Have you tried hiring a hypnotist? An actual licensed hypnotist for psycho treatment, not those magic trick stuff. I heard they are pretty good at reprogramming your brain.

As a kind of follow-up to what ApochPiQ said, this article has some advice on how you can improve yourself.

I'm going to mention just three thing that I want to change, for now:

a) anhedonia
b) proctrastination
c) being happy (related to a)


above problems are related to bigger problem, but let's just focus on this three.

I can eat the same food for a year and doesn't feel bored, couldn't "fee" life, and have problems being happly (but can feel sad, thank god - if not i would have been numb emotionally). I went to Toy Story 3 recently (3d version), and I just can't laugh when everybody else does. I only felt sad (and felt like want to cry) when the toys are holding eachother hand - even when I know they will be saved (kid movie), pre-shadowing (the aliens said 'the claw' beforehand), and i read the spoiler at awn.com. and when andy is giving the toys away. that one catch me off guard. i thought he follow andy (we are ANDY toys!) and he just want his friend to have better life too instead of live in the attic. besides, beling logical, woody would be on top of the pile and would be brought out first along with buzz. What I didn't know is that Andy already know that Woody is in the box, he just didn't take it out because he loves Woody so much. As a person who seriously into 3d and watches the first toy story, it really touches me (in toy story 1, woody is jealous of buzz.) so if woody prefer to stay with the rest instead of andy, it was awesome.

okay, back to question. anyway, it would be great if I can laugh at things other people laugh at.

as for procrastination, there are times my body wont do what i ask it to do (strange I know, but consider this - suicides is where your body do what your OWN mind told not to - just ask most suicides survivor). it's a long story (hanging carrots that never came / life keep coming back at square one / etc) but my procrastination is quite bad. Interestingly, I'm very hardworking at work (maybe that's the problem? most energy wasted a work?) that I wish to go home and curl like a bady. But I got ideas, plans, and ways to improve my life - but I just can't work on it. Maybe part time study too takes it toll on me.

I end up surfing the net (not because i'm addicted to internet,) but because it's better for me to be in front of the pc than tv or sleeping, and i can learn new thigns (tutorials, articles, and aforementioned life improvements websites / blogs). if my body would work everytime i self harm then i'm willing to self harm to get the job done (this is the 'have the gut to flick the switch' analogy) but i know my body would not do it anyway, and i have enough self harm / destruct problems already.

I don't know. maybe the person in the shock theraphy wikipedia article was right anyway. the one who said losing all your memory and coming out a new person is a price he/she willing to pay in order to be and feel like everybody else normal.

Sigh.

I've been fighting with bipolar disorder for well over a decade now, so a lot of what you say is all too familiar to me.

The first thing I want to say, and emphasize, is that everyone will have a different solution for these kinds of problems. At the end of the day the best anyone can do for you is share their own experiences, and hopefully give you some ideas. You will not find an easy answer in a box. You will not find a way to make everything just go away and get better. You will not find someone exactly like you who you can just copy their plans and get good results. But you can find some inspiration, and knowing that you aren't alone counts for a lot. There is hope for improving your life, but it depends on you to figure out how to make things work for yourself. You will have to fight, and it will be a very, very hard fight. Nobody else can fight that battle for you.

That said...


Anhedonia is nasty. It's good that you are aware of your problem, because it's very easy for anhedonics to completely lose all emotional control and go way off the deep end (been there, done that). Unfortunately, there's no success in just wishing really hard that you could enjoy things again. All the mind-over-matter crap in the world won't fix this one, because it's a very hard issue.

I am emphatically not a major fan of medication of any kind, and especially not anything psychoactive - but if you truly are struggling with anhedonia, you owe it to yourself to start medication. You've mentioned that you are taking things but didn't offer any details, so I don't know what to tell you to expect on that front just yet. However, there are some key things to keep in mind when it comes to antidepressants and other psychoactive medications:

• Most psychoactive medications take a long time to become truly effective - weeks or even months. If you just started recently, don't expect results just yet, and don't get discouraged if they don't seem to be working.
  


• Very, very few drugs are actually understood. Antidepressants in particular are pretty much like pouring random chemicals into your food and hoping the result tastes good and doesn't poison you. Some people will respond very well to certain types of medication, and others won't; some people have very bad reactions and side effects, and many are lucky and do not have such problems. For most people, it takes several different attempts to find a medication or combination of medications that work nicely. Expect to spend an average of two years finding the solution that is best for you - and even if you get decent results with one regimen, don't be afraid to try something else and see if it is even better.
  


• Do not, under any circumstances or for any reason whatsoever, mess around with your dosages. Do not take more than you need (you'll probably just waste the pills with no effect but harming your liver) and do not stop taking anything or cut back. Withdrawal symptoms are extremely unpleasant, and anything that destabilizes your mood will spiral out of control very, very quickly if you start messing around with the meds.
  


• For the love of everything holy, do not drink alcohol at all or use any harsher substances while taking medication. This is extremely dangerous stuff to mess around with. I speak from experience when I say that substance abuse will not improve your results at all - and will likely get you into legal, financial, and health problems that you don't need to have to deal with on top of everything else. I won't lie you to: loading up on SSRIs and antipsychotics and then getting blind drunk is amazingly fun at first, but you will have experiences you regret.

Don't forget though that even with chemical wizardry in the mix, emotional disorders are very much psychological problems. Your own thought patterns will influence your results a lot. The best advice I can give you is to erase your expectations. If you walk into a movie expecting it to be funny and to laugh a lot, you will be even more depressed if it doesn't work out like you expected. If you only try things you used to enjoy, or think you should enjoy, you'll miss out on a lot of opportunities. Try new things, try old things in new ways, and generally keep an open mind. You may be surprised how easy it is to start enjoying life again when you discover something new to explore.


Procrastination is a big part of clinical depression, as is anhedonia. It isn't something that is talked about a lot, but from my own experience and from others I have talked to, losing your motivation and self-discipline is very very common when dealing with emotional disorders. There have been many times when I've spent days or even weeks doing literally nothing but lying around in bed all day, sometimes even to the point of almost needing to be hospitalized for not eating or drinking anything. This can get out of control fast.

The most important thing to realize is that you are not entirely healthy, and that you cannot demand too much of yourself. It's good to have goals and try to accomplish them - without stretching yourself a little bit you will get worse quickly. However, don't be too hard on yourself if you fall behind or fail entirely. Remember that you are dealing with something very difficult, and that you frankly can't trust your own mind to motivate you properly yet. It takes time and support from other people to get back to a point where you can handle things at full speed. It doesn't make you lazy, or stupid, or a bad person, or anything else - it's a disease, plain and simple, and needs to be treated and recovered from like any other illness.

From what I know, procrastination usually becomes far easier to deal with once you get your general emotional state stabilized.


Hurting yourself is a slippery slope and gets nasty very fast. For me, sometimes the only way I can keep myself from doing something foolish is to focus very carefully on the fact that I don't really have any good reason to hurt myself, and that the desire to do so is entirely pathological. I can't stress enough that you should be open about this with your friends and especially your doctor(s), because it's a serious issue. I know it is very hard to do that; in fact I'm not real good at it, and most of my friends to this day do not know or understand why there is a series of deep scars on the inside of my left arm. However, it is something that nobody can really deal with effectively alone. You absolutely need support and understanding from other people to get through some of that stuff.


One final thought on doctors - don't just pick one and stick with them. Try several - as many as you can comfortably afford - and find the one(s) that work best. I wasted a long time and a lot of money seeing a complete fucking piece of shit doctor, and didn't even realize it. I recently switched to someone else; and even though I take the exact same medications, do the exact same things, and more or less talk about the exact same things during our sessions, I've felt incredibly better for it, because for once I feel like I'm getting help from someone who both cares and is competent enough to truly help in the first place. Don't shortchange yourself on that front.



Anyways... didn't mean to write a book there. Hopefully some of that will be useful for you.

anhedonia

Are you sure you are not able to laugh on anything? I can't laugh on everything either.
Do you have girlfriend and not happy with her?

Are you thinking all the time? I am. Even if I try to stop, my brain wont. And the mind is too simple. It can't multitask, if you are thinking, this uses up too many resources (especially if you think with full, well expressed phrases, like me). You can't enjoy feeling if you are thinking at the same time.

Do you listen to music? Some of them can make me feel like I'm happy.
Have you always had anhedonia?
Do you analyse situations after they happened? Are you sure you can't feel glad, have a good time, and not just the analysis afterwards tells you you didn't really enjoy yourself?
Don't you want to enjoy yourself too hard? And constantly thinking that you should in a particular situation? And thinking why you can't enjoy yourself?

The constant thinking can fuck up your life. If it's not truth in your situation, then I finish talking about it. But it's the situation with me. But I think I can get out of it. Or not. I don't think about it.

I used to smoke. And I suffered from major depression for most of my life. Now I'm a happy healthy person. Here's what I did:

* I stopped asking strangers for help. I felt that it weakened me.
* I started talking to people about my ongoing projects. It gave me purpose.
* I found what I'm good at, and did more of it. It built a better image of myself.
* I travelled to a faraway place for a week. The detachment from my normal life gave me perspective.
* I went to a meditation course.
* I started sleeping eight hours a day. Lack of sleep can actually be a big factor in most of the things you mention.
* I started taking a half an hour walk every day.
* I became wary of my personal shortcomings, but I didn't use my own judgements as an excuse; I used them constructively to change myself for the better.
* I learned to accept the criticism of others as a challenge to prove that criticism wrong.
* I learned to take everything step by step, drop by drop, as every little helps if you let it. I felt that if I was a better person now than I was a week ago, I'm doing something right.

EDIT:

Before I had "Here's what you do" at the top of my list, and it was a mostly imperative list. But ApochPiQ is right, there's no one size fits all solution. So here's what worked for me. I hope it helps you find what works for you.

As ApochPiQ said: try new things and try to be open minded. You can discover some pretty specific and simple things.

Just an example: why can't I enjoy looking clouds/sky/sunset, like I could in my childhood?
I was walking for 3 hours in Jyväskylä (it's a very interesting and exciting town), and I tried to look at the sky. Didn't feel to much, but it was after my "salvation", so I didn't distress myself why I can't feel anything. Then suddenly an idea came, which is maybe the solution to that particular problem: I was swinging or riding the see-saw when I was a child. I always drove the swing very hard and high. That is the difference between now and then, and a very important discovery. Maybe all I need is a big swing to be happy?
Not some shitty self-improving mantra, or whatever newage shit. Just a plain swing.
I could stared that day at the cloudy (pretty spectacular) sky for more than half an hour. I wasn't happy or anything, but I thought from another point of view: would I enjoy myself better at the flat in front of my computer? No. Am I bored? No. Then why bother?

During another walking (the same route: around the lake) I had another idea: maybe it would be cool to be a carpenter. And make big outdoor wooden structures under the open sky. Like columns or houses. Just like a siege machine in the middle age/Middle Earth (just because I saw a cool layered-plank electric column: it was more like a statue, then a simple column). How specific is that?
Only specific ideas/things can be helpful. "Be happy"/"think positive" these are all shit, and most of the time, they are lying to yourself.

You can't discover wooden columns, routes on the frozen lakes, swings, girls again, whatever if you are sitting on your ass.

ApochPiq, you're quite open. If that is for real, I guess we're in the same boat.

I think the only thing the medication can do it making me sleepy and behave like a zombie.

I don't have a girlfriend yet - but it isn't because I'm a nerd or anything. I tried to win a girl, like, 14 years go. I tried for two years, but it didn't work out, long story.

I tried again back in the uni days, but something happened.

This days I'm in deep sheet, and I don't plan to drag people into this (especially innocent people that I really love).

Anyway, thanks for the tips. Cognitive Therapy does link to more question, specially the Choice Therapy.

And you're right about the sleep part. The problem is I force myself to sit in front of the PC to get things done, sit is easy, getting things done isn't. This lead to me sleeping very late, and at times, didn't sleep at all. I keep telling myself "don't go to bed yet, a few more minutes and you'll able to start things." usually end up with I don't - sleep or getting things done. My brain is strange, I know.

But I do listen to music - repitative - based on my mood. If my mood say this song, that it will be that song until my brain says other song. I used to listen to eminem 'stan' for months.

Another discovery (obviously, I like to write too):
In my teenage years (up to the age of 24.5, 4 moths ago) I tough that I want to be special. Didn't want to create anything that lasts after my death or anything, just wanted to be special. I thought that average, "normal" life is boring, pathetic, good for cows whatever. I was meant for more that this, I wanted to be somebody. And the world is wrong/cruel. It's not for me.

Bullshit.

It was just an excuse for being a coward and go out and take risks, bare "socialization stress", etc. Now (at the moment) I want to be the average Joe. No special shit, just some no-name, invisible guy.