I think a functional definition is best. Do your negative thoughts (sadness, depression, anxiety, or suchlike) interfere with your ability to live your life (hold a job, attend social events, etc)? Then talking to a therapist may be helpful.
You wouldn’t be ashamed to visit a doctor for advice on how to deal with a nagging cough—emotions that impose a similar level of difficulty can be improved with expert attention.
I seriously don’t understand this. E.g. in post-Soviet Eastern Europe lot, really a lot of people go through life functionally in the sense of being able to hold down a job, stay in a marriage, raise kids, while being wholly joyless / anhedonic and just doing it from a sense of duty. And coping via drinking etc.
Are you talking from the viewpoint of a culture where people refuse to do things they don’t enjoy and thus their anhedonia becomes visibly dysfunctional?
For example, social events aren’t “mandatory” in the sense job/family are (in the sense of your parents probably did not drill it into you that you must do these to be allowed to not feel worthless about yourself), they are mostly for fun, so it is difficult to say what it does with functionality if we do not link functionality with joy. Again the people I am talking aboud do not attend to social events, if getting shitface drunk with the neighbor does not count as one.
At any rate I do not yet see a culture-neutral link between anhedonia and dysfunctionality, it seems they are only strongly linked if people define functionality itself as an enjoyable, autonomous life, but when people think they were born to fulfill certain mandatory roles and tasks, they can go through it efficiently while still feeling totally empty inside.
I think a functional definition is best. Do your negative thoughts (sadness, depression, anxiety, or suchlike) interfere with your ability to live your life (hold a job, attend social events, etc)? Then talking to a therapist may be helpful.
You wouldn’t be ashamed to visit a doctor for advice on how to deal with a nagging cough—emotions that impose a similar level of difficulty can be improved with expert attention.
I seriously don’t understand this. E.g. in post-Soviet Eastern Europe lot, really a lot of people go through life functionally in the sense of being able to hold down a job, stay in a marriage, raise kids, while being wholly joyless / anhedonic and just doing it from a sense of duty. And coping via drinking etc.
Are you talking from the viewpoint of a culture where people refuse to do things they don’t enjoy and thus their anhedonia becomes visibly dysfunctional?
For example, social events aren’t “mandatory” in the sense job/family are (in the sense of your parents probably did not drill it into you that you must do these to be allowed to not feel worthless about yourself), they are mostly for fun, so it is difficult to say what it does with functionality if we do not link functionality with joy. Again the people I am talking aboud do not attend to social events, if getting shitface drunk with the neighbor does not count as one.
At any rate I do not yet see a culture-neutral link between anhedonia and dysfunctionality, it seems they are only strongly linked if people define functionality itself as an enjoyable, autonomous life, but when people think they were born to fulfill certain mandatory roles and tasks, they can go through it efficiently while still feeling totally empty inside.