MODERN MALAISE

Why Do You Feel Drained Even When You’ve Done Nothing?

The hidden mental epidemic called anhedonia

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Does this sound like you?

• You used to love hanging out with friends and playing online games together, yet now all you want to do is lie around scrolling mindlessly on your phone
• You once binge-watched entire TV series until two or three in the morning, but now you drop a show after just one or two episodes, or skip straight to the ending on fast-forward
• Long-awaited indulgent meals and pre-planned trips fail to live up to expectations the moment you taste the food or set off on your journey — you’re left thinking, “Is that all there is?”

This state of living day after day with no clear goals, desires or sense of direction leaves you utterly exhausted despite accomplishing nothing.

It’s not that you’re never happy. A funny joke can make you laugh, and outings can bring fleeting joy, yet the happiness fades instantly, often leaving you even more worn out afterward. You simply feel like an empty shell, bored and lifeless.

This increasingly common mental state is clinically known as anhedonia in psychology. One can experience anhedonia without depressive moods, negative thought patterns, or disrupted sleep and appetite, yet still suffer from an inability to feel pleasure.

01. Why Have We Become This Way? Let’s Break It Down

Anhedonia Means Damaged Reward Processing Pathways in the Brain

Coined by French psychologist Théodule-Armand Ribot in 1896, anhedonia refers to a diminished or complete loss of the capacity to experience pleasure, marked by disinterest in once-enjoyed activities or an inability to derive joy from them. It remains a core research topic in psychopathology to this day[1].

Those with anhedonia live in a permanent low-energy slump with no emotional highs or lows, like a deflated balloon.

The loss of pleasure can manifest physically: failing to feel delight from sensory stimuli such as delicious food or scenic landscapes. It can also manifest socially—— feeling no warmth or joy in interpersonal interactions, remaining unmoved even by sincere compliments.

Contemporary research identifies three core components of reward processing that drive anhedonia when impaired[2].

1. Wanting——The motivation to pursue rewards
2. Liking——Instant positive feelings triggered by a reward
3. Learning——Forming expectations of future rewards based on past experience

To simplify this with an analogy of a lab mouse drinking sugar water.

• Liking = the pleasant taste of sugar water as it’s consumed
• Wanting = the urge to seek more sugar water after drinking it
• Learning = the mental link between past enjoyment and future access to sugar water, teaching the mouse to anticipate the reward

Damage to any one or more of these components creates distinct forms of emotional numbness.

• Impaired liking only——Sugar no longer tastes sweet, yet you still crave it
• Impaired wanting only——Sugar still tastes sweet, but you have zero drive to go get it
• Impaired learning only——Sugar always tastes good, yet you never learn to anticipate sugar when a light flashes, so you make no effort to seek it

Building on this framework, Gard et al. categorized anhedonia into two distinct subtypes[3].

Consummatory Anhedonia

This subtype describes diminished liking. Activities you once loved — tasting gourmet food, listening to your favorite songs, receiving a warm hug — feel bland or meaningless. This loss of experiential pleasure is linked to the body’s endogenous opioid and cannabinoid systems.

“This song used to give me goosebumps, but now it does nothing for me.”

Anticipatory Anhedonia

This subtype describes diminished wanting. You know fun experiences await you, yet you feel no urge to pursue future rewards, and your willingness to make an effort plummets. This loss of motivation is tied to the brain’s dopamine system.

“I know hanging out with friends would be fun, but I just have no desire to go at all.”

These two forms of anhedonia can occur independently or simultaneously. Many modern people lose both the ability to enjoy present moments and the drive to chase future joy .

Still from Things to Come

02. Four Root Causes Killing Modern Humans’ Capacity for Genuine Joy

The anhedonia plaguing modern society stems from contradictory forces—— we simultaneously crave too much and cannot afford to want anything. We face both excessive pain and a complete lack of hardship. Below are the four key drivers.

The Death of the Big Other: Disenchantment Paralyzes Desire

The Big Other refers to the symbolic order constructed by social norms, cultural traditions, language systems and authority figures[4]. It acts as an omnipresent frame of reference that defines what constitutes a good, worthwhile life.

Traditional societies laid out a fixed, unambiguous life roadmap—— school, career, marriage, children. Each stage came with predefined, guaranteed sources of happiness.

Though restrictive, this structure eliminated the burden of self-discovery — people did not need to figure out what they truly loved, only follow the established path, with joy scheduled at every milestone.

Still from The Truman Show

Modernity has disenchanted everything, reducing the world to physical laws and framing human existence as random and accidental. The Big Other has blurred, and ultimate meaning has vanished, leaving us unsure what we ought to pursue.

Shallow sensory pleasures feel fleeting and hollow, and we chastise ourselves for chasing “cheap dopamine hits” after eating a nice meal or finishing a binge-watch. This breeds metaphysical burnout — — nothing feels truly meaningful.

Meanwhile, boundless freedom creates what psychologist Schwartz calls the burden of choice[5]. Every decision means sacrificing other possibilities, and anxiety over picking the “suboptimal option” stops us from fully committing to anything.

We fall into a state of desire paralysis — — all hobbies feel unfulfilling, every pursuit tangled with the stress of opportunity cost. Without clarity on what we truly want, pleasure has nowhere to take root.

Still from Irrational Man

The Erasure of Negativity Erases Pleasure Alongside Itself

Derived from Hegel’s dialectics, negativity here refers to the counterpoint of joy — — external obstacles, delays, rejection, uncertainty — anything that prevents instant gratification.

Sociologist Byung-Chul Han argues that profound pleasure inherently requires negativity as a prerequisite. Joy arises when we overcome barriers, endure hardship and push past rejection. This struggle lends depth to our happiness.

Neuroscientific research corroborates this — — rewards earned through effort trigger far stronger activity in the ventral striatum and prefrontal cortex than free, unearned rewards[6]. Effort itself amplifies the value of pleasure.

Yet modern technology eliminates all minor discomfort. Short-form videos compress stimulation into 10-second clips. Dating apps simplify romance to left/right swipes. AI grants instant access to all knowledge.

With negativity erased, we obtain everything effortlessly — yet lose the overwhelming relief and euphoria of finally attaining something we worked for, left only with apathy and exhaustion.

Worse, Solomon and Corbit’s Opponent-Process Theory states that every emotional response automatically triggers an opposing counter-reaction to restore mental balance[7]. A period of joy inevitably brings mild post-pleasure dysphoria, a mental “post-high slump.”

When pleasure arrives cheaply and constantly, the opposing negative reaction grows stronger than the joy itself, creating hedonic tolerance — — the same stimulus delivers less and less delight each time.

Society has developed a “fear of suffering”[8]. People refuse to tolerate even minor discomfort, chasing quick distractions to numb themselves. Pleasure becomes thin, fleeting and scarce, leaving us endlessly chasing fleeting thrills yet perpetually unsatisfied.

Still from Nymphomaniac

Prepackaged Happiness — — We Lose Agency Through Vicarious Enjoyment

Alienation describes not only humanity’s detachment from itself but also the transformation of authentic self-discovered joy into pre-planned consumer experiences — this is vicarious enjoyment. Others craft our desires and even experience joy on our behalf.

Social media travel guides dictate “must-see” spots and “must-try” foods. When we finally visit these locations or taste these dishes and snap curated photos, we feel empty instead of fulfilled, thinking only “That’s it?”

Authentic experience is erased before it begins. We stop writing our own life stories and merely act out pre-written scripts from external influencers, never truly engaging with our own feelings.

Still from Fight Club

This creates a disconnect between ourselves and our emotions. As society fixates on external validation, we stop asking “Do I like this?” and instead ask “Will this get likes and viral comments?”

Per the Self-Determination Theory, our behavior is increasingly driven by external validation rather than intrinsic motivation[9].

Autonomy is a fundamental psychological need. When autonomy is continuously stripped away, we feel hollow and alienated, unable to draw organic, vital pleasure from our actions.

Simply put, we cannot feel genuine joy because we constantly consume trends pushed on us by the outside world, rather than pursuing what we genuinely crave. Anhedonia is fundamentally the loss of dialogue with our inner selves.

Trauma Makes Us Fear Happiness Itself

We typically associate joy with comfort and warmth, something we repeatedly seek out. However, some forms of intense satisfaction carry excess, boundary-crossing energy intertwined with pain and breakdown.

For certain people, pleasure and trauma become inseparably linked.

• Childhood punishment or neglect for expressing excitement and joy
• Intense intimate moments paired with betrayal
• Devastating misfortune immediately following periods of pure bliss

In these cases, joy becomes a danger signal — a precursor to loss and chaos. Our language echoes this intuition in the phrase “extreme joy begets sorrow.”

We develop a paradoxical self-protective strategy: our subconscious suppresses not only pain but all pathways to intense pleasure, to avoid re-traumatization.

Rather than being barred from joy, we bar ourselves from it — this repression operates so automatically we barely notice it.

We live in a safe gray zone with no emotional peaks or valleys, using emotional flatness as a shield against overwhelming intensity. As Osamu Dazai wrote in No Longer Human: “Cowards are afraid even of happiness. Sometimes they are wounded by joy.”

Research links fear of happiness to adverse childhood experiences, perfectionism and depressive symptoms[10]. People with high fear of happiness report a persistent sense that misfortune will follow any moment of delight.

When joy is coded as danger, anhedonia becomes an unconscious self-defense — — we can feel pleasure, yet subconsciously forbid ourselves from embracing it.

Still from The Night Porter

03. Rebuild Your Relationship With Pleasure, Starting Now

This analysis may make restoring joy sound like a futile battle against systemic societal dysfunction — but individual action still makes a difference. Below are actionable strategies to overcome anhedonia.

1. Seek Out Moderate, Meaningful Hardship

Philosopher Bernard Suits defined games as “the voluntary overcoming of unnecessary obstacles”[11]. Without struggle along the way, even games lose their charm. To reverse anhedonia, actively embrace moderate, purposeful hardship.

• Stick to endurance sports such as marathon running or rock climbing, and set small progressive goals
• Learn a complex craft that rewards incremental progress with each lesson
• Care for high-maintenance houseplants or an aquarium
• Read dense, challenging academic texts without AI assistance, breaking the reading into digestible segments

This hardship is not self-sabotage. It resets your pleasure threshold. Once you overcome obstacles, even tiny rewards will spark genuine delight.

The key distinction — — this struggle serves self-chosen, personally meaningful goals, not externally imposed performance pressure.

Still from Fight Club

2. Reduce Self-Criticism and Allow Aimless Existence

Modern people constantly interrogate every action: “What value does this hold? Am I doing this correctly?” This self-scrutiny kills pleasure instantly. Slavoj Žižek quips that the harder you chase joy, the faster it slips away like soap bubbles.

Practice unstructured, immersive presence with these small exercises.

• While showering, focus solely on the temperature and sensation of water on your skin, clearing all other thoughts
• Grab a pen and scribble loops or repeat a single word on paper, watching ink spread across the page
• Chew a single french fry 20 times slowly, focusing only on its flavor and texture

When you catch yourself mentally judging an activity — — “This serves no purpose,” “Am I enjoying this enough?” — — remind yourself: “I don’t need meaning right now — I only need to be present.”

Shift focus away from evaluating your happiness — — wipe down a table, tie your shoelaces, or listen to wind outside for two full minutes. Joy arrives quietly when you stop obsessing over it.

3. Carve Out Daily “No Audience Time” to Reconnect With Your True Feelings

Quitting social media entirely is unrealistic, but you can create daily periods of activity with zero observers: do something you will never photograph, post online, or share with anyone.

If you cannot identify your genuine interests, use reverse mapping — — write a list of three activities others praise yet leave you indifferent, for example.

• Queuing at viral photo walls for social media shots
• Binging trending hit TV series
• Buying limited-edition collabs you feel no real passion for

This list acts as a reverse compass; your true desires lie on its opposite side.

Reserve a two-hour afternoon window and follow these steps.

1. Place your phone in another room
2. Recall a tiny hobby you loved as a child that you abandoned long ago: folding paper planes, splashing in puddles, drawing lopsided clouds with crayons, kneeling to watch ants march
3. Engage in the activity without judging its quality or purpose. No audience, no likes, no witnesses

After finishing, sit quietly for a moment. You will hear a faint inner voice whisper, “This was nice.” That voice is the sign your capacity for pleasure has returned.

Closing Thoughts

Anhedonia may be a widespread ailment of the achievement-driven society, yet we do not have to surrender to the slow erosion of our authentic emotions.

May we all recover our capacity to feel joy, rather than drifting numbly through life — for to lose this capacity is the true death of living.

Today’s Discussion Prompt

Have you experienced anhedonia? What did you do to cope?

References

[1] Ribot, T. (1897). The Psychology of the Emotions. W. Scott.

[2] Berridge, K. C., & Robinson, T. E. (2003). Parsing reward. Trends in Neurosciences, 26(9), 507–513.

[3] Gard, D. E., Gard, M. G., Kring, A. M., & John, O. P. (2006). Anticipatory and consummatory components of the experience of pleasure: A scale development study. Journal of Research in Personality, 40(6), 1086–1102.

[4] Lacan, J. (2006). Écrits: The First Complete Edition in English (B. Fink, Trans.). W. W. Norton & Company. (Original work published 1966)

[5] Schwartz, B. (2004). The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less. Ecco.

[6] Westbrook, A., Lamichhane, B., & Braver, T. (2019). The subjective value of cognitive effort is encoded by a domain-general valuation network. Journal of Neuroscience, 39(20), 3934–3947.

[7] Solomon, R. L., & Corbit, J. D. (1974). An opponent-process theory of motivation: I. Temporal dynamics of affect. Psychological Review, 81(2), 119–145.

[8] Han, B. C. (2023). Society of Fatigue: Today’s Pain (Wu Qiong, Trans.). CITIC Press Group.

[9] Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000). Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being. American Psychologist, 55(1), 68–78.

[10] Gilbert, P., McEwan, K., Gibbons, L., Chotai, S., Duarte, J., & Matos, M. (2012). Fears of compassion and happiness in relation to alexithymia, mindfulness, and self-criticism. Psychology and Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice, 85(4), 374–390.

[11] Suits, B. (1978). The Grasshopper: Games, Life and Utopia. University of Toronto Press.

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