There is a term used in psychiatry called anhedonia, and it refers to being unable to experience pleasure in normally enjoyable activities. It can be associated with depression and other mood disorders, but I would go so far as placing it in its own category of mental disorder. The reason I would separate it out is that anhedonia seems to supplant other emotional or psychological states and becomes the predominant setting for the individual suffering from it. But suffering is not exactly the right word, because from the anhedonic person’s perspective, they really aren’t feeling anything. There is an emotional void that is vaguely disturbing, but general indifference to life renders the person incapable of really caring. In describing anhedonia, I am reminded of an episode of “The Simpsons” where Homer is about to tell Bart and Lisa that he needs triple-bypass heart surgery.
Bart: "Nothing you say can upset us. We're the MTV generation."
Lisa: "We feel neither highs or lows."
Homer: "Really? What's it like?"
Lisa: (shrugging her shoulders) "Meh."
“Meh” pretty much sums up the anhedonic state of being. The reason why I bring this all up is that for the past couple of weeks I have been stuck in an emotional no-man’s-land. As you may have noticed however, I have been writing some fairly bleak entries that give the appearance that I am quite miserable. Strangely, I am not miserable. In fact I have been writing with such detachment that I almost don’t know what it is I am trying to convey. I don’t seem to care about anything, and I am simply going through the motions of living. I do keep a routine: working out, going to work, walking the dogs, etc. But all of this is done on autopilot, and the work that I have been able to accomplish is minimal enough to be essentially nonexistent. Again, I don’t feel the motivation to do anything, and at the same time I don’t exactly not want to do anything either. Outside factors are dragging me along, and I am willing to accept this because the alternative is to remain complete indolent.
I am aware that this is no way to live, but no alarm bells are ringing in my head warning me of the danger. Instead, I am relying on rational thought to force myself into action, which, in itself is ironic given that the underlying issue is an emotional deficit. However, humans are driven by emotional imperatives. Whether it is fear or love or hate, emotions compel us into action, and without them life is literally meaningless. So my dilemma is finding a way to regain a sense of conviction and motive while I am mired in this emotional dead-zone.
The psychologist’s approach would be to try to identify the causative agent or agents that first put in this anhedonic crisis. After a moment of self-reflection I believe that I have done just that. It seems to me that what made me stop caring about anything was a confluence of negative events that reinforced the notion that everything can be lost, therefore it is best not to care.
First it was the temporary loss of my health insurance and a paycheck due to an administrative screw-up that took 3 months to fix. Then it was the car accident that destroyed my brand new car. Now so far, these are just material losses; ultimately, they are of little consequence, disconcerting, but superficial. So the truly precipitating event to my loss of emotions has to be much more substantive, and I am almost certain of its identity. Not surprisingly it has to do with an interpersonal relationship or, more accurately, the lack thereof.
I have hinted at in a previous post that I have never been in a meaningful relationship with anyone. Admittedly, this is entirely due to my own personal problems that have driven a wedge between me and most “normal” people. In addition, I gave up trying after one failed attempt at starting such a relationship, so the onus as to why I am alone is on me. But, being a human, and more pertinently, a male human, I occasionally find myself attracted to certain women. Generally, I do not act on such feelings, but a couple of years ago my defenses were broken by someone who I thought was like me. She told me things about herself that sounded so similar to my own fractured life that I couldn’t help but think that maybe I had found someone who could understand me. I didn’t know that she was really just holding up a metaphorical mirror so that I saw part of myself in her, and all the while she was playing a sick game with me. She craved the attention that I poured on her, but she kept me at such a distance that there was no relationship beyond me trying to get closer to her. That isn’t a relationship; it’s manipulation. I eventually woke up and realized that there was something wrong, and I asked her flat out if there could ever be anything between us. She lied to my face, and I knew it. When I stopped giving her the same amount of attention as before she dropped me like a used up gift card. Later I learned that almost everything she had told me about herself was fiction, created to string me along, and this hurt me so deeply that I shut down inside. Why care about anything or anyone when the concern may be misplaced or built on a lie and there was always the chance for loss?
My experiences affected my psyche more than I was consciously aware of, and as a result, I slowly and stealthily suppressed the emotional circuits of my mind. And here I am today, in a void and without any sense of meaning or purpose. Now it is truly pathetic that I could be so decimated by something that never really existed, but keep in mind that all of this occurred to a person with underlying mental issues. True, a more balanced person would be momentarily hurt and then move on, but in someone with chaotic swings between utter despair and modest unhappiness, these insults become super-destructive. Eventually, the person’s mental state becomes removed from the cause, and it becomes an entity unto itself. This is no longer about what happened to me; this is simply where I find myself now. I don’t know if I can go as far as to say that I am permanently broken, but currently I see no fix in sight. At this point I would welcome feeling misery; at least I’d be feeling something.
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