‍“Do you ever get a little bit tired of life, like you’re not really happy but you don’t want to die?”

Numb Little Bug linked here

If you haven’t heard it yet, I highly recommend listening to Em Beihold’s Numb Little Bug. The song is catchy but deep, and it’s quickly becoming one of my most played songs on Spotify. It also highlights an often-overlooked component of depression, anhedonia: the inability to experience joy or pleasure. Em Beihold paints a picture of someone who seems to be experiencing a depressive episode, maybe with dissociative features, but more on that later. The key thing to focus on is that the singer does not seem to report feeling sad—rather they feel, well, numb.

Often, when we think of depression, we think of feeling bad: low mood, intense sadness and negative thoughts. Ironically, these intense feelings of sadness are an example of “positive symptoms”. we call them that because there is something that the depressive episode is adding to your life, i.e.: adding the experience of feeling intensely sad. On the other hand, depression can manifest in anhedonia, or an inability to feel pleasure. This is called a “negative symptom”, because it has removed a normal psychological experience, the ability to feel joy and pleasure. 

Em sings “do you ever get a little bit tired of life, like you’re not really happy but you don’t want to die?” “Like your body’s in the room but you’re not really there, like you have empathy inside but you don’t really care, like you’re fresh outta love but its been in the air?”. 

These words convey a deep smothering of the ability to feel happy. The desire to be empathetic and to feel love are so close, however for someone experiencing anhedonia as part of depression, their presence may be known, but not experienced. Instead, the individual feels numb. I sometimes describe this feeling as “burning apathy”: the flattening of any positive emotion can be so much worse than experiencing strong negative emotions, especially when trying to talk about the experience with others. People are likely to empathize and understand what feeling sad is like, however anhedonia is something harder to communicate. It is not a normative human experience to never feel joy or pleasure. I feel that Numb Little Bug conveys the painful feelings of apathy that someone with depression may struggle with. If any of this resonates with you, reach out and talk to someone. 

‍

How do we treat anhedonia symptoms?

Anhedonia may also complicate the efforts to engage in a common treatment for depression called behavioral activation, in which an individual is encouraged to take part in activities they found exciting and fun before they experienced the depressive episode. An inability to experience the excitement and joy related to those activities can make it much harder to stick with that plan of action. Although anhedonia is a serious symptom of depression, it does not mean that remission of the depressive episode is impossible. 

Em asks “Am I past repair?”. Thankfully, the answer is no. Though sometimes a long and difficult process, psychotherapy is effective for treating depression. Your therapist is there to talk through what triggered the depressive episode, process the feelings that you currently do have, and collaborate on strategies that will start to bail the water out of your boat. It can be hard to try to stay afloat, but it is possible to keep your head above water until the storm subsides. Every time I listen to this song, I have a strong emotional response: Em paints a poignant picture of someone just doing their best to get by. In the end, that’s what we are all trying to do, but when you get a little bit tired of sinking, remember that it’s always possible to make it to shore. You are not “just broken and broke”.

‍