Social and orgasmic anhedonia: how to deal with it

Recently, there has been an unfavorable tendency for the general mood level to decline. People have become more susceptible to stress and can no longer give themselves wholeheartedly to those joys of life that were once dear to them. This causes concern among psychiatrists. After all, they increasingly use the term "anhedonia" in practice, which is applicable to patients who have lost the ability to enjoy life and get pleasure from once-loved exciting activities.

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Causes anhedonia

We owe the origin of this term to the French psychologist Théodule Ribot, who first used this expression in relation to the symptoms of liver disease. A few years later, somewhere in the middle of the 20th century, anhedonia began to be considered as one of the symptoms of a mental disorder called schizophrenia and was attributed to emotional defects.

But schizophrenia is not the only pathology in which patients experience a dulled sense of joy and pleasure and a loss of motivation for activities that previously brought satisfaction. Psychiatrists have recorded anhedonia in patients with certain personality disorders, self-perception disorders, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder, and, of course, depression.

People with paranoid traits are also prone to anhedonia. The nervous system of such individuals is constantly under stress. Constant alertness and tension lead to exhaustion of the central nervous system. At some point, a defense mechanism is triggered and complete apathy to what is happening sets in. Paranoia and anhedonia are like 2 stages of one disease, and in this case, anhedonia can be considered a defense mechanism of the human psyche.

The word "anhedonia" itself consists of two parts: "an" is considered a negative prefix, and the word "hedonia" denotes a person's ability to receive pleasure. Thus, anhedonia should be considered as a person's inability to experience pleasure, satisfaction, joy.

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Risk factors

Certain personality traits can also be considered risk factors for the development of anhedonia: responsibility, independence, compassion, sensitivity.

Sometimes such a state can be recorded in people who are called conscientious or responsible. The desire to complete a task at any cost and do it perfectly gradually dulls the feeling of pleasure from the work being done. Over time, a person loses interest in the activity that previously attracted him, and doing the work through force (after all, a responsible person cannot not do the work) only worsens the condition and the person begins to react differently to many past joys or not react at all.

There is also a category of people who try to solve all their problems without outside help. They are characterized by a sense of self-flagellation, since they blame only themselves for any mistake. Failures knock the ground out from under the feet of this group of individuals, and they lose interest in their previous activities and life's joys, concentrating on unpleasant thoughts and memories.

Fighters for justice are also prone to manifestations of anhedonia, taking personal failures in this field and other people's sorrows to heart. By focusing on these moments, they stop seeing the positive aspects of what is happening. This leaves its mark on the attitude to events, people, and activities. Many situations begin to be perceived inadequately, in dark tones.

Anhedonia is also common among narcissists (self-loving people who demand the same love from others). Often, those around them do not share the narcissist's subjective opinion of themselves and cannot support their self-esteem, showering them with love for no reason. This leads the individual into despondency. At first, they may begin to feel hostility towards specific people, then towards society as a whole and life itself, which seems very unfair. Disappointment in people and life gradually leads to the loss of the ability to see the world in bright positive colors and to enjoy life.

People who do not know how to enjoy life also call pronounced pessimists who, due to their negative attitude to most events and the confidence that a person is not able to fix anything, gradually lose interest in both activities and communication. It is impossible to enjoy life if you see only the bad in everything and paint any events in dark tones.

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Pathogenesis

In psychiatry, there are two possible causes for the development of anhedonia: dysfunction of the organs that produce dopamine and disruptions in circadian rhythms. In both cases, a person experiences a decrease in reaction to those events and actions that in the past caused a feeling of joy and satisfaction. In this case, a person either shows very little interest in what is happening, or does not react at all to events that previously caused a sea of positive emotions.

The human body is a complex system, because all actions, feelings and reactions occur in it for a reason. We experience feelings of joy and satisfaction thanks to the pleasure centers, which produce special substances that are neurotransmitters: the hormone of joy dopamine (the biochemical ancestor of norepinephrine) and the hormone of happiness serotonin in combination with endorphins (polypeptide compounds similar in their action to morphine).

Although endorphins in normal quantities are not capable of causing positive emotions (their action is rather aimed at dulling pain), positive emotions are capable of causing a significant increase in the concentration of endorphins in the blood, which entails the emergence of a certain euphoria or ecstasy.

The three substances mentioned above are produced by different parts of the brain and other tissues of the body. For example, dopamine is synthesized in the adrenal glands, the midbrain area called the corpus black, the kidneys, serotonin - in some areas of the brainstem, endorphins - in the pituitary gland and hypothalamus. In addition, most of the dopamine and serotonin are produced by different areas of the gastrointestinal tract and the tissues surrounding it.

These substances are responsible for transmitting nerve impulses to the brain. If a certain event causes positive emotions in a person, his body begins to actively produce the corresponding neurotransmitters, thanks to which we can experience happiness, joy, pleasure.

The relationship between an event and the emotions it evokes is stored in the subconscious of a person, so every time a pleasant event is repeated, we experience similar emotions. Moreover, once the scheme “event → joy, pleasure” was imprinted in the brain, we will subconsciously strive to experience the same emotions. This will be a kind of motivation for action. According to this principle, a person develops hobbies, interests, and attachments.

So, scientists associate the development of anhedonia with insufficient secretion of dopamine in response to positive stimuli. And if the higher the level of this hormone, the brighter the emotions, then a decrease in the content of dopamine in the blood leads to apathy, indifference, loss of motivation for actions that should cause positive emotions.

As for the disruption of circadian rhythms (the so-called biological clock), a weak reaction to positive stimuli may be due to the fact that the body is in a state of low activity during wakefulness, which occurs at night. If the biological clock works normally, a person is active during the day and in a passive state at night. When the rhythm is disrupted, the period of activity may overlap the sleep cycle, and in this state, the reaction to stimuli weakens.

According to statistics, anhedonia has no sexual preference. But it mostly affects adults and the elderly (anhedonia often develops against the background of dementia). But here it is not so much age and gender that are important, but rather personality traits. Most often, people with borderline personality traits, prone to psychopathic reactions, suffer from anhedonia.

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Symptoms anhedonia

Anhedonia is not an acute pathology. Its symptoms appear gradually and are often simply ignored, being considered manifestations of stress. After all, it is quite possible that a decrease in interest in life and activity is caused by troubles at work and in the family, tragic situations (divorce, death of relatives), social troubles. Such manifestations can be both short-term and observed for a fairly long time, until the situation changes or the person begins to look at it differently.

The first signs of anhedonia, which are used to make a preliminary diagnosis, are a decrease in interest in a favorite job, hobby, any activity that previously aroused interest in a person and brought pleasure. At first, a person begins to treat such activities neutrally, without much desire, as if out of habit, doing the work, and then he may even quit his job, abandon his hobby. The individual becomes passive and is interested in little, not to mention showing joy.

Observing anhedonics from the outside, one can characterize them as follows:

• These individuals are quite withdrawn; active interaction with other people brings noticeable discomfort into their lives.
• They do not like to attend entertainment events because they consider it a waste of time.
• They are indifferent to art and literature.
• Such people do not divide days into good and bad, because the lack of ability to enjoy life makes them equally gray.
• They are incapable of genuinely laughing at a joke and do not share ordinary human joys and hobbies.
• They do not try to brighten up their loneliness by caring for pets, playing sports, traveling. They have no hobbies.

Over time, these symptoms may be joined by a similar attitude towards people. This phenomenon is called social anhedonia, and its essence lies in the fact that a person gradually breaks off all relations with friends and relatives and begins to strive for solitude. If a person was previously pleased with the successes of friends and relatives, now he becomes indifferent to all this.

Man is a social being, for whom joy and pleasure are closely connected with communication. When communication is interrupted, interest in such everyday activities as shopping, communication with friends also disappears. A person has no desire to communicate with friends, participate in various events, including entertainment, go to visit or receive guests at home. Over time, this leads to the fact that the whole life begins to seem uninteresting and empty.

People suffering from social anhedonia avoid the company of others, and when in a group, they appear anxious and worried. They try to find solitude whenever possible.

Telephone conversations are also a problem for anhedonics. They quickly get bored with communication, since other people's news and joys are not interesting to them, and they have no desire to talk about their own (and, in principle, there is nothing to talk about, since people mainly share events that cause an emotional response in them).

Anhedonics do not like cheerful companies, holidays, parties and any other gatherings from which ordinary people get pleasure and a positive mood. Patients with anhedonia are physically unable to feel joy even when they see how happy others are.

Social anhedonia can be seen as a lack of interest in any social contacts, because, in the end, such people find themselves isolated from society by their own will. Their illness becomes a kind of psychological prison, making anhedonic people unhappy.

Some individuals may also develop sexual anhedonia on social grounds. By analogy, one can understand that this term denotes the inability to enjoy sex.

With orgasmic anhedonia, a person shows no interest in sexual intercourse, but only fulfills his duty to his partner, without experiencing any positive emotions, despite the preserved physiological functions (for example, men have a normal erection). And we are not only talking about physical pleasure (even completely healthy people do not always experience orgasm during sexual intercourse). But if a person usually strives to get satisfaction from sex, then patients with anhedonia perceive sexual intercourse as an obligation or refuse it altogether.

Causes of orgasmic anhedonia may include:

• overly strict sex education and a sense of guilt for the pleasure experienced (for example, in some sects it is believed that a woman should not receive pleasure from sex, her role is to receive seed from a man and bear a new life),
• inappropriate behavior of a sexual partner,
• lack of interest in any social contacts.

Doctors consider organismic anhedonia as a disorder of nerve conduction between the genitals and the brain. And the hormone dopamine is again responsible for the passage of nerve impulses.

So far we have talked about complete anhedonia, in which a person loses interest in their favorite activities, communication and life in general. A peculiar variant of partial anhedonia, the cause of which, according to scientists, is a violation of neural conductivity between the auditory center and the reward (pleasure) center, is musical anhedonia. Such people are able to experience joy and pleasure from everything except music. Listening to musical compositions seems to them a rather boring and uninteresting activity, since it does not evoke any emotions.

This pathology is not considered as serious as social anhedonia, because a person can compensate for the lack of pleasure from listening to music with other activities that bring him pleasure. Scientists conducted an experiment that confirmed that such people are able to experience joyful excitement, for example, in games for money, that is, they have other ways of getting pleasure, which is not observed in standard anhedonia.

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Complications and consequences

Anhedonia is a big problem, because the lack of joy in a person's life makes him rush to various extremes. Quite often, anhedonics seek help from drugs and alcohol. And there are those who, not seeing the joy and value of life, plunge into suicidal thoughts and even make attempts to part with life.

Anhedonia also brings various complications to people's communication. Since a person cannot completely isolate himself from society, he still has to move in certain circles. Friends, acquaintances, colleagues may be surprised by the unusual behavior of anhedonics. The fact that they do not laugh at witty jokes, do not share the love for pets, do not like music and fun can become the reason for teasing and sarcasm directed at them. But a person is not to blame for not experiencing feelings due to physiological disorders. It is the same as laughing at a deaf, blind, legless person.

Problems can also arise in the family if the joys of all family members become alien to the father or mother, because both men and women are subject to this pathology. And misunderstanding, mutual insults and reproaches are a direct path to a break in relations.

Anhedonia is a psychologically very difficult condition, because it is not just apathy, in which nervous tension is not observed, but only communication and cognitive functions suffer. An ordinary person is capable of experiencing various emotions, among which there are both positive and negative ones. Anhedonia sufferers cannot experience positive emotions, but negative ones still remain with them.

Positive emotions are an opportunity to give rest and a boost of energy to your nervous system, which is already too tense for many people in the conditions of economic and financial crisis. If there is no such discharge, at some point the brain may not be able to withstand it and fail. Hence psychosis, neurosis, prolonged depression.

The danger of this condition can also be seen in the fact that, not seeing joy in their lives, anhedonics often prevent others from seeing it, sharing their negative emotions with loved ones and friends. A person with anhedonia can be irritated by the joy of both strangers and relatives, the sympathy and care expressed to him, the desire to help. A negative reaction to such actions leaves an unpleasant aftertaste in those who are concerned about the state of the anhedonic.

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Diagnostics anhedonia

Despite the fact that there are no specific studies or tests for diagnosing anhedonia, it is not difficult to recognize the pathology. An experienced psychotherapist and psychologist, asking familiar, one might even say mundane questions about life, about friends, colleagues, hobbies of the patient, can very quickly recognize an anhedonic, because in fact it turns out that such a person has practically no friends, he avoids participation in social events and is not interested in anything.

Weak social activity in a person is already a signal of a possible disaster. We may not realize it, but many people are subject to anhedonia to one degree or another. To what extent this affliction has consumed a person, you can understand by taking a short test for anhedonia, which contains typical questions about life:

Part 1

• Do you have friends and how often do you meet them?
• Do you go to the gym, swimming pool, fitness club?
• Are you attracted to nature walks and travel?
• Does communication with animals evoke positive emotions in you?
• Do you follow the news?
• Do you take part in corporate events and parties?
• Does shopping attract you?
• Do you like to give nice gifts?
• Do you like changing your hairstyle and clothes?
• Do you enjoy visiting exhibitions, theatre, concerts?
• Do you like music?
• How do you feel your friends and coworkers value you?
• Do you take part in feasts with interest?
• Do you enjoy intimacy with your loved one?
• Do you often receive guests at your home?

Part 2

• Do you take other people's problems to heart?
• Do you have any doubts about your abilities?
• Do you often feel despair?
• Do your friends' jokes, anecdotes, and watching entertainment programs with elements of humor irritate you?
• Do you care what you watch on TV?
• Do children running around around irritate you?
• Do you often experience feelings of anxiety and worry?
• Do you often feel despair and fear of losing everything?
• Are you familiar with the feeling of dissatisfaction with yourself?

Having answered the questions "yes" or "no", let's try to study the results. The more questions from the first part received a negative answer ("no"), and from the second - a positive answer ("yes"), the deeper anhedonia has entered the life of the person being tested.

Abroad, the "Social Anhedonia Scale" method, which consists of 40 statements, is widely used to assess the condition of patients with anhedonia. Using this test, one can understand how much a person's need for communication with other people is reduced.

During the initial appointment, the doctor may ask both non-specific questions about the patient's life, which encourage a frank, friendly conversation, and direct questions aimed at identifying the area where the problem occurred: hobbies, work, art, communication, etc.

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Differential diagnosis

At the same time, the psychotherapist studies the patient's medical history, observes him, and inquires about other unusual symptoms. The thing is that anhedonia is rarely an independent pathology. Most often, it is diagnosed as one of the manifestations of various disorders of the psychoemotional sphere: depression, paranoia, schizophrenia, personality disorders. Differential diagnostics is carried out precisely to identify concomitant diseases, because only in such conditions can one count on effective treatment.

Treatment anhedonia

It would seem that there is nothing difficult about teaching a person to enjoy life if at some point he lost this ability? In fact, it is not as easy as it seems at first glance. After all, it is always easier to teach than to retrain.

The fact that a person experiences positive emotions is a kind of practice of producing specific hormones in response to a positive stimulus. If you focus only on negative events and feelings for a long time, live in anticipation of something bad, think over unpleasant situations a hundred times, the body will simply get out of the habit of positivity, and the production of "happy" hormones will slow down. Resuming this process is not so easy, because you will have to relearn how to enjoy ordinary things. In order to understand how difficult it is, try to force yourself to love embroidery if your soul does not lie to manual painstaking work.

It is clear that psychotherapy is indispensable here. The doctor's task is to help the patient find any reasons for joy: teach him to rejoice in meeting friends, look for the positive side in various events, look for new pleasant impressions. A positive effect in this regard is provided by walks in a park or forest area, observing wildlife and the gentle sun, visiting a zoo and watching baby animals, active recreation on the beach.

In psychotherapy, the following practices are used in relation to anhedonia: cognitive behavioral therapy, gestalt therapy, elements of psychoanalysis.

Cognitive behavioral therapy for anhedonia is a joint work of a psychologist and a patient, in which situations that bring a person joy and the reaction to them are considered. This method involves a dialogue about how the patient reacts to a particular event, why he reacts this way and how the situation can be changed for the better.

Gestalt therapy is a relatively new direction in psychotherapy, which helps the patient to understand himself, his place in life, his needs. This method allows a person to understand what is happening to him and why such problems arose.

With the help of psychoanalysis, the doctor identifies psychotraumatic situations that have caused a decrease in the ability to enjoy life.

You should not expect positive results from patients who are under stress due to lack of proper rest during the day. Such people need to immediately change their daily routine so that nighttime sleep takes at least 8 hours a day.

The issue of nutrition is no less important. A balanced diet with a predominance of light, healthy food and products that promote the production of serotonin. Such products include fruits and various desserts made from them, as well as chocolate, which is considered an active fighter against depression.

Sports, fitness, aerobics, and dancing bring a lot of positive emotions, even against the background of physical fatigue. Dancing is a unique way to fight depression and anhedonia, because it allows you to express a variety of emotions without words, throw off the burden of negative thoughts, without revealing the most secret corners of your soul to anyone, and plunge into the world of new positive emotions that a cheerful and upbeat melody evokes. Trying to convey the mood of the melody, you involuntarily enter the role, imbued with this mood.

As for television, you should try not to avoid funny humorous programs, but to remember what emotions watching them caused in the past. Try to reproduce the events of past times. In this sense, childhood memories and watching good Soviet cartoons work well.

Shopping with friends can be called an excellent method of treating anhedonia. Cheerful communication and a profitable purchase of beautiful, useful things for yourself and loved ones can significantly lift your mood and bring a satisfied smile to your face just from the thought of how happy your loved ones will be with pleasant surprises.

It is important to remember past hobbies and what exactly attracted you to them, to remember the emotions that a person experienced earlier, if his hobby helped him to achieve respect and fame, win a competition, or cause admiring glances from friends. Such memories, of course, cannot replace new positive emotions, but they will allow a person to remember that he is capable of such feelings and emotions as love, joy, and happiness.

Drug therapy

Anhedonia is considered a key symptom of depression, which is treated mainly with antidepressants. A person who is unable to feel joy and pleasure is constantly in a tense state. He is irritated by noisy cheerful companies, humorous programs, holiday bustle, which, due to the disease, do not bring positive emotions. Irritation and a burden of negative thoughts about life with its gloomy existence - this is all that remains for a person with anhedonia.

Many patients, having realized their condition, try to seek help from psychologists, which does not always give positive results, because not only the behavioral side and thinking are affected, but also the neural structures of the brain. Help from a psychologist in this situation makes sense only in combination with drug therapy.

The goal of drug therapy is to increase the level of hormones of joy and reduce anxiety and irritability. Three substances are responsible for joyful excitement and pleasure in the human body: dopamine, which is the forefather of norepinephrine, serotonin and endorphins. It would seem that it is worth introducing these substances into the body, and the problem is solved by itself. In practice, everything is not so simple.

It is risky to introduce the hormone dopamine in medications without extreme need, because it not only transmits nerve impulses, but also stimulates the heart. If a person does not have problems with the cardiovascular system, then it is undesirable for him to take heart medications.

There are substances in nature that, when they enter the blood, can cause active synthesis of dopamine and prevent its destruction. These are nicotine, alcohol, some types of drugs. But a person quickly becomes dependent on these stimulants and finally destroys his health.

The situation is identical with endorphins. Their artificial introduction (usually through narcotic substances) very quickly causes addiction. Withdrawal of such drugs is fraught with even greater problems with both joy and pain, i.e. the symptoms of anhedonia can only worsen.

The synthesis of dopamine and endorphins can be stimulated in another way, which doctors insist on. In the first case, this is sex, listening to music, communicating with nature, caring for baby animals, etc. In the second case, this is physical exercise (it is important not to overdo it, so as not to cause the opposite effect), sports exercises (running, jumping, etc.), dancing and even pregnancy (although endorphin therapy in the case of pregnancy begins from the 3rd month, when the active release of these neurotransmitters into the blood begins).

But with serotonin, things are different, because their level can be increased quite safely with the help of antidepressants and some healthy foods: dark chocolate, nuts, tomatoes, bell peppers, dates, bananas, sweets. Such products can be called natural antidepressants, but you should not get carried away with them. If tomatoes and peppers do not require any restrictions in the amount of vegetables eaten, then other products are considered quite high in calories and can negatively affect the figure. Moderate consumption of dairy products, eggs, sweet fruits, legumes, cereals is also useful.

The antidepressant effect of the above-mentioned foods is due to their high content of the amino acid tryptophan, which is actively involved in the synthesis of serotonin.

Sunlight is also considered a natural antidepressant. Many have probably noticed that on a clear day the mood is usually much better than on a cloudy one. Getting up with the first rays of the sun and giving up the night lifestyle can correct your mood and teach the body to enjoy life, especially if you actively search for joy.

If therapy with natural antidepressants does not give a noticeable result (for example, in the case of severe depression with anhedonia), doctors resort to the help of synthetic ones. But antidepressants are different, and not all of them help with anhedonia, so it is very important that the drug is prescribed by a specialist doctor, and not by an all-knowing friend or neighbor.

In the treatment of anhedonia, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors are used, which have both an antidepressant and a stimulating effect, maintaining a high level of the "happy" hormone in the blood and preventing it from quickly returning to the body's tissue cells. Such drugs include Fluoxetine, Paroxetine, Sertraline, Fluvoxamine, etc.

Recently, psychotherapists have increasingly begun to pay attention to new generation antidepressants that affect not only serotonin, but also increase the level of norepinephrine (a descendant of dopamine). This is the complex effect on the body that is provided by: Amitriptyline, Venlafaxine (analogues: Vipax, Efevelon, Venlaxor, Efectin, etc.), Mirtazapine and other tricyclic antidepressants.

Let's consider the action and use of antidepressants with a combined effect using "Amitriptyline" as an example. Its action is based on stopping the reabsorption of catecholamines, which include dopamine and norepinephrine, and serotonin by neuronal cells of the central nervous system. Thus, these substances remain in the blood longer, causing an improvement in mood and sleep, a decrease in anxiety, i.e. removing various symptoms of depression, which include anhedonia.

The drug is prescribed for anhedonia, 1 tablet three times a day. In severe cases, the daily dosage can be doubled. High doses of the drug (above 200 mg/day) are only applicable in hospital settings.

The drug also has its own contraindications for use. It is not prescribed for some severe heart pathologies: untreated heart failure, myocardial infarction, severe hypertension, cardiac conduction disorders. It is dangerous to take the drug in case of impaired renal or hepatic function, exacerbation of gastric and duodenal ulcers, prostate adenoma, atony of the bladder, intestinal obstruction. Contraindications also include periods of pregnancy and breastfeeding, hypersensitivity to the drug, therapy with MAO inhibitors. In pediatrics, this drug is used starting from 6 years of age.

Among the side effects of the drug, the most common are visual impairments, so special care should be taken when prescribing the drug to patients with closed-angle glaucoma and increased intraocular pressure. Also, symptoms such as dry mouth mucous membranes, intestinal obstruction, urinary retention, and hyperthermia are often noted.

Various reactions from the central nervous system may occur: headaches and dizziness, irritability, fatigue, nightmares and sleep disturbances, attention deficit, fainting, decreased body sensitivity, tremors of the limbs, etc. Sometimes a decrease in sexual desire is observed.

The heart may react to taking the medication by disrupting the rhythm and conduction of the heart muscle, instability of blood pressure readings, and the appearance of symptoms of heart failure.

Antidepressants should be discontinued gradually to avoid withdrawal syndrome with its characteristic symptoms: migraines, increased excitability of the central nervous system with sleep and behavioral disorders, gastrointestinal reactions.

The effect of such drugs develops gradually. Noticeable results can be seen starting from 2-3 weeks. If improvement does not occur for more than 1 month, then the drug is replaced or other methods of treating anhedonia are used, in particular psychotherapy.

Prevention

Anhedonia is a disease, the fight against which is much more difficult than its prevention. Treatment of this pathology can take many months, and even years. But is it worth bringing yourself to such a state, if the prevention of anhedonia is just training the ability to see positive moments in life that can cause positive feelings and emotions.

You need to learn to see the positive side of everything, including those cases when it would seem there is none. For example, you were late for a plane and missed an important meeting. Where can you look for the good side? But it is quite possible that this situation saved your life (aircraft crashes and other life-threatening situations have not been cancelled) or your health (it is not a fact that the result of the meeting would not have led to depression). After all, at a banquet to conclude a deal (or any other occasion), you could easily have been poisoned by alcohol or foods unusual for your body.

Is it possible to foresee all the consequences of events happening to us? Probably not. So is it worth ruining your life because of temporary failures, which, in fact, may turn out to be good luck or just good fortune?

If suddenly some serious stressful situation happens, you need to try to distract yourself from thoughts about it, not allowing depression to enter your life. In such situations, swimming, walking in the forest or park, caring for animals and people who need help no less than you do help well. Sports, dancing and pleasant music, especially classical music, full of feelings and emotions, which it generously bestows on those who listen to it, help to distract yourself from bad thoughts.

Another good piece of advice is to communicate with children more often, because their feelings and emotions are mostly positive. And their children's grief makes even the most seemingly callous adult heart empathize. But it is simply impossible not to smile in response to a child's smile.

A favorite activity, a hobby is another antidepressant in our life. During difficult periods of their lives, many find relief in such activities that help to distract themselves, switching their attention to things pleasant for the soul. In addition, a hobby in which a person can achieve great results significantly increases self-esteem, which also leaves no room for depression and anhedonia.

Work, professional activity, which takes up most of our time, plays an important role in a person's psycho-emotional state. If a person does not like his job, does not have good relationships with colleagues and management, or has negative relationships in the team, you do not always need to hold on to your place. After all, the end of the old is always the beginning of something new, which can be better and more useful for the soul. You need to develop optimism and positive thinking in yourself, because it is not for nothing that they say that thoughts are material.

All these measures will help prevent the development of a condition such as anhedonia, the prognosis of which depends entirely on the person himself, his desire to re-teach his body to enjoy the little things in life and get pleasure from life.

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