Are You Feeling 'Blah'?: Understanding Anhedonia and How to Rediscover Your Joy | Ep. 072

In this episode of the MindHack Podcast, we sit down with Tanith Carey, a psychology author and Gestalt psychotherapist-in-training, to explore the often overlooked issue of anhedonia, the inability to feel pleasure. Drawing from her latest book, "Feeling 'Blah'? Why Life Feels Joyless and How to Recapture Its Highs," Tanith delves into the relentless stressors of modern life and how they affect our brain's reward system, effectively taking it 'off line.'

Tanith shares her personal journey with anhedonia and provides a deep understanding of how our high-speed, high-stress lifestyles contribute to this condition. Rather than pursuing the elusive concept of happiness, Tanith focuses on finding moments of joy in our challenging world. She offers actionable strategies to help listeners reclaim these moments despite the pressures of modern life.

Join us as we uncover the biochemical underpinnings of joy and learn practical steps to navigate the complexities of the modern world, ensuring you can overcome anhedonia and find joy in everyday life. This insightful discussion is packed with expert advice and real-world solutions to help you reconnect with life's pleasures. Don't miss this episode if you're looking to transform your life and rediscover joy amid today's stressors.

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Feeling 'Blah'?: Why Life Feels Joyless and How to Recapture Its Highs by Tanith Carey
Other books here

People & Other Mentions

mesolimbic pathway
Andrew Huberman
Anhedonia
ADHD
Burnout
FMRI Scan
Learning to Listen, Listening to Learn: Building Essential Skills in Young Children by Mary Renck Jalongo

Transcript

Tanith: 0:00

when so many people feel so blah and feel so meh and feel so flatlined and feel so numb, why is it that we don't know the general public? Don't know this word Because unless you know what it is, you just think it's what your life is in the modern world.

CODY: 0:32

Welcome to the Mind Hack podcast, where we explore the psychology of self-improvement and mindset to enhance your happiness and fulfillment. I'm your host Cody McClain, and like many I've navigated through periods where the zest for life seems to fade, making everyday joys feel just out of reach. This feeling known as anhedonia is where life's usual pleasures stop bringing the joy they used to. Today we're joined by Tth Carey. She's the author of the book Feeling Blah, why Life's Feels Joyless, and How to Recapture Its Highs. It's a book that takes a deep dive into something known as anhedonia, the inability to feel pleasure. This condition, which I've battled personally, transforms activities that were once joyful into mundane tasks. Imagine hiking without the thrill, painting, without passion, or dining with friends, without savoring the taste or sounds around you. Tana's book is one of the few books that aims to connect the dots between our high speed, high stress lives, and the numbing effect they have on our joy. Through her extensive research and interviews with leading experts, she not only diagnoses this modern ailment, but provides actionable solutions to overcome it. Her work is particularly enlightening on how factors like diet can influence our brain's chemistry. How a Western diet rich in sugars and processed foods can inflame our gut and brain disrupting the production and flow of feel-good chemicals like serotonin. In our conversation today, we'll explore key strategies from her book to reclaim the vibrant life you deserve. Discussing everything from the biochemical underpinnings of joy to practical steps for reengaging life's pleasures. Join us as we discuss how to break the cycle of blah. And spark a renewed sense of excitement and fulfillment in our everyday lives. Tanith, welcome to the podcast.

Tanith: 2:28

Thank you so much.

CODY: 2:30

So I'd love to start out and just ask what inspired you to write feeling blah.

Tanith: 2:36

Well, I always say I write about what I need to learn, and for a long time I've been writing on science, health and psychology, and. It was realizing that there wasn't a name for the, for what I was experiencing. Um, I, like you, I was at the top of my career. I was doing very well. Um, things were going well for me. personally, things were going well. I had a lovely house, lovely husband, and there was a particular moment when I realized that there must be a name for this feeling. And that was, I got a call from my agent one day saying that I got a book deal. I'd really, really wanted. And it was on better terms than we expected. And it was really, really good news. And I just remember, like as I was speaking to her on the phone and I was, I could hear myself going, oh, that's great. That's fantastic. that's brilliant. But I couldn't feel any joy kind of coursing through me. It was like there was a numbness in me. And as I got off the phone, I started to think, what is that? What is that? That I can't get really good news, but yet I can't actually feel any joy that accompanied it. And I'm a very curious person. I'm a Gestalt start therapist in training. as I say, I've always been interested in, Understanding myself and others and, and bringing the science into the mainstream. And I started to go and search what this feeling was. And fast forward a few years and I kept thinking about it. And I, I had some talk therapy and it didn't seem to sort of solve what it was. And I could, I kept thinking, and I, I were other moments I, I realized, like, for example, my, my wedding day at the most fabulous wedding, I was at the altar sort of looking at this man I so desperately wanted to marry. He had tears of joy in his eyes. But as I look back at him. Again, I couldn't feel the joy. it was like I was looking at myself down a long tunnel. So as I said, I went to talk therapy. No one had an explanation. And then I started wondering what this was, and then one night I. was lying in bed and I was Googling and my husband was asleep next to me. And it was kind of felt like a guilty secret that I should be Googling. Why aren't I enjoying my life? when I should feel so grateful for it. And then I wish there was a more exciting explanation, but as I delved deeper into the Google searches, it started coming up. This word anhedonia. And I was like, wow. I was blown away. It was like a light bulb moment because, you know, even from the word anhedonia, you can tell what it means, you know, because it's the, it's the opposite to the to of hedonism. And then I was blown away to find out that this is not a new word, this was coined by a French, philosopher in 1896. And was in the psych psychiatric literature, professionals know about it. It a symptom of major depression. But it can also be a standalone condition. And I'm like, when so many people feel so blah and feel so meh and feel so flatlined and feel so numb, why is it that we don't know the general public? Don't know this word Because unless you know what it is, you just think it's what your life is in the modern world. So at that point, I was like, I've gotta write a book about this, and bring all this research together and into the mainstream.'cause I really feel that anhedonia has been the missing word in our mental health conversation. we talk about joy at one end and depression at the end, but what about the grace based in the middle, where so many of us are increasingly living our lives in the modern world? So that's why I wrote the book.

CODY: 5:45

Yeah, and, much like myself, I, ended up selling multiple companies, but it seemed that, remember the CEO of this company that acquired my company, asked me as he, shook my, hand and asked me how I felt. And I just responded okay. But we have a lot of work to do because I had to hand over the logins, they had to do their due diligence, and it was still like this whole process that still required a lot of work. And I was immediately just moving my brain onto what's next. And Even after I sold that company, I never really looked back at that, to have that sense of gratitude or appreciation for all the hard work that I put into it. It just felt like an empty feeling and I just went back into the rat race and just continued to, work on another company. And so there's a psychological component that I think contributes to anhedonia, which could be lack of dopamine or serotonin or other chemicals, but I think there's also a society shift that seems to be occurring where we, tend to just get stuck in this rat race of what society tells us we should value, and then we go from one thing to the next thing because we're never really taught gratitude or how to appreciate life. Intricate moments. But with that said, I'd love for you to explain what exactly is anhedonia and why do you think it's becoming more prevalent in today's society.

Tanith: 7:03

Yeah. So anhedonia is the loss of joy in things that you used to enjoy. it's often a numbness, an emotional flatlining, a kind of meh feeling, and apathy, kind of hopelessness. It has a hopeless flavor to it, and a kind of groundhog day feel. And it's like, it's like that feeling of being at Christmas and knowing that you like Christmas, but not really being able to feel the joy of Christmas or being at a party and everyone else seems to be having a good time, but you feel on the edge or you're on the other side of the frosted glass and you are kind of, if you are laughing, you feel like you're faking it. You're never completely in the moment. That to me, is what anhedonia is. I think there are so many reasons why. Anhedonia is on the rise. I think a lot of that's about the way, there's a big mismatch, I think between what our brains were designed for and the way we're using them now. I think that we've been told in more modern capitalist societies that, We should be happy and like, that should be our default state. But really, if you look back as I do in the book, and you go back to the evolution of the human brain, you know the human brain is not a happiness generator. It's a survival machine. It is designed to make sure that you survive that day with various different defenses and wiring so that you react to threats and that you live to till another day, and then you pass on your genes so that the human race gets continued. So I. think The human brain is wired for short, sharp spikes of cortisol. for example, typically, like if there's a bear on the horizon or there's a s snake in the grass, then the human brain is very good at raising those levels of cortisol so that it can react to the appropriate way in order to survive. But the thing is, is that, We now live in a society where human, although we're not in life threatening situations most of the time, Our cortisol is constantly being spiked, by the 24 hour news cycle, by, emails, deadlines, social media, and it never gets a chance to reset. Now what happens now in this is that basically when once cortisol is raised significantly, it takes an hour to disperse again in the body. And that makes sense from a survival point of view, because if you've seen a bear in the distance, you wanna make sure that you are on high alert for the next hour to make sure it's not still lurking in the, in the bush. But the thing is, that when our cortisol levels are constantly raised and never get a chance to reset, as they don't, with tech and modern, phones and stuff like that. Then it starts to dial down the of pleasure and joy, which are dopamine, serotonin. So basically cortisol is winning out. and It's like it's suppressing our levels and it's basically derailing our brain's reward system. So even when things are going well with it, well, for us, it's just not that easy to feel that good again. and I think it's like, we live in a society where. You know, one of the things I learned from the book is that like the dopamine is not the molecule of pleasure. It's the molecule of striving and exploration and anticipation. But like in the modern world, we get all our needs met immediately. like a hundred thousand years ago, we wanted to go and eat, then we would have to go and look for that fruit tree. Now, if we are hungry, we could get pizza delivered to our door in half an hour. all the things that used to activate our dopamine around our meso limbic reward path pathways are not there anymore'cause all our needs are being met. So it's, there's a kind of whole perfect storm of stress. Our needs being met too quickly, and also there's other things like, modern diets. Are really not helping with our brain's reward system. there's a selection of modern lifestyle illnesses which are causing inflammation, which can also interrupt the smooth running of the mesolimbic mesolimbic reward pathway. I just think we're in a kind of perfect storm of things, and I think by naming anhedonia we can start to tease apart the different reasons. I mean, all of us will have a slightly different set of reasons for anhedonia. but once we can identify our, we can start to do something about it. Because I think what's happening in the modern world is that we're accepting blah as our status quo. We're thinking that's, this is just what the modern life, modern world has become for us, and I think that's not a great place to be really.

CODY: 11:10

In your book, you note that there are three parts to anhedonia. one is that you've stopped looking forward to activities while you are doing them and you don't enjoy them anymore. and then afterwards you tend to have this negative memory of them, so you don't want to do them again. and that's inclusive for even things that you have previously enjoyed doing for a long time.

Tanith: 11:34

Yeah, absolutely. And that is also on the flip side. There's a good side to that is that that's what you can also break joy, feeling your joy into those three things, which is anticipating it and looking forward to it, enjoying it in the moment, and then remembering it afterwards. So, yeah, so you are right anhedonia is the breakdown of that circular. process of joy. So, and that process is interrupted?

CODY: 11:58

and then it, I'm, I'm not sure if you referenced the, the rat study in your book, because there was this infamous study where they, had rats who couldn't produce enough dopamine. And dopamine is largely viewed. It's not the feelgood chemical. it's the drive chemical, the motivation. It, makes effort feel good as, Andrew Huberman says. They found that when these rats didn't have enough dopamine, even when they were hungry, they weren't able to move or even get to feed themselves. And I think you referenced an example in the book and that there's this misconception with anhedonia is that you can still feel pleasure, like you can still enjoy that ice cream cone in the same way that somebody who doesn't have anhedonia can as well, but getting yourself. to go in the car to drive to the ice cream store, to buy the ice cream cone, that is so much of a bigger obstacle that you're never able to motivate yourself to do that.

Tanith: 12:53

Yeah, no, absolutely. That loss of motivation because you forget what makes you feel good,

CODY: 12:58

Hmm.

Tanith: 12:58

so you stop wanting so to do it because you, your, as I say, your mesolimbic reward pathway, it's just offline. It's not gonna be. Fixed right away. so I totally agree with you on that front. You know, it's like, that's why one of the things I do is to bring back the anticipation to my life. I make the most of that knowledge that dopamine is the molecule of anticipation and exploration. So every week I plan something new that I really want to look forward to. For me, so that builds up my healthy dopamine. Do you know what I mean? Because once you explore and once you get out, I mean, I think that's a really interesting point as well. You make is that what do we do if we feel this loss of motivation? And so that's why the research shows that behavioral activation is really important. So that is, remembering what made you feel good. And basically doing it anyway, even it doesn't feel good at the beginning. So like, the analogy is the old fashioned water pump. So to begin with, say you loved hiking, to give you your example and you remembered you liked hiking. And then basically say you decide to go hiking, once a week for a month, and then to begin with. The hiking wouldn't feel good, but like, as you of keep hiking and, and as you keep pressing that water lever, eventually the good feelings start to flow again. so basically it is about remembering what you used to do and doing it even though it doesn't feel good in the moment. You know what I mean? Even though even it feels counterintuitive, it's really important to, to have faith that the process will help you get back on track. I mean, I can't, I'm not gonna say it's, it's happening in every situation, but it's one of the very accepted ways that anhedonia is tackled and it's very research based. And I mean, I know if you feel like, oh my God, I'm in bed and I can't do anything and I can't get out of bed, I mean that's kind of major depression. But if you're still functioning and able to have some kind of control over what you can do with your life, I do think that, we do need to kind remember that behavioral activation does have a strong evidence base for it. and believe that It can help. I mean, did you find that helped you, I mean.

CODY: 15:03

Certainly. Putting yourself in the position of recognizing that motivation comes after action. You're never going to feel motivated to write that book or to go on that run, but it's the feelings that you feel afterwards. And so there's this, this ideas that say you go to, to, get ice cream or you are at a fast food place and you can get a burger or a salad. And that burger is going to give you pleasure in the moment. But there's this other perception is that there is a sense of pleasure of knowing that you chose not to get that ice cream cone or that burger. And there is a way that you can motivate yourself by recognizing that you will feel good by doing this activity, even if you don't feel like it. And the trick just is like procrastination is, you know, most of the procrastination is just getting yourself started, getting yourself in the running shoes, getting yourself to sit down and start writing and trying to just get yourself to. Create some forward momentum. And so certainly having that mindset, I think it's helped me, even if I don't always get to a place where it creates that, that rebound effect where I'm able to feel good and then go back to it every single day because in some ways. Just doing the same thing. I might feel good one day when I accomplish something, when I write something or I record an episode, but it seems like I, I have to find that same level of momentum. I have to motivate myself just as hard the next day, and it still seems like it's, hard to get myself going, and some days are better than others, of course.

Tanith: 16:35

Hmm. I think you make a really important point there though, that you feel that it's somewhat in your control. I think when people, I think that's what's really important about this book is that we, when we know how joy is made in the brain, we feel more able to do something about it. And also people who have a growth mindset about feeling good are, third more able to kind of enact that. So it's also a kind of, you feel, it sounds to me like you feel in control of some of the inputs that you feed your brain and you don't feel at the mercy of it. Do you see what I mean? I think that's when people lose hope or that they lose faith, that they can do anything about how they feel. think that is a real,

CODY: 17:18

I, I, think when you lose that, when you lose that sense of hope, even though anhedonia is potentially, I think considered a form of depression by, psychiatry, is that if you don't have that growth mindset of feeling like that you can overcome this. or I think another perspective is I've had to ask myself. If I wake up every day for the rest of my life feeling this lack of pleasure, this lack of joy, what will I do? And my answer is, well, I'll have to accept that, and that's going to be my life. And if that's the default or the minimum mindset, the mindset beyond that is I can overcome this and I can still have hope, because the moment you don't have hope. Then that leads to depression. And so I think you, you mentioned the growth mindset. I think that's really important with any mental health condition is being able to recognize, or either first find acceptance with what you have, and then from there, look forward and find that sense of hope. Look for other people who experience the same issue as you do. Join a community, see that you're not alone. And I think that can have a huge impact at helping us overcome a lot of the mental issues that we are dealing with in today's society.

Tanith: 18:39

I absolutely so agree. And I think that just, if people took nothing else away from the book or the podcast, it's like knowing there's a name for it and that a lot of people feel this way and that it's not, doesn't have to be a guilty secret and you shouldn't feel ashamed of it and you can do something about it. I think that is a major leap forward, you know?

CODY: 18:58

I'd like to ask what is the difference though between anhedonia and burnout? Because I think burnout is the more common thing that everybody's aware of burnout and that you can work too hard. You can become stressed to have too much cortisol, and then you just experience, you wake up one day and you just don't have that zest and you, can't do that same work. It feels so much harder. And people say, oh, take a vacation. But then you might end up being one of those people that just keeps on working so hard that you just continue to burn out. So Can, can continual burnout lead to anhedonia and what is the difference between these two?

Tanith: 19:35

Um, I'm smiling because I think there's a massive, massive crossover between burnout and anhedonia. In fact, I mean, I think anhedonia should be a recognized symptom of burnout. So what's happening with burnout is exactly that. It's like a cortisol overload. Where you are feeling so overwhelmed that basically in order to metaphorically save energy, your brain just starts to shut down and only do not shut down, but limits itself to what it needs to do to survive every day and make you get up and just do your job. So basically, as I say, once your, cortisol is so flooded with your system, it's dialing down dopamine so that you therefore don't. Feel, pleasure and you become, you know, I mean, I think part of the reason that I was in, in anhedonia,'cause I was completely burnt out. I just couldn't, I just, at the end of every day, I would just be like, I would do my work if there was enough deadlines, but at the end of the day, I would lie on my bed, unable to speak. I was so mentally exhausted. You know, my. voice was flat. I hardly smiled. I was expressionless, and I think it's really interesting as well, like, I think people living with ADHD, I think they're also very prone to. anhedonia as a result of burnout as well. And also I think the other interesting point you raise is what are the cohorts who are driving themselves so hard to burnout? And then I would also ask a question like, what is it from their family background or from their, what creative adjustments are they making? That they need to feel good to sur survive to basically work and work and work all the time. You know what I mean? And that might be also something to do with childhood messages. So there's an awful lot that comes with that burnout because most people, if they're feeling really stressed or you know, they will take steps. some people just do not stop. It's just, nothing's ever enough for them, and that was certainly me. It sounds like it might have been you. And that's, I think, how we ended up in that

CODY: 21:32

Yeah.

Tanith: 21:33

state. to be honest, obviously I follow everything in the book because it's all evidence based and it's from America's top and top neuroscientists. But I can feel joy when I am basically not overloaded and not overwhelmed. Again, you know. That, It's the cortisol. Cortisol is just constantly raised in our society and we are not appreciating what it's doing to our brain's reward system. I think it's really time that we step back and paid attention to that because, if we have like. A generation of people who are apathetic, who are tired, who are burnt out. I mean, we have so many challenges in the world. We need people who are flourishing. We need people who know when it's time to step back and how to look after their brains reward system.'cause the brains reward system is what makes us survive. You know, it, it's like a hundred thousand years ago, it's what made us get up. Go and find the fruit tree. keep walking, keep exploring, you know. It's just like we have as a human race just to have to keep exploring and keep trying and keep getting out of the mess that we've now found ourselves in. You know? So we need a flourishing population, And the good news is, okay, the world is tough, let's just name it. It's difficult, okay? It's not getting any easier. We've got global warming, we've got overpopulation, we've got political uncertainty. We've got war in the Middle East. It's difficult, but the good news is if we are gonna survive this and work our way out of it, we've never known more about how emotion is made in the brain at any point, we've never known more about neuroscience. Thanks to FMRI scanners, it really is time to harness this new neuroscience and make it genuinely applicable for everybody. we can't just let the modern life just kind of like, make our brains just kind of burn out, I think we have to realize what's happening to us.

CODY: 23:17

Yeah, it seems that we create technology and that technology causes some problems and that we hope that new technology will solve those problems, and at least luckily in the world of, psychology and psychiatry is that it seems that we are still trying to improve these things. but so in the book, you mentioned a metaphor, I believe there was a doctor who mentioned this metaphor quicksand as, using quicksand as this ability to experience anhedonia as a description. Can you elaborate on this analogy?

Tanith: 23:48

Yeah, I mean basically he just talks very, very, effectively about how it sort of seems to suck you in and how it seems to be very hard to release yourself. I just think it's a really good analogy for how you feel in anhedonia. Like you just can't quite extricate it from yourself. From it, you know? but that's possibly because a lot of people just didn't know there was a name for it.

CODY: 24:08

Right.

Tanith: 24:09

there are lots of analogies for anhedonia. I guess it's kind of this, it comes in different flavors and forms for different people and yeah, quicksand is just to kind of describe the way it sucks you under,

CODY: 24:20

And.

Tanith: 24:21

know, that's what the book is there to lend a hand, to pull you out.

CODY: 24:24

Hmm. In the book you also mention various things that can contribute to anhedonia things like say habits or food. And I know that there was a study that looked at. A high sugar and high fat diet and had noticeable correlations with mental disorders, and increased stress. And you also mentioned long covid. So what are some of these external triggers that can potentially cause anhedonia for people?

Tanith: 24:55

Yeah, so we are appreciating now that like food also makes your mood. I think no one could have missed the fact that like, we're all obsessed with the gut now and how we now know that so much of, serotonin and also actually dopamine is actually made in the gut. And then the junk food diet that we eat, which is so full of things like preservatives, high in sugar, also affects this microbiome in the gut, which means that not only do we, it's. It's harder for the, our gut microbiome to produce serotonin, but it also crosses the gut wall and causes inflammation. And this inflammation, it's now being shown can reach the brain where it's now believed to affect, the smooth running of the reward circuit. So on top of that, I mean, no wonder, I mean, we're not only more sedentary, we all, we're not only getting outside less, we're also eating. Foods that are actually contraindicating to what we really need to be eating to feel good. So this is what I mean by the perfect storm. You know, it's just like this is also not helping. So it really helps to be aware of what you are eating is not just filling your stomach or just driving your body. It's also. really good to start eating a diet that really supports your brain health and your, and smooth running of your brain's reward system and start to think of it like that. So I think that's a really interesting shift that we're now making and people are really joining the dots on that, which I'm really excited about.

CODY: 26:21

And you mentioned some different ways that we can attempt to deal with burnout. I know that there's behavioral activation therapy. Could you expand on that and any other methods that you say personally tried that has helped you overcome anhedonia?

Tanith: 26:36

behavioral activation is like. To find the thing that you really want to enjoy and to do it again, and do it again and again until the good feelings return. So, the other thing that I personally do, so for example, I love to do things like, I'm laughing 'cause it's not very me, it doesn't look like very, but I love to do things like, um, baking and sewing and stuff like that. And then. There's a really good thing about being involved in the activity that you are just naturally drawn to because it also puts you in a state of flow. And when you are in a state of flow, stress hormones start to reduce and the feel good hormones start to circulate. And you are also in the here and now. So I'm a really big. A believer in doing what your spark is. Like every person has a spark. And that is something that even as a child, they were drawn to without any adult encouragement. And it's something you just do naturally and you maybe you find it easier than other people. And often the clues are in childhood. So I'm really a big believer if you have anhedonia, is remembering what your spark was in childhood and then returning to it, and then allowing yourself at least. Sometime every week just to kind of at least an hour, because as we say, it takes at least an hour for the cortisol levels to drop, to basically enter into the activity completely. I really think that we need to put our phones away more also on that topic of what we do, like. With our phones, even if our, we are not using our phones, our, phones are constantly there. The research shows that even if they're just out of reach, we're aware of the possibility that there could be some incoming text or message or something we need to attend to. So I think for at least an hour, a day if possible, to put your phone away. Let the cortisol reset down to base level so that you can then allow your know your feelgood chemicals to start circulate again. That's another one I'm really, really keen on. I'm really keen also on, the process, the concept of interception, which I think is really exciting and that is. Taking the time to notice how your, the physical sensations you are feeling are adding up to your emotion. and it's like kind of that awareness of what you need. You know how stressed you are. What you need now to feel better. I think just to kind of open ourselves up to that is really important with anhedonia, because I think often we numb ourselves or we push that stuff away, or we look at our phones and we don't notice what we really need. I don't think interception is the same as mindfulness, but like it is about stopping to notice. Another thing I'm really keen on is. Glimmers, which is a kind of a sematic idea, which is like even if you are having a really stressful day, there will be moments of joy in them in there. And that once you start looking out for glimmers, which are kind of. Little moments of kind of loveliness or joy in your day and taking time to notice instead of just moving on and moving past, say there's a, cat purring on the street that demands your attention or just wants you to stroke it, or there's a beautiful flower on your way to work, instead of just ignoring it and just saying you're too busy. But just take a moment, like, say a minute. Allow your nervous system to reset again, bring your cortisol levels down so that your feel good chemicals can flow. So I mean these are all things, like in the book, like a lot of the book is about analyzing anhedonia, like what it is, why modern life makes it more common and the reasons for it. But then the second half of the book's like a toolkit and like everybody is gonna need a different thing. the book is about bringing together this toolkit that works personally for you. So those are some of the things I do. And as I say, because I know dopamine is the molecule of anticipation, I plan something every week. I also know that healthy dopamine release is released by novelty, so I try and do something new as well that I look forward to. So it's just to kind of build that up. So it's about awareness of what modern life is doing to your brain and then just basically. Having the courage to say, okay, I can change these dials a bit, I can push that one up, I can push that one down. I think I need this now. And just responding to that because I say if you are, I keep saying it, but like if your, reward system's offline, nothing's gonna feel good. It is our most basic survival circuit. We have to start taking care of it.

CODY: 30:58

So much, so much good stuff in there. you, mentioned from interception gratitude, awareness. So, personally, I have a practice I call reverse meditation, where I get into a chair at the end of the day and then I let my mind wander. It's kind of the opposite of meditation, and so I, I explore how did I feel today? Do I feel bad? Do I feel good? what emotions am I experiencing? What might I wanna do tomorrow? What's currently occupying my attention? And I explore that. And that has allowed me to really go into my subconscious and look at what's there. And as you said, with our phones, we often might pull out our phone. Not know that we're pulling out our phone as a means of distraction. And it's just like whenever you're, say at a table with friends and you guys are having, you're out at a restaurant, somebody pulls out their phone. I've noticed I, I will reach for my phone and then the moment later, everybody has their phone out. Because we, don't know that we're being triggered by this other person who has their phone out, and we end up being triggered by stress and the daily responsibilities that we have, and then we end up occupying that and distracting ourselves. And so having that, the interception to be aware of, what am I feeling, where is this feeling coming from? Can give you the awareness. to be able to take a step back and ask yourself, what am I doing? And you also mentioned gratitude, and I think that's a hugely important one. I practice a gratitude journal every day where I'd wake up and I would do like the three things. But eventually it got to the point where I'm saying, I'm grateful for air, I'm grateful. for water. And I think to some extent it might get to a point where it's not helpful, but I think the important thing with gratitude is to look at what's a memory or something I'm looking forward to who is somebody I helped? And to try and experience that emotion, that thing that you felt and bring that up again. And even when I go back to by my meditation routine so often that motivation. It comes not from the doing because you might end up doing some emails, say you clear your inbox. You might feel good after the end of that, but at the end of the day, doing your email is not, it's not a, it's not gonna fulfill you. Right? It's just you get a little bit of a reward after that. So those who don't have anhedonia can more easily do email. But one thing that I've experienced even with this condition is that I can think about what are my goals? What are my long-term visions? then I try to imagine myself, what will it feel when I accomplish this thing? Who am I going to help when I accomplish this thing? And that has given this, wave of motivation that's helped me so much accomplish these long-term goals. granted it doesn't help me get my email inbox, you know, clear my email inbox or respond to my friends who text me and that, that end up waiting a week or two before I have the motivation to respond. But it's helped me in so many other ways. but yeah, you mentioned so many important points from just the, I think at the end of the day, it's, it's having awareness and giving ourselves the time of day to connect with. Our inner subconscious and how we're feeling and I think the more connected we can be to that, the more we can work to overcome this mental issue.

Tanith: 34:19

Yeah, I totally agree. I mean, the more our modern life disconnects us from our awareness and our interception and our bodily kind of connection, so that's partly why. So we're doing all the things that actually we, that are not really good for us. Basically without even, we're just. Blindly, blindly sleep walking into it because that's the messages we get from the modern culture. So yeah, I think it's time to reclaim our awareness of our bodies. Yeah, definitely. Although, I love your point about, really visualizing that goal because you're just really harnessing your dopamine there, aren't you? You are really, your exploration, your striving. And that's really wonderful to hear, you know, it's really interesting about emails and email boxes because my email box is constantly saying, oh, I'm running out of storage. You know, so I think, um, I think it really like an hour of digital detoxing just on the Sunday, maybe sometimes. Sometimes it's really good to kind of stop those feelings of overwhelm, you know, that kind of feeling that everything's kind of filling up the whole time. You know, all these messages we're getting. So I just think we need to curate the messages that sort of social media companies, the companies we use, are just bombarding us with these kind of demands for attention. Because what demands our attention is our nervous system and our brain's own reward system, which is just, being sidelined here. And that's why a lot of us are just feeling really gray.

CODY: 35:40

Yeah, I think it's gonna continue to get worse than better, unfortunately, as we have this generation that's being raised, being addicted to social media, and we have depression rates and anxiety rates among Generation Z just continuing to soar and get worse and worse. And I think that's related to opening up the app. You see what your friends are doing, you see. This person is in a private jet. You see all the highlights that people wanna post on social media, and it's just reminiscent of a friend who works at McKinsey. And she posted these beautiful photos on Instagram of her and Paris and it looked amazing. And in the caption for all these amazing photos, she said, this was the worst week of my life. and I thought, okay, she's joking, right? And so, when she came here to visit me in Austin, she literally said, no, it was the worst week of my life. And you can only imagine the stress of working at a huge global consulting company. Sure you get to travel the world, but it that sense it, it's meaningless and it's just like everybody can post a picture of. Some amazing travel and some amazing experience, but we tend to not share all the crappy things about that experience. And I think that continues to add to this increase in anxiety and that increased cortisol, as you say, goes hand in hand with this increase in anhedonia. And that lack of ability to experience the reward from doing something that's hard.

Tanith: 37:08

And I think you also make a really good point there because like serotonin is also one of our happiness chemicals, and that's triggered by status. So it tends to rise when we feel good and it tends to dip when we feel less than. So as soon as you open a social media account like Instagram, then someone's got more followers than you. Someone's got more likes, someone looks like they're having a better time than you. you. know, our brains evolved in a culture where we wandered. the planet with sort of 50 or 50 to 70 tribal members, and these were the only people we had to compare ourselves to. It wasn't designed for us to compare ourselves to 10,000 strangers a day who we've never met. and that is just one more reason. so I'm thinking with phones, we are finally kind of working out, you know, as you say, the technology is always ahead. Really, of what the human body needs, isn't it? And I think hopefully we're starting to work that out. And so I'm really like, people are going back to brick phones. People are really in the uk, probably in America too. They're really starting to cut down on when their kids get phones, they're starting to put friction so that, they only use their phones in limited amounts. I think that we are finally facing up to what this doing, because we've been at the center of just a really, very, intense experiments, particularly since, the iPhone came out. Really? Yeah, definitely. Um, and I think we need to frame phone free time, not as a deprivation, but as a treat. I think we need that shift, and that is also how we need to frame it for our kids. And I think that, if we say to our kids, for example, I've got two children and I'm a parenting author. It's like kind of, it's like. They don't really wanna be on their phones. If you offer them something to do as a family that's phone free, they'll go with it. They will do it, particularly in the tween years. And they, if they learn to enjoy and they learn that intersection that they realize actually I like not having to be a slave to my phone. I like not seeing that my, my friends got more likes than I have. I think that we have to be more conscious as parents as well about also looking after our kids. Reward systems and that interception. I mean, as a parenting author, I think interception is one of the greatest skills that we can ever teach our kids. You know, it's like, what do I need now? I feel stressed on my phone. I don't feel good on my phone. I've had enough, and just to really listen to those messages. And because it goes into all sorts of different areas, like, they notice when they're drinking too much, how that makes them feel. If they're, like, they notice that they're stressed, how do I feel now? What can I do about it? Instead of just reaching for those coping mechanisms, just make things worse. So, yeah, I'm really very keen on. Teaching awareness to our kids as well of how they're feeling in that moment. And also, I think, sorry, one more thing on social media is like when we are consuming the world for the entertainment of other people or for the judgment of other people, we are not in the moment ourselves. So maybe your friend was taking the most stunning picture of the Eiffel Tower, but she wasn't actually herself looking up at it and thinking, my God, that's an amazing piece of architecture. She was thinking, oh, okay, well how's that gonna look in Instagram? So she's not in the here and now. to appreciate it She wasn't really feeling the joy of it because she was. in posing a filter between her and the experience

CODY: 40:14

Hmm. Yeah, that strikes me because I've, I would end up traveling the world and taking these amazing photographs. And I would do it for the sake of taking the photograph. And at some point I remember being on a beach in San Francisco during sunset and taking a photo, but then stepping outside of the camera and looking at the landscape that I just took this beautiful photo of and remembering, I remember like the wind on my face and seeing the ocean waves and even some of the people there and that experience, that memory is kind of solidified in my mind. And it's so often we don't have those mindful experiences and those can be the, foundations to having an amazing travel experience or, experience of being with somebody.'cause I know if you have a loved one and so you have kids, and you ask your kids, okay, I can be with you. For 12 hours, but I'm gonna be on my phone or I can be with you for one hour and give you my full attention. I mean, it's a no brainer what you're going to choose. And so we need to be mindful of how we dedicate our attention and where we put our attention, and then finding ways to pull ourselves out of whatever it is that we're experiencing. Find those sources of things that, that we can be grateful for or, notice those little small things because it's not the travel that we might go on occasionally where we derive a huge sense of happiness. It's, say, making that coffee in the morning, smelling the coffee grinds or taking our kids to school. And we so often overlook that, that we never stop to notice.

Tanith: 41:51

You make such a good point there. And also, when you're in the here and now, you are using all your senses. So for example, you are smelling, you are seeing, you are feeling the wind on your face as you described. I mean, that's why I love the beach because you know, you have the smells, you have the sensation of the sea, you have the sensation of the sand. when we are in that sensory mode, it's more possible to be present. So yeah, definitely I really into sensory experiences definitely.

CODY: 42:16

earlier you said that you're a parent and also that you're working on a new book. I would love for you to share some insights as to what are some of the rules that having your kids abide by, whether it's not giving them a phone and, what this new book is about.

Tanith: 42:30

Yeah, so my new book is called, what's My Baby Thinking, perhaps called Child Psychologist for Modern Parents Psychology. Sorry, and it's looking at, it looks at scenarios. With your baby, from newborn to two years old. And it's looking it through the eyes of the baby. So like, what's my baby? What can my baby see? What can my baby smell? Why does my baby love to play Peekaboo? and basically looking at it from your point of view, because as parents, we bring a lot of stuff ourselves from our own experiences of being children, our own experiences of what we think worked for us as children. What didn't, maybe some trauma stuff that we haven't worked through, maybe some biases about how children should be raised. And it basically looks at the science of, I mean. We know so much more about, baby brains than we did even 10 years ago because now they've now got FMRI scans where you can actually, where the baby can sit quietly because obviously it was quite difficult to put a baby in a scanner before and they've learned so much about how babies think. So I wanna bring that science so that parents can use it to make the best possible decisions and really connect with their children. and it's like, it's the fourth in, a series of books which are sold all around the world. So there's what's my child thinking? What's my tween thinking and what's my teenager thinking? And they're, they're like translated into 40 languages and it's just so wonderful to bring the science of parenting in a compassionate, real life way. To parents all over the world, from China to Russia, to France, to Germany, even these Arab states, I mean. it's amazing I'm just really proud to be able to do that as a parent, what I, gosh, my, my girls are like 19 and 21. so I'm a big believer, as I say, in Spark what they were drawn to as children, not imposing my own biases or my needs and making sure that that's them and that's me. I really believe in a kind of. Being able to speak freely, no. Emotions are off limits. I'm ready to listen and when I listen, I don't try to fix, you know, it's, it's never easy hearing your child go through a difficult time, but our job is to sit with that discomfort. And listen and then help them process. And more than, most of the time, they'll come up with their own solutions, which they know work. So really, I mean, my goal is to really to be a connected and empathetic parent so that they can be the people they were always meant to be.

CODY: 44:46

hope, I hope you're able to experience that level of joy and knowing that you're able to help so many people and that you're able to help parents learn how to raise their kids, and even the component of the, there's a great book, I think it's called Learning to Listen. And how we tend to default to giving people advice or to, to one up them and not really just sitting and just listening to what they have to say because 99% of the time what other people want or need.

Tanith: 45:19

Yeah, we wanna fix, don't we? I mean, that's, that's the human brain in action, but it's not what people need at that point. So, yeah, it's really difficult. I mean, I'm a trainee psychotherapist in the Gestalt. It's just a very hard modality. So yeah, a lot of it is like right. You know, really just listening is, is just a, such a skill and, so difficult, you know what I mean? It's like it's, it really takes a lot of practice and a lot of awareness of your own process, but it can be done. hopefully Yeah. But just noticing that impulse to fix and that's not what the person needs now. They just need to be heard. It's just like really important.

CODY: 45:57

Well, Tanith, you're doing amazing work, so I love your insights and I think your book is a great resource for clearly anybody who's struggling with ability to find joy or even looking to raise a, a child or a baby. And for those interested in diving deeper, you can find Tanith's book, feeling Blah on Amazon in Barnes and Noble, and to our listeners, I hope this conversation inspires you to take a small but meaningful step towards a happier life. Whether it's making changes to your diet, reconnecting to your hobbies, or taking time to reflect each action can lead to a more joyful existence. Tanith, thanks for joining us today.

Tanith: 46:40

Thank you so.