It is the weekend, nothing is wrong that you can name, and you cannot find one thing you want to do. Why does nothing feel fun anymore?
If you're thinking about harming yourself, contact your local emergency services now.
When nothing feels fun anymore, the pleasure can still be there while the pull to go and get it is what has gone missing. In one 2012 study, depressed people rated cartoons as funny as everyone else did, yet how much they liked them no longer predicted how much effort they would spend to watch them (Sherdell, Waugh and Gotlib, 2012).
Sometimes the colour drains out of the world. Food tastes like cardboard, music washes past you, and the hobby you used to love feels like a chore. People describe it as grey, flat or numb, and they say the same thing in almost the same words. Nothing is fun anymore. (If it is feeling itself that has gone quiet, not only enjoyment, numbness has explanations of its own.)
In 2012, a team at Stanford gave 38 depressed people and 30 people who had never been depressed a small test. Everyone rated how much they liked a set of funny and non-funny cartoons. Then they chose which cartoons to watch, with a catch. Each choice came with a set amount of effort attached (Sherdell, Waugh and Gotlib, 2012). The two groups rated the cartoons as equally enjoyable. But what drove their choices was different.
That result is the first of four ideas in this article, and they lead somewhere hopeful. The question "should I force myself to do the thing I used to love?" has a better answer than yes or no.
The pleasure may still be there. The pull is what went missing
Here is the strange part of the cartoon study. In the people without depression, the more they liked the cartoons, the more effort they were willing to spend to see them. In the depressed group, liking and motivation had come apart. What predicted how hard they would work was something else, which the researchers call anticipatory pleasure, meaning the little lift you get from looking forward to something.
A review of the wider research found the same gap on a larger scale. Across studies with 415 depressed people and 506 comparison people, the ability to look forward to pleasure was lower in depression, by what researchers call a large margin (Hallford and Sharma, 2019). The authors point out that only a small number of studies sit behind that figure, so treat it as a strong hint and not a final number.
Think of a coloured world with the dimmer switch turned down. The colour is not gone. The part of you that walks toward the paint has gone quiet.
One more finding makes this practical. Treadway and colleagues (2012) gave depressed people and healthy controls a series of choices about how much effort to spend for a chance at money. The depressed group was less willing to spend effort. Within that group, a longer current episode went with worse performance on the task.
So when you say a hobby feels like too much, you may be reading your own gauge correctly. The price of starting has gone up. That is not the same as the hobby being worthless, and it is not laziness.
A word on timing. If this has been most of your days for two weeks or more, book a visit with your doctor. That is a check, not a diagnosis, and it is a sensible first move. The check-in on this site can help you notice how long it has been and what else has changed.
The cartoon study leaves one big question hanging. If liking and wanting are separate, how separate can they get?
Liking and wanting are two different systems
Psychologists have been splitting these apart for a long time. Berridge and Robinson (2003) argued that "reward" is not one thing. It has at least three parts, which are learning, "liking" (the pleasure itself) and "wanting" (the motivation to go and get something).
You can see the split in ordinary life, with food. Finlayson and colleagues (2007) tested 60 volunteers on how much they liked foods and how much they wanted them. When people were hungry, they wanted rich savoury foods more than lighter savoury ones, with no matching difference in how much they liked them. Liking and wanting only partly moved together.
Now take that to a dinner table where nothing sounds good. That feeling may be mostly the wanting side going quiet. The study was about food and ordinary volunteers, so it cannot say what happens in depression, but it shows that wanting a food and liking it are not one switch.
Treadway and Zald (2011) made the point directly in a review of the science. They argued that the word anhedonia, which means losing interest or pleasure, blurs two things together, a drop in pleasure and a drop in motivation. They suggested the two need to be pulled apart.
I find this a relief to learn. "I can't enjoy anything" and "I can't get myself to start anything" are different complaints. The second one has a way in.
So should you force yourself to do what you used to love?
The answer has two halves.
If "force" means grit your teeth, pick the biggest version of the old hobby, and punish yourself when it feels flat, then no. Nothing in the research says that works, and it sets you up to decide the hobby is dead. That is a verdict drawn from a gauge that is currently reading low.
If "force" means schedule a small, specific piece of it and do it whether or not you feel like it, the evidence looks much better. This is called behavioural activation, a treatment built on one idea. You plan doing things instead of waiting for the mood to lead.
A meta-analysis of 16 studies with 780 people found a large benefit compared with control conditions (Cuijpers, van Straten and Warmerdam, 2007). Its effect size was 0.87, which researchers call large. Compared with cognitive therapy, the other main talking treatment, the difference was close to zero (0.02). A later review pooled 26 trials with 1,524 people in all. Against control groups, the benefit was 0.74, with a warning that most of the studies were of low quality and followed people for a short time (Ekers and colleagues, 2014).
The strongest single test is a UK trial called COBRA. It followed 440 adults with depression. Behavioural activation, delivered by junior mental health workers, did as well as cognitive behavioural therapy delivered by psychological therapists. Both groups averaged 8.4 on a standard depression questionnaire after a year. The activation treatment was simpler and needed less costly training (Richards and colleagues, 2016).
These studies have limits. They are structured programmes, usually with a guide, and they were tested on depression, not on anyone's willpower alone at 9pm on the sofa. They tell you that planned action is a real treatment. They do not prove that pushing yourself through a hobby alone will lift the grey. The trial also left out people who were acutely suicidal.
In anxiety, avoiding the thing keeps the fear alive, as in the loop where relief from avoiding feeds the fear. Depression is a different problem, but doing a little may keep the door from sealing shut. One last question remains. When does the fun come back?
Action often arrives before the enjoyment does
Waiting to feel like it is the rule most of us live by. These studies suggest that in depression, the order may run the other way.
In one small study, Santos and colleagues (2017) tracked 21 people session by session in behavioural activation or usual care. In 79% of the people getting behavioural activation, changes in their activity came before or at the same time as changes in their depression. None of the usual care group showed that pattern. That is a tiny, after-the-fact analysis, so it is a pointer and not proof. It matches what the other findings suggest, though. The pull may follow the doing, not the other way round.
A line from my own writing on depression keeps coming back to me. The less you do, the less you're able to do. It cuts both ways. The shrinking is real, and so is the way back. A little more done today makes a little more possible tomorrow. The same idea sits behind the plan for an ordinary Tuesday when nothing feels worth it.
What to try
1. Shrink the hobby, do not drop it. If you used to cook for two hours, chop one onion. If you played an instrument for an hour, play one song. The cost of starting is the problem, so cut the cost. If the hobby went flat because of prizes or scorekeeping instead, how counting and rewards drain the fun from a hobby covers that.
2. Decide in advance, not in the moment. Pick a day and a time. Your pull is the part that is quiet, so do not wait for it to speak up. Write it in the calendar and treat it like an appointment.
3. Rate it after, not before. Before you start, you will predict it will be dull. Afterwards, give it a score from 0 to 10. Compare the prediction with the result. In the cartoon study, depressed people liked the cartoons as much as everyone else, so the "after" score may beat your prediction.
4. Count the doing, not the feeling. A flat 10 minutes still counts. The aim is to do it, not to enjoy it. If joy turns up, treat it as a bonus.
5. Keep one thing that is easy. A short walk, a shower, a call with someone who does not need you to perform. Pair it with something you used to love when you can.
6. Ask for help with the starting. A friend who sits in the room, or a doctor or counsellor who can build a plan with you, makes the first step cheaper. That is how the guided trials worked. Knowing a thing and doing it are far apart, as explained in why a stronger wish barely moves behaviour, so lean on structure.
How far to trust all this
The cartoon study is small, 68 people in a lab, and enjoying a cartoon is not the same as enjoying a hobby you have loved for years. Not everyone with this feeling has the same pattern, and the studies cannot tell you which type you are. The behavioural activation results are strong but come from guided programmes, and most of the trials were short. And nothing here shows how long it will take for colour to come back for you.
If your mood or numbness has lasted most days for two weeks or more, or it is getting worse, talk to a doctor or a qualified professional. If you're thinking about harming yourself, contact your local emergency services now.
The colour is not gone. The part of you that reaches for it has gone quiet, and small, planned reaching is how it gets a chance to come back.
Sources10
- Berridge, K. C., & Robinson, T. E. (2003). Parsing reward. Trends in Neurosciences, 26(9), 507-513. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0166-2236(03)00233-9
- Cuijpers, P., van Straten, A., & Warmerdam, L. (2007). Behavioral activation treatments of depression: A meta-analysis. Clinical Psychology Review, 27(3), 318-326. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2006.11.001
- Ekers, D., Webster, L., Van Straten, A., Cuijpers, P., Richards, D., & Gilbody, S. (2014). Behavioural activation for depression; an update of meta-analysis of effectiveness and sub group analysis. PLoS ONE, 9(6), e100100. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0100100
- Finlayson, G., King, N., & Blundell, J. E. (2007). Is it possible to dissociate 'liking' and 'wanting' for foods in humans? A novel experimental procedure. Physiology & Behavior, 90(1), 36-42. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17052736/
- Hallford, D. J., & Sharma, M. K. (2019). Anticipatory pleasure for future experiences in schizophrenia spectrum disorders and major depression: A systematic review and meta-analysis. British Journal of Clinical Psychology, 58(4), 357-383. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjc.12218
- Richards, D. A., Ekers, D., McMillan, D., Taylor, R. S., Byford, S., Warren, F. C., et al. (2016). Cost and Outcome of Behavioural Activation versus Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Depression (COBRA): A randomised, controlled, non-inferiority trial. The Lancet, 388(10047), 871-880. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(16)31140-0
- Santos, M. M., Rae, J. R., Nagy, G. A., Manbeck, K. E., Hurtado, G. D., West, P., Santiago-Rivera, A., & Kanter, J. W. (2017). A client-level session-by-session evaluation of behavioral activation's mechanism of action. Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry, 54, 93-100. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbtep.2016.07.003
- Sherdell, L., Waugh, C. E., & Gotlib, I. H. (2012). Anticipatory pleasure predicts motivation for reward in major depression. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 121(1), 51-60. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0024945
- Treadway, M. T., Bossaller, N. A., Shelton, R. C., & Zald, D. H. (2012). Effort-based decision-making in major depressive disorder: A translational model of motivational anhedonia. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 121(3), 553-558. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0028813
- Treadway, M. T., & Zald, D. H. (2011). Reconsidering anhedonia in depression: Lessons from translational neuroscience. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 35(3), 537-555. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2010.06.006