Emotional Anhedonia and reactions to Death

Coping
#1

I am but one of many here in the grip of emotional anhedonia. Perhaps some here can prepare me for what to expect:

My mom is 91 and in a nursing home. Recently her kidney numbers have taken a turn for the worse, and doctors don’t believe she has much time left.

Death of a family member, especially a mother, would normally be a very sad event, to say the least. My anhedonia has me feeling cold at the possibility, so far.

Has anyone else gone through this scenario? Did it crack through the anhedonia? Did you feel the deep emotions you would without PFS?

I’m wondering if I’ll feel the grief I should? Jim

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#2

I wish you and all her loved ones all the best in these difficult times.

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#3

I lost all my grandparents in short succession after I got PFS. I felt very little. It was almost solely a “thinking brain” experience.

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#5

I don’t feel much emphaty with my own loses and I feel less for others.

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#7

Although I can’t speak from the perspective of severe anhedonia, I think it’s good to remember that lots of people grieve great losses in very different ways and that’s okay. There are no rules in life on how one should grieve. Especially since this anhedonia was never your choice.

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#8

The anhedonia is terrible. I used to be such a master of emotions, lol, I loved listening to music, watching beautiful movies, even just going out into the world and seeing and analysing all the random things going on out there.

But these days, I mostly just feel sad, if I feel anything at all. I’d been depressed before this but even then, even during those moments, there was this sense that I was enjoying it, somehow. I mean, who doesn’t like getting drunk and wallowing in some self pity for a while? Lol.

But now, it’s a depression that just doesn’t seem to end. I watch movies sometimes and get some kind of enjoyment out of it but overall it just makes me feel, I don’t know, bland. I have this really sad look on my face which I didn’t even know was humanly possible.

I used to believe that there was never a challenge that humanity couldn’t overcome, that even in the darkest of moments there was something worth living for. Whenever I read about people saying they were fed up or couldn’t deal with life I truly didn’t
understand them. I thought they just weren’t seeing the bigger picture or they were being too hard on themselves.

But now I really know what that’s like. It’s so hard to find beauty and meaning in this, no matter how hard I try. I’ve gone from being someone full of youthful passion and potential to someone who sympathises more with drug addicts and old people. Like, I guess that’s not a bad thing, but it comes with the price of feeling so so sad and upset all the time.

I never realised how sad life could get. Like, ok I knew there was grief and heartbreak and all that, but in some weird way I saw that as part of the adventure of life. That even the shit times were all part of this awesome journey we were on.

But like, I don’t know. It’s hard to feel like that now. I just can’t see hope for myself or ever finding some sort of joy and pleasure in life again. Even the small joys I do find just remind me of how much less enjoyable life is overall.

God, I don’t know. I pray to God to heal me and to release me from this pain and to give me something to look forward to but it’s like I’m praying to some bureaucrat that has just forgotten about me. I see people out there doing things I used to enjoy - going to the pub, looking forward to movie releases, chatting up pretty girls, and I don’t even feel jealous anymore. I just feel… sad. Like I was never meant to live that life. That I was never supposed to be happy in this world.

I feel like one of those monsters from fairy tales that want to be part of the regular world so bad but is rejected just because of what they are. I feel like the Beast from Beauty and the Beast, or Wall-E stuck on a deserted earth watching movies about romance and love, lol.

Man, I don’t know. I just don’t know.

Edit: Sorry about your mother, Jim.

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#9

I agree this seems different than all the ‘what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’ experiences. I’ve had some pretty low points, challenges that brought me to the edge that I was able to learn from. I’d always fall back on ‘ok you didn’t see that coming, it sucks but you’ll know what to do next time’. This isn’t like that. This doesn’t feel like a part of life, it’s more like death in slow motion.

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#10

Emotional anhedonia,

it’s like poetry you tell about that you feel, that I feel, I think what we all feel. All my life I looked back to that I have lived I thought I would do it again. Like a song “And if I had another chance I would live the same romance”

Yes my youth, my student years, my stormy 30tees and my forties. Than after the dead of my mother the chaos years began. I made everything wrong but after all I became father and looked for my daughter. I had a new relationship and I spent to much time with my old family and forgot my new family. Than I had two families on the weekends, couldn’t organize it, tried to be there for both, didn’t take care of me.

So I was not aware of my health and what is good for me, had the wrong doctor and the wrong therapist, not enough time to talk about my problems.

That’s the way you make mistakes, like taking the poison, without asking what is good for yourself and what isn’t.

Many others here made the great mistake on a bad day. Many here get stressed over hairloss instead of thinking, starting the biohazard. Many have been aware of the danger, made it even knowing it. Most have been gaslighted, but in a good moment, being in the middle of your mind, you’re critical about your health and that you’re going on to do with your life

Looking back now I only see what I have done wrong. I’m in regret of it all.

A normal shock about recognize what I have done wrong is the chance to analyse the problems and make it better for the future. For example be more careful with yourself. Change the doctor and the zero therapist .

But with this poison you have no chance left to make it better. With this poison you only have the fatal error. Not another chance. The only chance to accept to live in regret and anhedonia the rest of my life.

So this crippling anhedonia takes every feeling away from me. I’m jealousy to everyone who lives a good life. Sometimes I even wish bad things to happy people.

Even the relationship to death has changed.
Before death by word was distress. No death and suicide sounds like freedom from suffering. What a perverted change.

In my old life I always thought: “Leben und leben lassen” Like “Live your life and let the others live their lifes” I was happy, so I wanted everyone to be happy.

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#11

Man oh Man am I in touch with pretty much everything you just said

Mostly about praying and not being meant for certain things in this life

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#12

Your entire post really mirrors my feelings, we could be pfs twins. Thanks for putting this into words.

Also, thanks for kind thoughts on my mom. She’s hanging in there, holding steady. Jim

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#13

It is wild to think molecules in nano-gram (a billionth of a gram) amounts is the catalyst for expression or suppression of actions and reactions that we take for granted.

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#14

That’s the shit. This what @Taw said shows: We are not only gods kids with a soul, on the other hand we are bioreactors becoming intelligent, ethical and human by nanograms of neurotransmitter and hormones. Unethical like Mercks finasteride developers damaged people for perverted experiments with perverted drugs. And the bioreactors lost their souls. The day after they deny everything they have done. The perverted doctors who prescribed this potential euthanasia drug and didn’t inform their victims about the risks are inhuman too. They fucked my life

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