Nothing sounds good anymore, including things that aren't food

Tbh i’m brand new here too—week one, still nervous about saying the right thing. Your guitar case detail got me. I haven’t touched my sketchbook either.

One tiny thing I’ve started: a note on my phone called “3-minute maybes.” One song on good headphones, five breaths on the porch, wash one mug. Not because it fixes the flatness, but it gives me a data point.

Last night one song actually flickered something, and I wrote it down. Does the nothingness hit harder for you at a certain time of day, or is it pretty even?

I started adding a 1–10 “interest” rating to my tracker next to sleep, steps, and whether I actually ate enough. The flatness clusters hard for me on low-sleep, low-protein days.

Not saying causation—in the trials they talk about reward/motivation pathways, but non-food anhedonia seems way less studied. Curious: does the guitar feel any different if you just leave it out and do five minutes with zero goal?

Sometimes the action comes before the wanting. I’d track that one point before assuming it’s permanent.

The guitar case detail got me. I’ve had the same flat quiet this round.

What helped a little was lowering the bar until it was almost stupid: leave the guitar out of the case, sit down, play one chord, then I’m allowed to quit. Sometimes I do; sometimes 20 minutes disappear.

The first move is the hard part when nothing has a pull. Curious—does the quiet feel more like numbness, or like you’re just missing the old reward signal?

I’m still figuring out if I need to push or wait it out.

Worth separating anticipatory vs. consummatory anhedonia. I track two columns: “wanting to start” and “enjoyed once doing,” 1–10.

During my last cut, wanting was 2–3 but once-done was 5–6 — that pointed more to initiation/energy than true pleasure loss. Concrete test: 10-minute timer with the guitar, no improvement goal, rate both before/after.

If the after-rating is consistently flat too, flag it with your clinician; if only the start is dead, that’s a different problem. Did this flatness show up only in deficit rounds, or also at maintenance?

night shifter here. My flatness hits hardest after a shift.

I stopped trying to enjoy hobbies then. Now I do 10 minutes before work. Literally timer on.

Guitar stays on the couch, not in the case. I track a checkmark, not a mood rating.

Some days it’s tuning and one chord. Not fun yet, but less of a closed door.

What time of day are you attempting stuff? If it’s post-shift, that might be the whole problem.

I had a similar flat-affect phase when the food noise dropped. What helped was separating “wanting” from “doing”: I tracked motivation 1–5 next to sleep, steps, protein.

Pattern was clear—my anticipatory reward was low, but once I started a task for 10 minutes, I didn’t hate it. So I stopped waiting to feel like playing guitar. Timer, one scale, no outcome.

Sometimes it stayed gray; sometimes it shifted. Sharp question: is it global anhedonia, or specifically the “looking forward to it” part?

That distinction changed how I approached it.

I know that flat, everything-is-beige feeling. What helped me was making the hobby smaller than my motivation: not “play guitar,” just “tune it and play one chord.” Some days I literally opened the case, strummed once, closed it. Weirdly, that counted.

After a couple weeks the wanting came back in little flickers, not a switch. Sharp question: when you look at the guitar, is it that you don’t want to play, or that you don’t want to want it?

That distinction messed with me for months.

Hey, that guitar-case moment is so real. Different angle: instead of trying to want my old hobbies, I started a “tiny pulls” note on my phone.

Not joy—just anything that made me lean in for 10 seconds: a weird cloud, a song intro, the smell of coffee. I rated curiosity 0–3, no pressure to act.

After two weeks I noticed a few 2s, and one turned into 15 minutes of doodling. Not a fix, just evidence the signal isn’t gone.

When was the last time you felt even a flicker of curiosity about something non-food? Even stupid-small counts.