Overview
Anhedonia is the state of being unable to experience happiness or joy. This is in sometimes conflated with alexithymia, which is the inability to articulate the emotions someone might be experiencing. Someone with alexithymia might physically feel a fast heartbeat but not be aware if it’s fear or excitement. Someone with anhedonia doesn’t feel reward or pleasure when engaging with activities that ordinarily give people pleasure, like spending time with loved ones or eating their favorite food. It can be tied to depression or trauma, which means it can be temporary. In fact, in cases of severe depression, both can occur such that someone can neither experience happiness nor realize that they don’t experience happiness.