[sensatives]

Hello, I'd like to know the difference between the two terms in the title? They sound rather similar, so I was wondering if anyone could help explain them to me.

[lavendersage]

Hi. Never having heard of "avolition" I did some googling and reading.

Surprised to learn that it seems to be a lack of motivation, lack of desire to engage in self-directed behaviors. These don't include just the things one might think are "fun" to do; it also includes any goal-directed behavior like personal hygiene (as one example). Avolition is a negative symptom of schizophrenia.

Anhedonia is the reduced ability to experience pleasure, including those things that once did give you pleasure.

These are oversimplifications but that's what my takeaway was.

I said I was "surprised" to learn about this because I've never really felt anhedonia fit what I experience. I have no problem experiencing pleasure. My biggest obstacle is gathering the wherewithal to get myself to DO those things that would bring me pleasure. It just disappeared - as though a faucet on me got left turned on and almost every single drop in me drained away. And I have NOT been able to get it back. I still have some - but nothing like I used to.

Yet, I do not have schizophrenia.

I hope others will chime in as I'd like to learn more about this. I plan on bringing it up in therapy, too.

If I may ask, what is your experience?

[Angelique67]

I have terrible avolition. It leads to anhedonia because I fail to do the preparatory things necessary to experience joy (like going outside for a short walk or something).

[sensatives]

Originally Posted by lavendersage

Hi. Never having heard of "avolition" I did some googling and reading.

Surprised to learn that it seems to be a lack of motivation, lack of desire to engage in self-directed behaviors. These don't include just the things one might think are "fun" to do; it also includes any goal-directed behavior like personal hygiene (as one example). Avolition is a negative symptom of schizophrenia.

Anhedonia is the reduced ability to experience pleasure, including those things that once did give you pleasure.

These are oversimplifications but that's what my takeaway was.

I said I was "surprised" to learn about this because I've never really felt anhedonia fit what I experience. I have no problem experiencing pleasure. My biggest obstacle is gathering the wherewithal to get myself to DO those things that would bring me pleasure. It just disappeared - as though a faucet on me got left turned on and almost every single drop in me drained away. And I have NOT been able to get it back. I still have some - but nothing like I used to.

Yet, I do not have schizophrenia.

I hope others will chime in as I'd like to learn more about this. I plan on bringing it up in therapy, too.

If I may ask, what is your experience?

Same! I've never related to anhedonia much. I discovered the term 'avolition' a few days ago, and I think it describes how I feel about things more than anhedonia does. In fact, I feel like it's the avolition that causes the anhedonia, for me.

Every time my therapist brought up "loss of interest" I just agreed because I didn't know any other way to put it. The thing is, I just don't feel like doing anything anymore, not because I'm not interested, it's because I feel like I genuinely can't do it. Which led to me losing interest in those things.

According to Wikipedia's write up on Avolition, it can be present in clinical depression as well!

[francisR]

hi Sensatives

As has been said anhedonia is the inability to feel pleasure. People in the depths of depression experience this form of emotional numbness and when they feel better their feelings return to normal. I hope and pray you have a really great day. God bless and best wishes from your friend Francis

[annoyedgrunt84]

I feel like avolition is a better way to describe what I experience with depression. It's not that I don't experience pleasure it's just that I don't ever feel like doing anything. I have a hard time getting myself to brush my teeth some days and my exercise plan has taken a big ole' flop for more than a month now. Showering is even tough some days I often just don't on the weekends. I tell people I just don't feel like it and they roll their eyes, I can't get them to understand it's more than just I don't feel like it it is that I often have absolutely no desire to do it.

[vonmoxie]

It's like this, for me: after I found a way to turn my back on the depression I was in for the first decade-plus of my life, for the next couple of decades I was go-get-em, doing the right things all day long, making strides, making money, the whole nine. Even inspiring people around me. But, it wasn't out of true volition, rather it was as though I was corralling myself, pushing myself through life all the time. I knew I was deficient where volition was concerned, but I was determined to "fake it till ya make it" as they say.

But it turns out that the point to which I could fake it was until I finally just ran clean out of that energy. I can't fake it anymore, can barely pretend to fake it; just cannot compel myself. It feels like I'm outside of a part of myself that must exist but which I've lost any access to, like it's locked me out and won't even talk to me through the peephole.

I wish I could go back and find a different way to approach my struggle besides what was mostly just faking it. Who knows though.. at the time it seemed like the only available option for me with any chance at a positive outcome, and it may just have been. It might not even have been wrong; a lot has happened since then to re-traumatize me, and I may be ascribing too much weight to how I managed to handle what was almost an impossible situation back then to move forward from in the first place.

I prefer in my posts to have at least a seed of positivity, but this really speaks to the core of what I struggle with. Apologies.

I agree with what others have said here about anhedonia being besides the point when there's severe avolition. I'm able to feel pleasure, it's just that it doesn't even occur to me to strive for that, or for anything really. It's funny to me, from the perspective of my own experience, that anhedonia seems to be a so much better known "feature".

[ScientiaOmnisEst]

I just looked up avolition. It perfectly describes what I experience in several realms (I'd wondered if it was anhedonia, but honestly, I don't have that much of a lack of pleasure. Mostly a lack of caring enough to make the effort). Thanks, I just learned something.

[francisR]

hi Sensatives

I can understand feeling you cannot do anything. But if you did take one thing, however small and make yourself do it. that would give you the confidence to do more difficult things. I hope and pray you feel much better soon. Take care. God bless and best wishes from your friend Francis

[vital]

Originally Posted by Angelique67

I have terrible avolition. It leads to anhedonia because I fail to do the preparatory things necessary to experience joy (like going outside for a short walk or something).

I know it can sound a little silly, but doing "snap club" as described in these notes can be w o n d e r f u l for that:

http://egg.bu.edu/~youssef/SNAP_CLUB...0164151576.pdf

- vital

[lavendersage]

Originally Posted by vonmoxie

It's like this, for me: after I found a way to turn my back on the depression I was in for the first decade-plus of my life, for the next couple of decades I was go-get-em, doing the right things all day long, making strides, making money, the whole nine. Even inspiring people around me. But, it wasn't out of true volition, rather it was as though I was corralling myself, pushing myself through life all the time. I knew I was deficient where volition was concerned, but I was determined to "fake it till ya make it" as they say.

But it turns out that the point to which I could fake it was until I finally just ran clean out of that energy. I can't fake it anymore, can barely pretend to fake it; just cannot compel myself. It feels like I'm outside of a part of myself that must exist but which I've lost any access to, like it's locked me out and won't even talk to me through the peephole.

I wish I could go back and find a different way to approach my struggle besides what was mostly just faking it. Who knows though.. at the time it seemed like the only available option for me with any chance at a positive outcome, and it may just have been. It might not even have been wrong; a lot has happened since then to re-traumatize me, and I may be ascribing too much weight to how I managed to handle what was almost an impossible situation back then to move forward from in the first place.

I prefer in my posts to have at least a seed of positivity, but this really speaks to the core of what I struggle with. Apologies.

I agree with what others have said here about anhedonia being besides the point when there's severe avolition. I'm able to feel pleasure, it's just that it doesn't even occur to me to strive for that, or for anything really. It's funny to me, from the perspective of my own experience, that anhedonia seems to be a so much better known "feature".

Oh my. I wonder if this might be my deal, too? I feel like after "dancing as fast as I could" for so many years....the energy to do that is just dead gone.

It's pretty amazing to me that so many of us experience the same thing: not anhedonia so much as not having any motivation (avolition). I've struggled with depression for so many years, done a ton of therapy, read a ton of stuff about depression.....but yet I'd never heard of that word until this thread!