Okay so Jack Black… first I’ll start with saying that “permanent” is often a weasel word in research articles, in the sense it’s used as long lasting, but not irreversible. Not even sure if they are making it on purpose, but it’s clear plenty of people have gotten their brain back to full functioning when off psychiatric drugs after a couple months to a year. The rate at which they get better depends on how stressful their environment or mindset is, and the number of good habits they participate in.
Concerning apathy and anhedonia… please stop with the labels. I wasted so much much time researching about it just to realize it was pointless to try to diagnose myself with something when emotional numbness is marked as a symptom of depression, depersonalization disorder, bipolar, autism spectrum, and negative symptoms of schizophrenia… diagnosis are commercial pharmaceutical tools used to give you a psychiatric treatment plan, but in reality many symptoms overlap.
Now, drugs, and/or excessive stress, the two things that brought pretty much everyone into anhedonia in the first place. That’s just facts. But what is the first instinct for someone that becomes severely anhedonic? Stress heavily over it, or take drugs to relieve suffering short term. Except I’d say people that keep taking drugs of whatever kind (including supplement/nootropics), have a worse long term outlook. Sure they might be better for a little, but not really reaching a point where they feel as good as they used to when not hit by mental illness, or not long-lasting. See, boredom and suffering are necessary to some extent for recovery. Feeling good and being motivated are primordial human aspects of survival, and there is no way your brain will not aim to fix itself if you let it. Your biology works for you, but by overly obsessive over your mental health, or drugging yourself and playing with your chemicals, you are interfering with that process.
-Exercise puts stress on the body, and your body adapts by building more muscle.
-SSRIs help relieve suffering from depression and anxiety, but makes people numb (degree varies)
-People that push themselves to study in a field which is hard for them, as they keep at it the studying will become easier and they will get good at that field
-People get a feeling of relaxation after they cry
-Not sure if you noticed, but if you’re severely anhedonic and go trough excessive stress for whatever reason, after that period is over you’ll be less numb than usual for a bit.
-Someone with bipolar and manic, will inevitably crash
-Tolerance/withdrawals are inevitable with stimulants, psychiatric drugs etc…
Rise and fall, fall and rise.
Besides not drugging yourself, it’s also important you do not feed your symptoms, what you decide to put your mind’s attention on has much more influence than you may think on how you feel, same with your environment. A trait a lot of people with anhedonia have is, they spend too much time in their mind, not enough in the present moment. The longer this has been going on, the more awkward or unnatural it may be to start being instinctive again, but practice makes perfect. If you are feeling like crap, your mind is most likely being overactive at the same time. Working on calming your thoughts, and trying to relax is the best healthy way to feel better while not playing with your chemicals. Thing is it might be hard, the worst you feel the more time or effort it might take, but try not to see it as an effort and reach for your instinctive side you lost. It’s why meditation is famous for making people feel emotions out of nowhere, help in lessening anhedonia in people with mental illness, while also improving concentration, and awareness. You could try it now… lay down somewhere, focus on the sounds, smells around you, aim to forget about anything you’re thinking about, and try to just feel things. You’ll find you have the ability to pierce that barrier of numbness to your environment you subconsciously put on yourself. Piercing that numbness to your environment helps calm your thoughts and make you feel better. Like I said, emotions are pure and lie on being immersed in reality. Drugs and stress mess up with your biology and can give artificial highs, but messing up your balance. You need to train your brain to restore that balance, like someone that suffered from a stroke. It can come much quicker than you may think, just depends how much you dedicate yourself to it. Effects can be instant if you do it right, but may not last so long unless you keep at it as your brain still is addicted to the homeostasis you’re currently at. So yeah, the more severe your anhedonia is, the harder it may be, but you technically have the ability to.
Life is also about tolerance. Your biology always works to adapt to stress, do you feel like exercising? Do you feel like socializing or studying or working? Likely not because overthinking makes people unmotivated, but if you push yourself and just “do it” you’ll develop tolerance to that effort. The more you do something, the easier it becomes. It’s just how life works. The thing is, at least when you are doing something, you are occupied, leaving less room for unproductive, detrimental mind chatter. I said stress is toxic, well only the kind that gives you too much room to analyse everything negatively. Find something that you can get immersed in, that keeps you busy. The key is to get occupied, to find something that catches your attention, doesn’t leave you room to ruminate. Of course you’ll need to put a bit in effort into that because it will feel unnatural. If something is too stressful, you’ll ruminate. So hard work probably not at first… but still you’ll need to learn to keep busy in life and lessen rumination. Maybe me addressing concerns might help in calming that rumination, so it’s why I’m writing this. (Sorry for all the repetitions)
It’s no wonder that doctor that offers SPECT scans inevitably will recommend you to get into meditation, but at least if you get that SPECT scan, since you’ve been deep into finding biological explanations for everything, then it might help calm your mind to have someone working on the field of neuroscience tell you it’s what you need to do. Honestly though, you don’t need that SPECT scan, I believe I’m making enough sense here, maybe for me to be more convincing in your mind I should link research articles on how environmental factors affect us biologically (genes, hormones, thyroid, neurotransmitters, digestion, immune system), speaking in scientifically terms, or maybe link multiple testimonies from people getting full long term remission from severe anhedonia/apathy naturally. Blaming genetics for every biological abnormality found is ridiculous, before talking about genetics one should learn how genes work. For now I’ll just link this, but I could develop my point much further if you want:
>https://www.ncbi.nlm...les/PMC3420737/ (is not only relevant to people with autism and worth reading, although technically anhedonia could be diagnosed as asperghers, and no I’m not trying to give you a diagnosis).
“Meditation is a conscious process of self-regulation that tempers the flow of thoughts, emotions, and automatic behaviors in the body and mind. In our accomplishment-driven society, the human brain constantly receives and processes countless pieces of information from the outside world that are contradictory, opposing, and threatening to the organism. As a result, the brain commands a stress response in the body that recruits defense mechanisms and demands high expenditure of energy resources that can severely tax the body in the long run. It is now recognized that cognitive stress is linked to accelerated cellular aging and DNA degeneration [25, 94] that can span generations [95–98]. Furthermore, research suggests that practically every chronic disease of the western world is caused or triggered by stress, particularly in early life”
A normal life for a normal brain.
Edited by Deaden, 13 July 2018 - 08:29 PM.