People with anhedonia can still cry, although people with anhedonia often also experience a reduced ability to cry, or even feel disconnected from the emotion when they do cry.
Anhedonia often makes people feel numb or empty, which results in a significant decrease in the ability to express sadness or joy through tears and some people with anhedonia find themselves unable to cry even during distressing situations, or if they do cry, the crying can feel forced.
Around 21 percent of people in a study with major depressive disorder and anhedonia reported being unable to cry.
The inability to cry in anhedonia is often a temporary symptom, and with treatment like through therapy and medication for the underlying depression or trauma, emotional range as well as being able to cry again can return.
Anhedonia is not brain damage, especially in the sense of any physical brain tissue destruction, although anhedonia can occur after a traumatic brain injury.
Instead of brain damage, anhedonia is a functional and often also reversible, disruption in your brain's reward system, which specifically involves dopamine pathways and areas your prefrontal cortex as well as the ventral striatum.
Anhedonia, while it does involve altered brain chemistry and function it is not considered brain damage itself.
Because anhedonia is often functional, the brain can rewire itself, and motivation as well as pleasure turn with the proper treatment, like through therapy, medication and lifestyle changes.
Anhedonia is a symptom of conditions like major depression, trauma or even schizophrenia and not just an inherent structural defect and imaging also shows reduced volume in the brains reward areas like nucleus accumbens and altered but not necessarily damaged connectivity between the brain regions and it's linked to reduced dopamine function that is involved in the drive and reward functions and serotonin balances.
In anhedonia, the brain's capacity to process anticipation, motivation and pleasure is also diminished.
If anhedonia is left untreated it can lead to severe and long term issues including intense social isolation, high risk of suicidal ideation, and deepened depression.
Untreated anhedonia creates a vicious cycle of worsening mental health and physical health, withdrawal, reduced motivation as well as chronic and strained relationships.
Left untreated, anhedonia often progresses into severe, major depressive disorder that is resistant to treatment, anxiety disorders as well as possible bipolar disorder.
And as a result of a lack of interest, people with untreated anhedonia and even when treated, often withdraw from family and friends, which results in deep and persistent loneliness and strained or even destroyed relationships.
And the lack of motivation with anhedonia can also result in neglecting self care, which can result in poor nutrition, chronic fatigue and significant weight changes, which can include weight loss.
And with untreated anhedonia life can begin to feel meaningless, completely empty or even grey, which can lead to a person feeling trapped in a hopeless state and the inability of a person with anhedonia to feel joy or purpose that persists can result in the person developing thoughts of suicide.
Anhedonia requires targeted treatment, like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy or specialized medications as Anhedonia often involves changes in brain chemistry, like lower dopamine levels.
The signs and symptoms of anhedonia include lack of motivation, social withdrawal, emotional numbness, persistent fatigue and reduced libido.
People that have anhedonia often also describe life as feeling muted or numb or in black and white.
The key behavioral and emotional signs of anhedonia are loss of interest and pleasure in hobbies and socializing, or eating of favorite foods no longer bring the person joy.
And social withdrawal like avoiding family, avoiding friends and social gatherings or losing interest in romantic relationships and reduced motivation and having a "meh" attitude toward life and having trouble starting tasks or feeling no desire to pursue goals and feeling dead inside or having a facial expression or body language which does not reflect any emotion.
Fatigue, low energy, sleep disturbances, like sleeping too much or sleeping too little are also signs of anhedonia.
People with anhedonia can still feel love and even care for other people.
While people with anhedonia may struggle to experience the warmth, pleasure or emotional high that is often associated with love they can still feel the love and care about others.
Anhedonia mainly disrupts a person's brain's reward system, which lead to emotional numbness, although it doesn't erase the cognitive or deep seated value that a person places on relationships.
Love is also a decision and while the feeling of love or excitement euphoria may be absent in people with anhedonia, people with anhedonia often retain the capacity for love as a conscious decision and maintain commitments to partners, family and friends.
Anhedonia can also cause a feeling of being broken or even emotionally distant, where one might not feel the joy of being with loved ones, although still care deeply about their well being.
And as a result of the lack of reward from social interaction, people that have anhedonia may withdraw or even feel like they're going through the motions, which can also be mistaken for them not caring.
And people that have anhedonia may also lose the capacity for physical pleasure which is physical anhedonia, while they still possess a desire for emotional connection which is social anhedonia and vice versa.
To know if you have anhedonia a clinician can do tests for anhedonia which includes the Snaith-Hamilton Pleasure Scale (SHAPS) or the Temporal Experience of Pleasure Scale (TEPS) tools for testing for anhedonia.
These tests for anhedonia are questionnaires that focus on measuring your interest in hobbies, social interaction, food and sensory experiences.
The SHAPS Questionnaire for anhedonia is a commonly 14 item scale which rates agreement with statements that regard pleasure in various situations.
Clinicians when testing for anhedonia may also use interviews to distinguish between social anhedonia and physical anhedonia.
Anhedonia is also often a symptom of major depression, schizophrenia or even other mental health conditions, which prompts a broader diagnostic evaluation.
Anhedonia is also closely linked to bipolar disorder, trauma, substance use and depression.
Anhedonia is also often tied to disruptions in brain reward systems that involve neurotransmitters like dopamine.
Anhedonia is the reduced ability to experience pleasure and the common signs of anhedonia include.
Loss of interest in activities, hobbies or social events that you once enjoyed but with anhedonia these things no longer bring you pleasure like they used to.
Emotional numbness, which is a feeling of being gray or disconnected from emotions, reduced motivation and a lack of drive to engage in social, sexual or physical activities and faking emotions like pretending to be happy or pretending to be excited in social situations are also common symptoms in people with anhedonia.