em> have that freedom. I’m sad for them.<\/p>\n

Abi eventually introduced me to the term “anhedonia”<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Anhedonia is a diverse array of deficits in hedonic function, including reduced motivation or ability to experience pleasure. While earlier definitions of anhedonia emphasized the inability to experience pleasure, anhedonia is used by researchers to refer to reduced motivation, reduced anticipatory pleasure (wanting), reduced consummatory pleasure (liking), and deficits in reinforcement learning. In the DSM-V, anhedonia is a component of depressive disorders, substance related disorders, psychotic disorders, and personality disorders, where it is defined by either a reduced ability to experience pleasure, or a diminished interest in engaging in pleasurable activities. While the ICD-10 does not explicitly mention anhedonia, the depressive symptom analogous to anhedonia as described in the DSM-V is a loss of interest or pleasure.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s a symptom, not a condition in itself \u2014 there’s no drug or treatment for it, but it is characteristic of depression. Like when I read Cate’s article in April, this was a very “it me” moment.<\/p>\n

In June and July I also interviewed for a couple of jobs, and one of them came through with an offer. In 2010 I left my job at Skyscanner partly because I was in a trough of depression. Even though in the long term that worked out okay, I had long told myself that I shouldn’t do that again. Leaving a job is a way to break out of a depressive cycle at work, but that’s also when my sense of self-worth is at its worst. So that’s not a great time to be interviewing. Especially when the anhedonia was making it impossible for me to really say if I genuinely wanted<\/em> any of the opportunities I was pursuing.<\/p>\n

July was a crisis time at work, a crisis time between me and Abi, and a crisis time for myself and my own identity. During one of the interviews I got asked the question: what would you do if you won the lottery and didn’t have to work any more? I found this hard to answer honestly, because the whole concept of wanting something<\/em> felt utterly alien to me. I used to think that I would go back to university and study some more, but I’m not that person any more. In fact, I’m not even sure what kind of person I am now. I don’t know what I want or like in something as simple as a movie or a meal, let alone in my future career. So the answer I ultimately gave was: I would take some time to deliberately not do<\/em> things, so that I could re-learn what I enjoy in life, and to rebuild myself from the ground up.<\/p>\n

I didn’t get that job, but the question and my answer stuck with me. For the first time in a long while I had discovered something I actually wanted, even needed<\/em>: some time free of obligations and expectations. Time in which I didn’t have to regularly do<\/em> anything in particular, with the inevitable anhedonic realization that \u2014 no matter what it is \u2014 I don’t actively “want” to do it. (Which dovetails with the depressive spiral in which I feel trapped by having to do things I don’t want to do.) Having gone through a similar thing with Fiona last year, I’m very aware of how time<\/em> plays a part in recovering from mental health problems.<\/p>\n

We already had some holiday time scheduled over the summer, and we had consciously chosen not to go anywhere this year. But even holiday time comes with an expectation that it’s limited and precious. I needed to break out of that. I’m fortunate to work for a company that cares a lot about the mental health of its staff. I talked to my manager and tried to explain what was going on in my head. I felt there were three paths open to me: quit and move to the new job I had been offered (taking some time off before starting there), take some unpaid leave from my current job, or the Hard Brexit option of just quitting entirely and figuring things out later. My manager was extremely supportive, and immediately paved the way for me to take some sabbatical leave, right after my holiday. I’ll be staying with FanDuel when I return.<\/p>\n

So that’s where I am now. I’m tackling the depression from three angles: therapy, medication (the first time I’ve tried that), and time off work. The term “sabbatical” brings to mind the idea of undertaking projects I wouldn’t have time for otherwise. I suppose that’s true, in the sense that the project I’m working on is me<\/em>. As I’ve alluded to in recent<\/a> posts<\/a>, my strategy is to pay close attention to my own feelings (mindfulness<\/a>) and to learn to recognize when there is a glimpse of something I enjoy, or want to do. And then pursue that feeling and see where it leads. I started out by calling it “finding my joy”, but Abi coined the phrase “chasing Tinkerbell”, which is much more evocative.<\/p>\n

Sometimes it’s taking a walk to watch the crows and magpies defend their roosts. One day, I felt like browsing second-hand furniture shops, and I came home with a lovely comfortable chair I spotted for \u20ac35 that feels rewarding every time I sit in it. I’m starting to play the bass guitar. When I wake up in the morning, after going to the toilet I crawl back under a warm duvet for a while and savour the contrast of a cool breeze from the open window. I’m trying to resist the idea that all of this is selfish and self-indulgent, and that I should<\/em> be working and should<\/em> be using my time more productively. With the help of my family and friends and therapist I’m succeeding at least some of the time.<\/p>\n

\"New
My new old chair. \u20ac35<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I still feel numb to most things. But I’m in a place right now where the potential for negative emotions has been reduced to the point where I can at least detect<\/em> moments of positive emotion, and try to encourage them. I’ve changed the signal-to-noise ratio in my favour. I’m not “better”. But I think it’s helping.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve been going through a phase of depression. I’m familiar with the signs and symptoms, and how they manifest for me specifically. (I keep a checklist of my idiosyncrasies that don’t get covered on the standard lists. I get disproportionately sensitive to and upset by bad smells, for example.) It has happened before, and it … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Anhedonia”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4456"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4456\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5001,"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4456\/revisions\/5001"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}