Social and orgasmic anhedonia: how to fight it

Recently, there has been a negative trend towards a decrease in the general level of mood. People have become more prone to stress and can no longer give themselves wholeheartedly to those joys that once were 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 enjoy the once-beloved fascinating activities.

[1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9], [10]

Causes of the anhedonia

The emergence of this term is due to the French psychologist Theodule Ribot, who first used this expression for the symptoms of liver disease. A few years later, somewhere in the middle of the twentieth century, anhedonia was seen 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 feel bland with joy and pleasure and there is a loss of motivation for activity, which previously brought satisfaction. Anhdony, psychiatrists were fixed in patients with certain personality disorders, self-perception disorders, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder and, of course, depression.

People with paranoid signs are also inclined towards the anhedonia. The nervous system of such individuals is always in tension. The constant vigilance and tension lead to depletion of the central nervous system. At some point, the protective mechanism works and there comes a complete apathy to what is happening. Paranoia and anhedonia are like two stages in one disease, and in this case, anhedonia can be regarded as a protective mechanism of the human psyche.

The very word "anhedonia" consists of two parts: "an" is considered a negative prefix, and the word "hedonics" means a person's ability to enjoy. Thus, anhedonia should be regarded as a person's inability to experience pleasure, satisfaction, joy.

[11], [12], [13], [14]

Risk factors

Risk factors for the development of anhedonia can also be considered some personality qualities: responsibility, independence, compassion, impressionability.

Sometimes such a condition can be fixed in people about whom they speak conscientious or responsible. The desire to accomplish the task at all costs and to do this ideally little by little dulls the sense of pleasure from the work being done. Over time, a person loses interest in his earlier activities, and doing work through force (after all, a responsible person can not fail to do the job) only aggravates the state and the person starts reacting to many former pleasures differently or not at all.

There is also such a category of people who try to settle all their problems without outside help. They have a sense of self-flagellation, because in any mistake only themselves are blamed. Failures knock the ground from under the feet of this group of individuals, and they lose interest in their former activities and life's joys, concentrating on unpleasant thoughts and memories.

To the manifestations of anhedonia are also inclined the fighters for justice, which take to heart and personal failures in this field and others' sorrows. Closing to these points, they cease to see the positive aspects of what is happening. This leaves its imprint on the attitude towards events, people, activities. Many situations begin to be perceived inadequately, in black tones.

An- donia is often found among narcissists (narcissistic people who demand the same love from others). Often people around do not share a subjective opinion about a narcissist about themselves as a loved one and can not support his self-esteem, giving him without love. This leads the individual into depression. At first, he can begin to feel dislike for specific people, then to society as a whole and life itself, which seems very unfair. Disappointment in people and life gradually leads to a loss of the ability to see the world in bright positive colors and to receive joy from life.

People who do not know how to enjoy life are also called pessimists who, because of their negative attitude towards most events and the belief that a person can not fix anything, gradually lose interest in both activity and communication. It is impossible to enjoy life if you see only bad things in everything and paint any events in dark colors.

[15], [16], [17], [18], [19], [20], [21], [22]

Pathogenesis

In psychiatry, two possible causes of the development of anhedonia are considered: a disruption in the functioning of organs that produce dopamine, and disruptions in circadian rhythms. In both cases, a person has a decreased response to those events and actions that in the past caused a sense of joy and satisfaction. At the same time, a person either shows very little interest in what is happening, or does not react at all to events that previously caused him a sea of positive emotions.

The human body is a complex system, because all actions, feelings and reactions occur in it not accidentally. Feelings of joy and satisfaction we experience through pleasure centers, in which special substances that are neurotransmitters are produced: the hormone of joy dopamine (biochemical ancestor of norepinephrine) and the hormone of happiness serotonin in combination with endorphins (polypeptide compounds, similar to morphine in action).

Despite the fact that in normal quantities, endorphins are not able to evoke positive emotions (their action is more likely to blunt pain), positive emotions can cause a significant increase in the concentration of endorphins in the blood, which entails the appearance of some kind of euphoria or ecstasy.

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

These substances are responsible for the transmission of nerve impulses to the brain. If an event causes positive emotions in a person, active production of appropriate neurotransmitters starts in his body, thanks to which we can experience happiness, joy, pleasure.

In the subconsciousness of the person, the relationship between the event and the emotions caused by it is postponed, therefore each time a pleasant event repeats, we experience similar emotions. Moreover, once in the brain the "event → joy, pleasure" scheme was once imprinted, we will unconsciously strive to experience the same emotions. This will be a kind of motivation for action. By this principle, a person develops a hobby, hobbies, attachments.

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

With regard to the disturbance of circadian rhythms (the so-called biological clock), a weak reaction to positive stimuli may be due to the fact that the body during wakefulness is in a state of low activity that occurs at night. If the biological clock is working normally, then the person is active during the day, and at night is in a passive state. With a beat rhythm, the activity period can be superimposed on the sleep cycle, and in this state the reaction to stimuli weakens.

According to statistics, anhedonia does not have sexual preferences. But it affects mostly adults and old people (anhedonia often develops against the background of dementia). But here it is not so much the age and sex that matters, how many personal characteristics. Most often from anhedonia suffer people with borderline personality traits, prone to psychopathic reactions.

[23], [24], [25], [26], [27], [28], [29], [30], [31], [32]

Symptoms of the anhedonia

Angodonia is not among the acute pathologies. Her symptoms appear gradually, and often they simply do not pay attention to them, considering them to be stresses. 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 turmoil. Such manifestations can be both short-term and can be observed for a fairly long time until the situation changes or the person begins to look at it differently.

The first signs of anhedonia, for which a preliminary diagnosis is made, is a decrease in interest in your favorite work, hobby, any activity that previously aroused interest and pleasure. First, a person begins to treat such activities neutrally, without much desire, as if out of habit, doing the work, and then can generally quit his job, abandon the hobby. The individual becomes passive and does not care much, let alone the manifestation of joy.

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

• These individuals are rather closed, active interaction with other people brings noticeable discomfort to 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 not able to genuinely laugh at a joke and do not share ordinary human joys and hobbies.
• They do not seek to brighten up their loneliness by taking care of pets, playing sports, traveling. They do not have a hobby.

Over time, these symptoms can be associated with a similar attitude to people. This phenomenon is called a social anhedonia, and its essence lies in the fact that a person gradually breaks all relations with friends and relatives and begins to strive for seclusion. If earlier people were happy with the successes of friends and relatives, now all this becomes indifferent to him.

Man - the essence of social, in which joy and pleasure are closely related to communication. When communication breaks down, interest in such daily activities as shopping, socializing with friends disappears. A person does not have the desire to communicate with friends, participate in various activities, including entertainment, go to visit or receive guests at home. Over time, this leads to the fact that all life begins to seem uninteresting and empty.

People who suffer from social anhedonia avoid the company of other people, and when they are in the team, they look anxious and worried. At the first opportunity they try to seclude themselves.

The problem for the anhedonists is represented by telephone conversations. They are quickly bored with communication, because other people's news and joys are not interesting to such people, but they do not want to talk about their own (in principle, there is nothing to it, because people are divided mainly by events that cause them emotional response).

Angodonists do not like gay companies, holidays, parties and any other gatherings, from which ordinary people enjoy and have a positive mood. Patients with anhedonia are not physically able to feel joy even when they see how others rejoice.

Social anhedonia can be seen as a lack of interest in any social contacts, after all, after all, such people are isolated from society at their own will. Their illness becomes a kind of psychological prison, making the anjedonists unhappy people.

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

With an orgasmic anhedonia, a person does not show interest in the sexual act, but only performs his duty to the partner, while not experiencing any positive emotions, despite the preserved physiological functions (for example, men have a normal erection). And it's not just about physical pleasure here (even quite healthy people do not always experience orgasm during intercourse). But if a person still aspires to get satisfaction from sex, then patients with anhedonia take sexual intercourse as a duty or completely refuse it.

The causes of orgasmic anhedonia can be:

• excessive sexual education and guilt for the pleasure experienced (for example, in some sects it is believed that a woman should not enjoy sex, her role is to get a seed from a man and take a new life)
• incorrect behavior of a sexual partner,
• lack of interest in any kind of social contacts.

Doctors consider an organismic anhedonia as a violation of nerve conduction between the reproductive organs and the brain. And for the passage of nerve impulses, the dopamine hormone again responds.

So far we have talked about the full anhedonia, in which a person loses interest in his favorite activities, communication and life in general. A kind of variant of partial anhedonia, the cause of which, according to scientists, is the violation of neural conduction between the auditory center and the center of encouragement (pleasure), is the musical anhedonia. Such people are able to experience joy and pleasure from everything except music. Listening to musical compositions seems to them rather boring and uninteresting occupation, as it does not cause any emotion.

This pathology is not considered as serious as social anhedonia, because the lack of pleasure from listening to music a person can compensate for other activities that bring him pleasure. The 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 obtaining pleasure, which is not observed with the standard anhedonia.

[33], [34], [35], [36], [37], [38], [39], [40], [41]

Complications and consequences

Angedonia is a big problem, because the lack of joy in a person's life causes him to rush to various extremes. Quite often anhedonists turn to drugs and alcohol for help. And there are those who, not seeing the joy and value of life, sink into suicidal thoughts and even make attempts to part with life.

Andonia brings in various complications in the communication of people. Since a person can not completely isolate himself from society, he still has to rotate in certain circles. Friends, acquaintances, colleagues can surprise the unusual behavior of the anhedonists. The fact that they do not laugh at witty jokes, do not share a love for pets, do not like music and fun can cause cheating and sarcasm directed towards them. But a person is not to blame for not feeling because of physiological disturbances. It's like laughing at the deaf, the blind, the legless.

Problems can arise in the family, if the joys of all family members become alien to the father or mother, because this pathology affects both men and women. And misunderstanding, mutual insults and reproaches is a direct way to breaking off 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. The Angelonists can not experience positive emotions, but the negative ones still remain with them.

Positive emotions are an opportunity to give rest and a charge of vivacity to your nervous system, which is too tense in the conditions of economic and financial crisis. If there is no such discharge, at some point the brain can not stand and give a crash. Hence the psychosis, neurosis, prolonged depression.

The danger of this state can be seen in the fact that, not seeing the joy in their lives, the anhedonists often prevent it from seeing others, sharing their negative emotions with family and friends. A man with an antedonia can be annoyed by the joy of both strangers and native people, expressed by him sympathy and care, the desire to help. A negative reaction to such actions leaves an unpleasant impression on those who are preoccupied with the condition of the anhedonist.

[42], [43], [44], [45], [46], [47], [48]

Diagnostics of the anhedonia

Despite the fact that no specific studies and tests have been invented to diagnose anhedonia, it is not difficult to recognize pathology at all. An experienced psychotherapist and a psychologist, asking usual everyday questions about life, friends, colleagues, hobbies of the patient, can very quickly recognize the anhedonist, because in fact it turns out that such a person has practically no friends, he avoids participation in public events and nothing not addicted.

Weak social activity in a person is already a signal about a possible disaster. We can not be aware of this, but many people are affected to an extent by anhedonia. How absorbed a person this ailment can be understood by going through a small test for anhedonia, which contains typical questions about life:

1 part

• Do you have friends and do you often meet with them?
• Do you go to the gym, swimming pool, fitness club?
• Do you take nature walks and travel?
• Do you have positive emotions with animals?
• Do you follow the news?
• Do you participate in corporate parties and parties?
• Does shopping attract you?
• Do you like to give pleasant gifts?
• Do you like changing hair and clothes?
• Do you visit exhibitions, theater, concerts with pleasure?
• Do you like music?
• How do you think friends and employees appreciate you?
• Are you interested in taking part in the feast with interest?
• Do you get pleasure from being close with your loved one?
• Do you often receive guests at home?

Part 2

• Do you take someone else's problems to heart?
• Do you have any doubts about your abilities?
• Do you often feel desperate?
• Do you have irritation jokes friends, anecdotes, entertainment programs with elements of humor?
• Do not you care what to watch on TV?
• Do you have irritation swarming with children?
• Do you often feel anxious and anxious?
• Do you often feel desperation and fear of losing everything?
• Do you know the feeling of dissatisfaction with yourself?

Answering 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 - the positive ("yes"), the deeper the anhedonia entered into the life of the tested person.

Abroad, for the evaluation of patients with anhedonia, the "Scale of social anhedonia" methodology, which consists of 40 statements, is widely used. Using this test, you can understand how much the person needs to communicate with other people.

During the initial admission the doctor can ask both non-specific questions about the patient's life, having a frank friendly conversation, and direct, aimed at finding out the areas where the failure occurred: hobbies, work, art, communication, etc.

[49], [50], [51], [52], [53], [54], [55]

Differential diagnosis

In parallel, the therapist studies the patient's anamnesis, watches him, and is interested in 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 diagnosis is just conducted to identify co-morbid diseases, because only in such conditions it is possible to count on effective treatment.

Treatment of the anhedonia

It would seem that it is difficult, to teach a person to enjoy life, if he at any time lost this ability? In fact, it is not as easy as it seems at first glance. It's always easier to teach than to retrain.

The fact that a person experiences positive emotions is a peculiar practice of producing specific hormones in response to a positive stimulus. If for a long time to focus only on negative events and feelings, live in anticipation of something bad, a hundred times to think about unpleasant situations, the body will simply get out of the positive, and the development of "happy" hormones will stop. Resume this process is not so simple, because you have to re-learn to rejoice in ordinary things. In order to understand how difficult this is, try to force yourself to love embroidery, if the soul does not lie to manual laborious work.

It is clear that without psychotherapy here can not do. The doctor's task is to help the patient to find any reasons for joy: to teach him to rejoice at meeting with friends, to seek a positive side in various events, to seek new pleasant experiences. Positive action in this regard is taking walks in the park or forest zone, watching the wildlife and affectionate sun, visiting the zoo and watching the children of animals, active recreation on the beach.

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

Cognitive-behavioral therapy in anhedonia is the joint work of a psychologist and patient, in which situations that bring joy to a person and the response to them are considered. This technique provides a dialogue on how the patient reacts to an event, why it reacts and how to change the situation for the better.

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

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

Do not expect positive results from patients who are in the power of stress due to lack of proper rest during the day. So people need to immediately change the regime of the day, so that a night sleep took at least 8 hours a day.

Equally important is the issue of nutrition. Rational nutrition with a predominance of light, healthy foods and products that promote the production of serotonin. These products include fruits and various desserts from them, as well as chocolate, considered to be an active fighter with depression.

Many positive emotions, even on the background of physical fatigue, bring sports, fitness, aerobics, dancing. Dancing is generally a unique way to deal with depression and anhedonia, because they allow you to express many emotions without words, throw off a load of negative thoughts, without revealing to anyone the most secret corners of your soul, plunge into the world of new positive emotions that cheerful and cheerful melody. Trying to convey the mood of the sounding melody, willy-nilly you enter the role, getting filled with this mood.

As for television, you should try not to avoid gay humor programs, and remember what emotions caused their viewing in the past. Try to reproduce the events of past times. In this sense, children's memories, watching good Soviet cartoons work well.

An excellent way to treat anhedonia is shopping with friends. Merry communication and profitable purchase of beautiful, useful things for themselves and their loved ones can significantly raise the mood and cause a happy smile on his face from one thought only, how happy they will be to pleasant surprises.

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

Medication Therapy

Anhedonia is considered a key symptom of depression, which is treated primarily with antidepressants. A person who is not able to feel joy and pleasure is constantly in a tense state. He is annoyed by noisy merry companies, humorous programs, festive vanity, which because of illness do not carry positive emotions. The annoyance and burden of negative thoughts about life with howling dark life is all that remains for a man with anhedonia.

Many patients, realizing their condition, try to seek help from psychologists, which does not always give positive results, because it affects not only the behavioral side and thinking, the neural structures of the brain are affected. The help of a psychologist in this situation makes sense only in conjunction with drug therapy.

The goal of drug therapy is to increase the level of hormones of joy and reduce anxiety and irritability. For joyful excitement and pleasure in the human body, there are 3 substances: dopamine, which is the forefather of norepinephrine, serotonin and endorphins. It would seem that it is worthwhile to introduce these substances into the body, and the problem is solved by itself. In practice, everything is not so simple.

The hormone dopamine in drugs, without extreme need to enter risky, because it not only transmits nerve impulses, but also stimulates the work of the heart. If there are no problems with the cardiovascular system, then it is undesirable for him to take heart medications.

In nature, there are substances that, when ingested into the blood, cause an active synthesis of dopamine and prevent its destruction. It's nicotine, alcohol, some kinds of drugs. But a person quickly gets into dependence on these stimulants and finally kills his health.

Identical situation with endorphins. Their artificial introduction (usually by means of narcotic substances) very quickly causes dependence. The abolition of such medicines is fraught with even greater problems both with joy and with pain, i.e. The symptoms of anhedonia can only worsen.

Stimulate the synthesis of dopamine and endorphins can be done in a different way, which doctors insist on. In the first case, this is sex, listening to music, communicating with nature, caring for young animals, etc. In the second - physical activity (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 endorphins therapy with pregnancy begins with the 3rd of its month, when begins an ejection into the blood of these neurotransmitters).

But with serotonin, the situation is different, because you can raise their level safely with antidepressants and some healthy foods: black chocolate, nuts, tomatoes, bell peppers dates, bananas, sweets. Such products can be called natural antidepressants, but it is not worth taking them too seriously. If tomatoes and peppers do not require any restrictions in the quantity of vegetables eaten, the rest of the products are considered to be quite high in calories and can negatively affect the figure. It is also useful to moderate consumption of dairy products, eggs, sweet fruits, legumes, cereals.

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

A natural antidepressant is considered to be sunlight. Many have probably noticed that on a clear day, the mood is usually much better than overcast. Getting up with the first rays of the sun and giving up the nightlife you can adjust your mood and teach the body to enjoy life, especially if you are actively engaged in the search for joy.

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

In the therapy of anhedonia, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors are used that have both an antidepressant and stimulating effect, maintaining a high level in the blood of the "happy" hormone and not allowing it to quickly return to the cells of the body tissues. Such medicines include "Fluoxetine", "Paroxetine", "Sertralin", "Fluvoxamine", etc.

Recently, psychotherapists have begun to pay increasing attention to antidepressants of a new generation that affect not only serotonin, but also increase the level of norepinephrine (a descendant of dopamine). It is this complex effect on the body that has: Amitriptyline, Venlafaxine (analogues: Vipax, Efewelon, Venlaksor, Efetin, etc.), Mirtazapine and other tricyclic antidepressants.

Consider the effect and use of antidepressants with a combined effect on the example of "Amitriptyline." Its action is based on the cessation of the reverse absorption of catecholamines, which include dopamine and norepinephrine, and serotonin by neuronal CNS cells. Thus, these substances last longer in the blood, causing better mood and sleep, reducing anxiety, i.e. Removing various symptoms of depression, which includes anhedonia.

Assign a medicine at anhedonia for 1 tablet three times a day. In severe cases, the daily dosage can be doubled. High doses of drugs (above 200 mg / day.) Are applicable only in hospital settings.

Have a drug and its contraindications for use. It is not prescribed for certain severe cardiac pathologies: untreated heart failure, myocardial infarction, severe hypertension, cardiac conduction disorder. It is dangerous to take medicine for impaired kidney or liver function, exacerbation of gastric and duodenum ulcers, prostate adenoma, bladder atony, intestinal perforation. Contraindications are also periods of pregnancy and breastfeeding, hypersensitivity to the drug, therapy with MAO inhibitors. In pediatrics, this tool is used, starting from 6 years.

Among the side effects of the drug, the most frequent can be called visual disturbances, so special care must be taken when prescribing the drug to patients with closed-angle glaucoma and increased eye pressure. Also, such symptoms as dryness of the oral mucosa, violation of intestinal permeability, retention of urine in the body, hyperthermia are often noted.

There may be various reactions from the central nervous system: headaches and dizziness, irritability, fatigue, nightmares and sleep disorders, attention impairment, fainting, decreased body sensitivity, limb tremor, etc. Sometimes there is a decrease in sexual desire.

The heart can respond to taking medication by violating the rhythm of work and conduction of the heart muscle, the instability of blood pressure indicators, the appearance of symptoms of heart failure.

To cancel antidepressants it is necessary gradually that there was no withdrawal syndrome with characteristic symptomatology: a migraine, the raised excitability of the CNS with disturbances of sleep and behavior, gastrointestinal reactions.

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

Prevention

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

We need to learn to see in everything a positive side, including those cases when there is, it would seem, no. For example, I missed an airplane and did not get to an important meeting. Where can I find a good side? But it is quite possible that this situation saved your life (air crashes and other life-threatening situations have not been canceled) or health (not the fact that the outcome of the meeting would not have led to depression). After all, at a banquet about the conclusion of a transaction (or any other occasion), you could calmly poison yourself with alcohol or unaccustomed products for the body.

Is it possible to envisage all the consequences of the events that are happening to us? Probably, not. So is it worth it to spoil your life because of temporary failures, which, in fact, can actually turn out to be luck or simple luck?

If suddenly there was some serious stressful situation, you need to try to distract yourself from thinking about it, not letting depression enter your life. In such situations, swimming, walks through the forest or park, and care for animals and people who need help as much as you do, helps a lot. Help to distract from bad thoughts sports, dancing and pleasant music for the soul, especially classical, full of feelings and emotions, with which she generously endows those who listen to her.

Another good advice is to communicate more often with children, because their feelings and emotions in the majority have a positive attitude. And their children's grief makes you feel even the most mature heart, seemingly stale. But it's simply impossible not to smile in response to a child's smile.

Favorite occupation, hobby is another antidepressant in our life. In the hard periods of their lives, many find relaxation in these activities, which help to distract themselves by switching their attention to things that are pleasing to 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.

An important role in the psychoemotional state of a person is played by work, professional activity, which occupies most of our time. If a person does not like his work, relations with his colleagues and superiors do not develop, the collective has negative attitudes, it is not always necessary to hold onto one's place. In the end, the end of the old is always the beginning of a new one, which can be better and more useful for the soul. We need to develop optimism and positive thinking in ourselves, because it's not for nothing that they say that thoughts are material.

All these measures will help to prevent the development of a state such as anhedonia, whose prognosis depends entirely on the person himself, his desire to re-teach his body to enjoy life's small things and enjoy life. 

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