What Inside a Goblin’s Pocket & Anhedonia
Goblin Pockets (Hand Pies)
For the Crust:
2c GF flour (Bob’s Red Mill)
2 TBSP Powdered Sugar
1/2 Teaspoon Salt
2 TBSP tapioca starch
2 sticks vegan butter (frozen)
1/3 c ICE COLD water mixed with 1TBSP apple cider vinegar
For the Filling:
3-5 Portabello caps (sauteed)
1 TBSP salt
4-8 oz vegan shredded cheese of your choice
3 cloves garlic
2 springs rosemary
4oz Vegan Cream Cheese
* Season to your taste
Make the crust!
1. Cut or grate the butter into small cubes and mix with all the other ingredients except for the water. Once the mixture is well combined, add the water and combine, then refrigerate.
Make the Filling!
1. While it’s chilling, preheat your oven to 350f or 165c
2. Sauté your portobello caps with the garlic and rosemary. Set those aside to cool.
3. Take your dough out and dust a work surface with GF flour. Roll until it’s 1/4 inch thick and cut into uniform triangles or take a large cookie cutter and make circles (like you’re making pasta.)
4. Take your cool mushrooms and mix with cheese, cream cheese, salt, and seasonings. Portion out on each piece of dough on the right side (leaving room around the edge), and fold the dough on itself over the filling and seal with a fork.
5. Brush the top and crimped edge with a milk alternative and sprinkle a little flaky salt or chopped rosemary on top.
6. Bake for 15 min, flip it over, and then check every 5-7 mins after that to see if the crust is baked through.
7. Let it sit for a 15 mins before serving, and keep the leftovers in the fridge! (You can freeze them and pop them in the microwave later for a quick bite!)
Anhedonia refers to the reduced ability to experience pleasure, and has been studied in different neuropsychiatric disorders. Anhedonia is nevertheless considered as a core feature of major depressive disorder, according to DSM-IV criteria for major depression and the definition of melancholic subtype, and regarding its capacity to predict antidepressant response. Behavioral, electrophysiological, hemodynamic, and interview-based measures and self-reports have been used to assess anhedonia, but the most interesting findings concern neuropharmacological and neuroanatomical studies. The analyses of anhedonic nonclinical subjects, non-anhedonic depressed patients, and depressed patients with various levels of anhedonia seem to favor the hypothesis that the severity of anhedonia is associated with a deficit of activity of the ventral striatum (including the nucleus accumbens) and an excess of activity of ventral region of the prefrontal cortex (including the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and the orbito-frontal cortex), with a pivotal, but not exclusive, role of dopamine.
Anhedonia refers to the reduced ability to experience pleasure.1 It has had an important place in many aspects of psychopathology since it was first described in the previous century,2 and is still a feature of several types of psychiatric disorders and maladaptive behaviors.3-5 Anhedonia has been the most extensively studied in major depression,6 but, as it also constitutes one important negative symptom of schizophrenia, much literature has also been devoted to anhedonia in psychosis.3,7 Anhedonia has in fact been studied in a large range of neuropsychiatrie disorders, including substance use disorder,8-10 Parkinson's disease,11 overeating,12 and various risky behaviors.13
Anhedonia is nevertheless considered to be a core feature of major depressive disorder as, for example, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth edition (DSM-IV)14 requires that either depressed mood or anhedonia be present to propose this diagnosis. Furthermore, lack of reactivity and anhedonia are key diagnostic criteria for the DSM-IV melancholic subtype of major depression,14 and presence of anhedonia has been shown to be predictive of antidepressant response.15 The absence of diagnostic specificity could be regarded as a limiting factor when trying to define anhedonia as a pivotal feature of major depressive disorder.
What are the causes of anhedonia?
Anhedonia is a core symptom of depression, but not everyone who’s depressed experiences anhedonia. Prescription medication, especially medications like antidepressants and antipsychotics used to treat depression, can cause anhedonia.
Schizotypy is a psychology theory that certain personality traits may be a risk factor for developing psychotic disorders, such as schizophrenia. Social anhedonia is a risk factor for schizophrenia.
Anhedonia may also occur due to recreational drug use or having a large amount of stress or anxiety.
Types of Anhedonia
There are five (5) types of anhedonia; consummatory, motivational, social, sexual and specific musical. Consummatory, exists when the person gains no satisfaction from activities, previously or not, considered enjoyable. There’s no anticipation for a reward. Motivational, describes a person who shows no interest in taking part in pleasurable activities, because not even a reward is enough of a motivation to them. Social, is about a person who withdraws from all social gatherings and contacts. They’ve no interest to interact or make friends, they want to be alone all the time and have a hard time adjusting socially, contrasting to introversion. Sexual or ejaculatory, is most common in men and qualifies the state of not feeling fulfillment or enjoyment from the sexual action. This form of anhedonia might be caused by low testosterone levels, fatigue, or physical illness. The fifth type is the specific musical anhedonia. In this case, the individual has no problem processing musical sounds or beats, but receives no pleasure from listening to music. This state, however, shouldn’t be confused with “melophobia” the fear of music.
What Does Anhedonia Feel Like?
In life, people often experience good feelings of accomplishments and rewards from activities they are engaged in. These accomplishments and their rewards are often worth the pursuit, because of the positive feelings they bring. Such things people often pursue to accomplish include basic biological drives like eating delicious food, exercising/working out, sex, and hygiene, cleanliness etc.
Social drives like socialization and productive activities, for which they receive rewards of recognition, accomplishments, and acceptance, also in activities of appreciation of beauty, art or nature like listening to music, art, dancing, literature and the natural environments, which often create sense of appreciation and joy. In a state of Anhedonia, the patient lacks the ability to enjoy and experience these things.
There is currently very little research done to give better explanation as to the level of enjoyment either gained or lost in the illness of Anhedonia. Most researches had only highlighted on different types of pleasant behavior such as motivational anhedonia.
Symptoms, Causes & Treatment
The symptoms of anhedonia are many, some of them being an incredibly flat mood with no variations and the suffering individual being unable to react properly or feel anything. It is associated with many schizophrenia – spectrum disorders, depression and social anxiety.
The two main types of anhedonia are social and physical anhedonia.
Social anhedonia is a disinterest in social contact and a lack of pleasure in social situations. Physical anhedonia is an inability to feel tactile pleasures such as eating, touching, or sex.
The symptoms of anhedonia include:
1. social withdrawal
2. a lack of relationships or withdrawal from previous relationships
3. negative feelings toward yourself and others
4. reduced emotional abilities, including having less verbal or nonverbal expressions
5. difficulty adjusting to social situations
6. a tendency toward showing fake emotions, such as pretending you’re happy at a wedding
7. a loss of libido or a lack of interest in physical intimacy
8. persistent physical problems, such as being sick often
Anhedonia may result from the breakdown in the brain’s reward system. Every time we feel pleasure, the neurotransmitter chemical called dopamine, fills the part of our brains called striatum. The disease may be linked with a lower activity in a part of our brain’s called prefrontal cortex, also used with its abbreviation, PFC. Anhedonia causes its effects through this cortex, which controls the dopamine releases.
Though it is related to depression and anxiety disorder, anhedonia isn’t the only reason for these disorders. Risk factors of it are a history of major depression disorder (MDD) or schizophrenia, a recent traumatic or stressful event, a history of abuse or neglect, a major illness, an eating disorder or it might be due to a recreational drug use.
The disease can only be diagnosed through counseling. You should tell your therapist about your symptoms, including the loss of experiencing pleasure. Your doctor may want to run a blood test to check for a vitamin deficiency or a thyroid problem. Unfortunately, there’s no validated treatment, especially for social anhedonia. There’s no medication developed specifically aiming at anhedonia.
From the Urban Dictionary:
There are so many things one can feel in this life – anger, joy, jealousy, love, shame, happiness, embarrassment, amusement, sadness, euphoria, frustration. The roller coaster of emotion whips over high peaks, spins, and dips, over and over again – it’s thrilling, and it’s scary, and it’s one hell of a ride.
Except now, I want you to imagine that one day you get on the roller coaster, and as it climbs, falls, twists, and turns, you realize that you feel nothing. You are sitting in a tiny cart being whipped around like a wet noodle, wondering why everyone else is laughing and throwing their hands in the air.
The technical word for feeling nothing is anhedonia. Anhedonia is one of the main symptoms of major depressive disorder, but someone might also experience this sort of reaction in response to things like anxiety or trauma. In grief, it is common to experience emotional numbness, especially in the days to weeks following the death.
Helpful Links:
https://www.anhedoniasupport.com/anhedonia-success-story/
https://www.epainassist.com/mental-health/anhedonia-its-link-with-depression-symptoms-types-causes
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3181880/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kmth7JPxxQ8&ab_channel=Psych2Go
https://psych2go.net/anhedonia-53105-2/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtphOKEOHaI&ab_channel=KatiMorton
Baking-ish is a podcast produced and edited by Fahrenheit Co., a U.S. based entity run and organized by Ren Newman.
**I am not a mental health professional. Please talk to a healthcare professional before doing or changing anything within your daily life. These experiences and opinions reflect only my personal experiences.
