I’ve noticed recently that my life has been lacking pleasure. I don’t really seem to be having much fun.
That’s not to say that I don’t have access to fun things. It’s more that I don’t end up feeling like I am enjoying myself. And over time, I’ve lost the desire to even try.
Since my burnout, the idea of doing something pleasurable feels fraught with risk. Unhealthy indulgence? That’s bad for you. Nice time with friends? You may not see them again for months. Going to a party? I may end up feeling out of place.
Somewhere along the line I’ve apparently trained my brain to stop giving me pleasure signals. I haven’t been out to a restaurant in months, and I don’t really want to either.
To be honest, eating right now feels like a chore. My ability to understand my hunger signals is very mixed, and I am often very confused whether I should eat, and how much it should be. Right now, I eat for sustenance. I guesstimate what I should eat to stop me crashing.
Getting an autism diagnosis has led me to reevaluate a lot around the way I function. Many neurodivergent people have real challenges with eating. For me, I often have numbed feelings around eating, followed by intense, insatiable hunger pangs. I don’t think I’m particularly sensitive to sugar, but I do have a very sensitive stomach.
For a while, I had accepted my current way of living as the way it will be for the rest of my life. But I also have reflected that I didn’t have such difficulties before. I could eat in restaurants without a problem, and I used to enjoy food far more than I do now.
The idea is dawning within me that I don’t have to be this way. If I could do something before, I can do it again. But that requires me to retrain the brain. I think I need to unlearn my pattern of suppressing feelings of joy and happiness.
It’s interesting because I’m also seeing that there’s different facets to fun. My sense of satisfaction from a ‘job well done’ seems to have returned. It’s what’s driving me to continue with writing my articles here. It’s also what’s getting me to pick up more activities over the last few months. This is probably the one that has persisted despite the burnout.
I also have generally felt better through exercise. I feel healthier, and generally have a boost to my day after a gym workout from the endorphinal rush. I also am far more confident with my body, which means that a lot of worries and concerns have disappeared.
But my ability to enjoy simple, more hedonistic pleasures seems to be eluding me. I don’t seem to really get much joy in the things that I do. Even the idea of a walk in the park or going to the beach has felt more a thing I ‘should’ do, rather than one that I actually want.
For a while I went on antidepressants. The aim of this was to increase my serotonin and effectively ‘snap’ me out of a rut. Yet it became obvious that these weren’t really helping. Although I had a burst of energy, I didn’t really have much desire to do anything with it. And so, it probably compounded the issue rather than helped.
I think the solution for me is quite a simple one. ‘Have more fun’. The challenge is doing this in practice, and doing it in a way that actually really feels fun.
I’ve been to parties, but I wouldn’t describe myself as enjoying them particularly. It then instead becomes about attaining a goal – whether making more friends or instead seeing it as a cardio session to burn calories.
I’ve been spending quite a lot of my spare time playing video games. Yet I’m not sure whether this is really to do with having fun, as much as just distracting my brain by giving it lots of sensory inputs to focus upon.
I don’t really have an obvious solution. If I did, I probably wouldn’t be facing this problem still. So this is definitely a work in progress.
But my instinct is telling me that I’m better off letting the universe take the lead with this one. I’ve found that the more I let go, the more the Law of Nature will take over.
Ironically, such struggles end up working themselves out when we stop fighting them.