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When Depression Steals Your Ability to Feel Anything (Anhedonia)

When your ability to feel joy, excitement, or even basic enjoyment disappears, it doesn’t just hurt your mood, it guts your entire operating system. You can still go through the motions: working, talking to people, cleaning the house, playing games, watching shows. But nothing lands.


You know these things are supposed to matter, but the feeling never shows up.

This loss of pleasure has a name: anhedonia. And it’s one of the most frightening, confusing, and isolating symptoms of depression. What makes it worse is that it often comes out of nowhere. No crisis, no trauma. Just a sudden flip of the brain’s switch, leaving you disconnected from your own life.


As a psychologist, I’ve learned that while anhedonia can’t be willed away, it can be disrupted. Not by waiting for insight or breakthroughs, but by stacking meaningful actions in ways that outmaneuver numbness.


The Night That Cracked the Wall


I was 17 or 18, depressed, shut down, socially anxious. My best friend wanted to start lifting weights. I didn’t want to, but I said yes. We had no plan, no idea what we were doing, but it became routine.


One night, after the gym, we were at my place with another friend. Pizza arrived. We were eating, laughing, playing Dynasty Warriors and suddenly this thought hit me:


“Because I went to the gym earlier, this pizza is actually helping me get stronger right now.”

It sounds small, but in that moment, everything clicked. For the first time in years, I felt alive again. I liked being around friends. I liked my body. I liked existing. It didn’t last forever, but it was real.


Why That Moment Worked


Looking back, it wasn’t just the gym, or the pizza, or the video game. It was all of them together, layered in a way that hit my system differently:


  • Time: Earlier effort (working out) made later reward (pizza, fun, connection) feel deeper.

  • Emotion: Achievement, pleasure, and connection stacked, creating a stronger response than any one emotion alone.

  • Investment: Because I’d earned it through effort, the enjoyment felt legitimate, not hollow.


That combination was strong enough to break through the wall of anhedonia, even if only for a while.


The Pattern That Helps Me Beat Numbness


Since then, I’ve learned that anhedonia can be hacked by creating layers of meaning in your day. Not just doing one thing and hoping it clicks, but stacking effort + reward + connection so they reinforce each other.


Some examples:


  • Yard work in the morning, then a bonfire in that same yard at night.

  • Cleaning the living room, then relaxing in the clean space with family.

  • Working out, then enjoying a meal or social time after.


The sequence matters. Effort first, enjoyment after. This way, pleasure becomes not just passive consumption but the harvest of something you planted earlier.


Outmaneuvering Anhedonia


Anhedonia doesn’t care how badly you want to feel better. But it can sometimes be outsmarted not with grand fixes, but with stacked, meaningful actions.


One thing alone won’t break through the numbness. But when you stack small investments, different emotions, and rewards that matter, you create cracks in the wall. And in those cracks, feeling can return.


Even if only for a moment, those moments matter. A lot.


If this resonates, I share more on how to outmaneuver anhedonia in my video below.


-Scott

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