Does anyone here suffer from sexual or general anhedonia? Any comforting guesses as to when we will reach the point of being able to routinely cure it?
Any comforting guesses as to when we will reach the point of being able to routinely cure it?
Do we “routinely cure” depression? People do stop being depressed but I’m not sure that I would use the word “routinely cure”.
It might be more productive to think of the suffering person as a subject than as an object.
Feeling pleasure is only possible if you actually see yourself as a subject.
Parts of the brain don’t function right. Contrary to your and the majority’s belief, it’s not a matter of choice to see yourself as a subject and alter your thinking. It wouldn’t cure your aging for the same reason it won’t cure the type of anhedonia in question.
If you make a choice to see yourself as a subject than you might still frequently drop into the old habits, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t make that choice. It doesn’t mean that making that choice won’t help you to more frequently feel as subject.
I have multiple times seen that when someone makes that shift his body language changes to a visible extend. They become more present. Emotional processing starts to happen that otherwise wouldn’t.
It wouldn’t cure your aging for the same reason it won’t cure the type of anhedonia in question.
Large parts of aging aren’t about disassociating emotions*. Associating emotions won’t make your telomeres longer. On the other hand anhedonia seems very much about disassociated emotions and a straightforward way to associate emotions is to move from seeing oneself as object to seeing oneself as subject.
*If you want more input into the parts that are, read Thomas Hanna’s “Somatics: Reawakening The Mind’s Control Of Movement, Flexibility, And Health”
Seems being the keyword. Posting here was probably a mistake. The whole world thinks that if your dick behaves like rubber incapable of any pleasure, it must mean you’re thinking the wrong way. I just wanted some optimism about future scientific breakthroughs. Seemed like the place.
As the same person you were responding to, I know there is no point trying to make you comprehend that there is a possibility your idiotic belief about my anhedonia being different than other devastating illnesses and curable by myself is not true just because it makes you feel smug and justified to blame others for their suffering. I don’t care about being banned, so here goes. What you said was extremely cruel. I wish you decades of torture. Congratulations on making the world a worse place, you shit.
As the same person you were responding to, I know there is no point trying to make you comprehend that there is a possibility your idiotic belief about my anhedonia being different than other devastating illnesses and curable by myself is not true
The fact that nothing you tried in the past cured it doesn’t imply that it’s incurable. It just means that nothing you tried worked.
Believing in the ability to change is helpful for quite a lot of mental health issues.
blame others for their suffering
I don’t blame your for suffering. You are free to suffer if you want. If you want to interpret my comment as blaming than I’m blaming you for unwillingness to do things I consider likely to improve your situation.
I only know it from SSRIs. I also know general anhedonia or perhaps hypothymia from depression.
Suicide is a reliable cure at least for the experience of it (unfortunately the best suicide options are also legally limited, plus of course it costs one’s life).
Other cures, to my best knowledge, are not reliable, except for invasive stuff like literal wireheading. Related to depression, this piece by Yvain is good.
As for the latter, the request is childish, and as for the former, I have yet to meet a person who would even pay the financial cost of living for another person.
Yet, for some reason, everybody feels entitled to judge whose life is worth living—even for total strangers. And why wouldn’t you? You get to be morally superior AND you get to have higher social status AND you get the upvotes for being a nice person AND you don’t have to go through the suffering AND you don’t have to pay the cost.
Bravo. Well done. Thanks for the objective discussion.
You are welcome to die if you wish, although I would probably not want you to. But if you encourage others, in particular depressed people, to commit suicide you can expect some pushback. That’s because you are being an asshole.
It’s often considered as a “treatment” by the “patients” precisely you will NOT be anhedonic and hypothymic when you’re dead, i.e. unable to experience these states! The rest of his/her point is correct as well, though.
Anhedonic means NOT feeling joy. You will feel no joy when you are dead. Hypothymic means not having much emotion. You will have even less when you are dead.
If the OP had claimed pain from depression, then yes, I would have to agree. Death would be a way to eliminate pain.
It seems I have met a lot of people who have attempted suicide but whose lives were saved. I can’t help thinking that if their desire to be gone were rational, they would have learned from their mistake and gotten it right in a 2nd or 3rd attempt. The fact that there are so many people who attempt suicide but fail, and then stay alive for years afterwards, seems to me strong evidence that suicide is a choice that is often made irrationally. And so more good than harm is done by setting the difficulty level of suicide high enough that you actually have to be thinking somewhat rationally to succeed.
I know you are sincere, but you are understimating that getting rid of the unpleasantness is half the game for us depressives. Being dead objectively removes the unpleasantness, by destroying the parts of the brain that instantiate unpleasantness.
You deny this so strongly because you are offended by it, which is simply a mix of cultural programming and psychological death aversion on your part.
What you have to realize is that you are harming people by it, because this is the political foundation for the reduction in our suicide options. I would be objectively far better off if I could buy a deadly dose of barbiturates, drink it, fall asleep and then die. Society as a whole would also be objectively better off (an improved version would be one that allows me to donate my organs).
Facts don’t go away because you don’t like them; LessWrong is the one place where I would have expected people to understand that.
Does anyone here suffer from sexual or general anhedonia? Any comforting guesses as to when we will reach the point of being able to routinely cure it?
Do we “routinely cure” depression? People do stop being depressed but I’m not sure that I would use the word “routinely cure”.
It might be more productive to think of the suffering person as a subject than as an object. Feeling pleasure is only possible if you actually see yourself as a subject.
Parts of the brain don’t function right. Contrary to your and the majority’s belief, it’s not a matter of choice to see yourself as a subject and alter your thinking. It wouldn’t cure your aging for the same reason it won’t cure the type of anhedonia in question.
If you make a choice to see yourself as a subject than you might still frequently drop into the old habits, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t make that choice. It doesn’t mean that making that choice won’t help you to more frequently feel as subject.
I have multiple times seen that when someone makes that shift his body language changes to a visible extend. They become more present. Emotional processing starts to happen that otherwise wouldn’t.
Large parts of aging aren’t about disassociating emotions*. Associating emotions won’t make your telomeres longer. On the other hand anhedonia seems very much about disassociated emotions and a straightforward way to associate emotions is to move from seeing oneself as object to seeing oneself as subject.
*If you want more input into the parts that are, read Thomas Hanna’s “Somatics: Reawakening The Mind’s Control Of Movement, Flexibility, And Health”
Seems being the keyword. Posting here was probably a mistake. The whole world thinks that if your dick behaves like rubber incapable of any pleasure, it must mean you’re thinking the wrong way. I just wanted some optimism about future scientific breakthroughs. Seemed like the place.
Sorry, that wasn’t appreciative.
No, certain thinking patterns are associated with certain problems. Psychological interventions do help people.
What naivety on my part that I thought you wanted to change. Of course it’s easier to blame it on supposedly unchangeable traits of the brain.
As the same person you were responding to, I know there is no point trying to make you comprehend that there is a possibility your idiotic belief about my anhedonia being different than other devastating illnesses and curable by myself is not true just because it makes you feel smug and justified to blame others for their suffering. I don’t care about being banned, so here goes. What you said was extremely cruel. I wish you decades of torture. Congratulations on making the world a worse place, you shit.
The fact that nothing you tried in the past cured it doesn’t imply that it’s incurable. It just means that nothing you tried worked. Believing in the ability to change is helpful for quite a lot of mental health issues.
I don’t blame your for suffering. You are free to suffer if you want. If you want to interpret my comment as blaming than I’m blaming you for unwillingness to do things I consider likely to improve your situation.
I only know it from SSRIs. I also know general anhedonia or perhaps hypothymia from depression.
Suicide is a reliable cure at least for the experience of it (unfortunately the best suicide options are also legally limited, plus of course it costs one’s life).
Other cures, to my best knowledge, are not reliable, except for invasive stuff like literal wireheading. Related to depression, this piece by Yvain is good.
Please, please don’t do this.
Do what? Commit suicide or talk about suicide?
As for the latter, the request is childish, and as for the former, I have yet to meet a person who would even pay the financial cost of living for another person.
Yet, for some reason, everybody feels entitled to judge whose life is worth living—even for total strangers. And why wouldn’t you? You get to be morally superior AND you get to have higher social status AND you get the upvotes for being a nice person AND you don’t have to go through the suffering AND you don’t have to pay the cost.
Bravo. Well done. Thanks for the objective discussion.
You are welcome to die if you wish, although I would probably not want you to. But if you encourage others, in particular depressed people, to commit suicide you can expect some pushback. That’s because you are being an asshole.
I have not encouraged anyone to commit suicde, you lying piece of shit.
I second the Yvain recommendation, the linked post is excellent.
You will be even more anhedonic and hypothymic after you are dead. That is NOT a cure, not even unreliably!
It’s often considered as a “treatment” by the “patients” precisely you will NOT be anhedonic and hypothymic when you’re dead, i.e. unable to experience these states! The rest of his/her point is correct as well, though.
Anhedonic means NOT feeling joy. You will feel no joy when you are dead. Hypothymic means not having much emotion. You will have even less when you are dead.
If the OP had claimed pain from depression, then yes, I would have to agree. Death would be a way to eliminate pain.
It seems I have met a lot of people who have attempted suicide but whose lives were saved. I can’t help thinking that if their desire to be gone were rational, they would have learned from their mistake and gotten it right in a 2nd or 3rd attempt. The fact that there are so many people who attempt suicide but fail, and then stay alive for years afterwards, seems to me strong evidence that suicide is a choice that is often made irrationally. And so more good than harm is done by setting the difficulty level of suicide high enough that you actually have to be thinking somewhat rationally to succeed.
I know you are sincere, but you are understimating that getting rid of the unpleasantness is half the game for us depressives. Being dead objectively removes the unpleasantness, by destroying the parts of the brain that instantiate unpleasantness.
You deny this so strongly because you are offended by it, which is simply a mix of cultural programming and psychological death aversion on your part.
What you have to realize is that you are harming people by it, because this is the political foundation for the reduction in our suicide options. I would be objectively far better off if I could buy a deadly dose of barbiturates, drink it, fall asleep and then die. Society as a whole would also be objectively better off (an improved version would be one that allows me to donate my organs).
Facts don’t go away because you don’t like them; LessWrong is the one place where I would have expected people to understand that.