These have been very serious and challenging months. Many of the things we loved to do are closed and inaccessible. Things that used to energize us are out of reach, even thinking about them seems to use too much energy. When the objects/subjects of our pleasure are gone we can lose a sense of there being any enjoyment in life at all, which is a mental health condition called Anhedionia. We are experiencing many of the symptoms on some level collectively through the pandemic. Kevin and Niseema discuss the loss, and reclaiming, of pleasure for your mental and physical health. Tools and insights to bring you from "meh" to moving towards feeling good again
These have been very serious and challenging months. Many of the things we loved to do are closed and inaccessible. Things that used to energize us are out of reach, even thinking about them seems to use too much energy. When the objects/subjects of our pleasure are gone we can lose a sense of there being any enjoyment in life at all, which is a mental health condition called Anhedionia. We are experiencing many of the symptoms on some level collectively through the pandemic. Kevin and Niseema discuss the loss, and reclaiming, of pleasure for your mental and physical health. Tools and insights to bring you from "meh" to moving towards feeling good again
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For more information or support contact Kevin or Niseema at info@thepositivemindcenter.com, or call 212-757-4488.
These are challenging times and we hope this episode served to validate and ease your anxiety about what you may be experiencing.
Please feel free to also suggest show ideas to the above email.
Thank you for listening,
Kevin and Niseema
www.tffpp.org
https://www.kevinlmhc.com
www.niseema.com
www.thepositivemindcenter.com
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Kevin O'Donoghue & Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:00:01
The following program is an encore presentation of The Positive Mind Radio Show. Hi everybody. This is licensed New York State Mental Health Counselor, Kevin O'Donoghue, and I'm Niseema Dyan Diemer licensed massage therapist and trauma specialist. And this is The Positive Mind, bringing you some ideas, concepts, and guests and tools, many tools to help you lead a more positively minded life.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:00:49
And you need to have a positive mind the way we're living these days. Today, we're going to be talking about pleasure and get it wherever you can. And are you getting any, as they say, are you getting any pleasures? For me root beer always works every time, a float, a root beer float, but just root beer straight on. My mentor, Armand DiMele, when he was passing away, when he was in the hospital he kept sending me out to go get another flavor. Go get me cucumber juice, watermelon juice, Scotch. How about root beer?
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:01:30
For me it's root beer. I kept coming up with different ideas. He wanted to go out knowing every last pleasure. What would you want on your last day, your last hours? What pleasures would you line up for yourself? We're going to be talking about pleasure today, but we wanted to recap where we've been. We've talked a lot about feeling here during this pandemic. We're in week 11 of social isolation. Although things seem to be changing a little bit, there were more cars on the road. It is still a quarantine situation. We are still living with social isolation. Nobody seems to have broken that.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:02:11
We still feel socially isolated. And we want to recap some of the shows that we've done. Our first show was about grief and loss. Obviously, if you lost your job, if you lost a loved one, if you know somebody who did lose a loved one, we wanted to do a show about that. And then we did one on quarantine fatigue, the settling in on the bones of the body feeling of fatigue and an explicable fatigue. We don't know what it is, but there is a general sense of fatigue. We didn't come up with that phrase. The media came up with that quarantine fatigue and sure enough, I know I had it.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:02:52
And now it's week 11. I'm dealing with something else, another different kind of feeling. And I'm saying, as we're doing these podcasts going week by week, there's a different texture to each week. And we want to talk about this idea of pleasure and the loss of pleasure, the absence of pleasure. But to finish the recap, we did a show on rhythm. And where are you in your rhythm? Did you lose your rhythm? Have you kept a rhythm? What has been the rhythm for you through this pandemic? Did you find a rhythm? It makes sense if you didn't, it's hard to get into a rhythm when you're not feeling great.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:03:34
And then we did a show on sleep because everybody's sleep seemed to have been disturbed. I know mine was. And then with the dreams, disturbed sleep can often lead to disturb dreams and then vulnerability in sharing a vulnerability of how I'm really feeling. Do you have somebody in your life you can be vulnerable with during this time? We asked in our first show about getting an ally. Remember that Niseema? Yeah. That we said the first thing you need is make a list, three allies that you could turn to. If you didn't take our advice, I bet you have an ally now, 11th week in, if you haven't, you can call us here at The Positive Mind, 212-757-4488 Tell us why not.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:04:27
And we'll see what we can do to help you, because we need allies. You know, this social isolation takes a toll. We've been trying to do programs for you to understand you're not alone. There are plenty of people who were not feeling right, feeling well. And having an ally is one of the best ingredients to feel better. And then last week we did our show on alexithymia. Do you know what alexithymia means? I'm going to ask my producer. Now I'm not going to ask him, but you know, alexithymia we said lexicon, everybody knows lexicon means words, right?
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:05:07
And thymia means emotions. So, "AH" alexithymia means absence. So an absence of words to describe your emotions. So you could be having an emotion and not even know you're having it. And that's what alexithymia is. And other people wouldn't see you having an emotion. You would just have a blank face and something's moving in your body, maybe sadness, maybe anger, maybe fear, whatever. And you don't even know how to name it. You can't give a name to that. Do you know somebody like that? So, you know, people like that, I know people like that. And boy, they wish they weren't that way.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:05:48
They wished they could name their emotions because emotions are useful. They're very good. They make life worth living. If you don't have any emotions, what are you living for? What's fueling your living? What's fueling your day? What's fueling getting you out of your bed in the morning? And now we're going to talk today about something about pleasure and that they have these islands, right? Where people go and have pleasure, right? Where are they, hedonism? Aren't there islands in the same area where people go on vacation and they meet other people and they all live sorta hedonistic.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:06:31
Yes. Are they still popular?
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:06:33
I don't probably not. I'm sure they're all shut down right now. And those hedonists, the Dionysian types are probably really bummed out right now because they can't go have fun there.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:06:49
Right. They were popular at one point, for sure. You know, so today's word is anhedonia and anhedonia it's not an Island in Greece. Anhedonia is an absence of pleasure, an inability to feel pleasure, an inability to hold on to pleasure. So we're going to talk today about anhedonia and wondering are you feeling anhedonic? I remember when we were taking phone calls andwhy a gentlemen called in and he says, I can't taste my food. And you know, my tongue, he was in his nineties, Herb, I believe his name was.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:07:34
It's like, why should I eat? I can't even taste anything. And it's kind of hard to be logical with somebody like that. I mean, why eat? What is the point of eating? Eating is one of the greatest pleasures going. And if you've stopped having pleasure eating isn't it tedious to make a meal and clean up after yourself? Why not just stop eating? So Herb was sharing how difficult it was for him to stay motivated to eat. And it was something with his tongue. So we're not sure if it was a clinical symptom of depression or if it was a biological symptom, because anhedonia is a symptom of depression.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:08:24
It's a clinical condition, an inability to feel pleasure to hold on to pleasure. So let's talk a little bit about that today. And Niseema, we've done a lot of work on this. What is anhedonia what are some symptoms? What makes somebody a subject to anhedonia. It would make sense if you're feeling chronic pain in your life, that it would be hard for pleasure to penetrate through chronic pain, right? So let's say you have a bad back or a sore tooth and you haven't been able to get to the dentist.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:09:04
A headache, you have headaches, you've suffered a burn. I mean, a chronic pain. Some people have chronic digestive problems. And you know, there's some people who have just pain in their stomach all the time. Their digestion is never smooth. It's always an issue which could prevent them from eating in the first place. Like why would I want to encounter that discomfort all day based on a meal I ate. And so it would make sense to drop that pleasure and to drop most pleasures because pleasures, for most of us are welcome distractions Welcome absorbtions.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:09:49
So let's break this down. Let's first talk about pleasure, Niseema. What a great topic, right? Here's your chance to go to work today and you get to talk about pleasure. Pleasure is not something out there, it's in this body that you have, and if I were to ask you, what are your five top pleasures? How do you want to approach that? You go ahead because
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:10:15
I was reading something so interesting about pleasure being linked to the quality of liking something. And it's a little different than wanting something. I feel such a difference in "I want that" to "I like that." And I liked that induces kind of a feeling of pleasure in my body. I like going shopping. I like it. I don't always want to, but I know I like it. I go, and it's like about wandering and seeing the colors and touching the fabrics and getting an arm full of things and going into the dressing room and trying on different things and seeing different colors on my body or different styles and making choices around that.
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:11:05
And whether I'm feeling good or not about myself and different outfits
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:11:10
Do women actually like it in the dressing room?
Niseema Dyan Diemer and Kevin O'Donoghue
00:11:14
Some do and some don't. Kevin: We don't want to go there because I'm a guy and what you're describing is everything that I hate. I would hate going into a department store and trying things on. I mean just that description, but go on. I want to hear a little bit more about this, about liking something as opposed to wanting. Niseema: I think I like to do it. It doesn't mean I have to buy things. It was a way to spend time with me on a certain level, just sort of wandering around and saying, Oh, this is something that appeals to me that I like. I like that color. I like that cut.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:11:52
Describe how it feels physically, because I always take pleasure in I've got the jacket that I like, or I got the shirt that I want. I like that. I identify, I like the color. I like the feel. I like the hunt searching for the nice object. The thing that's going to give me pleasure is the destiny, but am I having pleasure during all that? No, the pleasure is when I put it on when I got it. And when it's mine obtaining it for that's maybe the male psychology, I don't know what the difference is, but to me, it's like, AH I got it. It's mine. This is what pleasure is like to me.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:12:33
But you're describing a whole process of walking around, trying things on, touching the fabrics and what is that like on a body level?
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:12:43
It just feels like some freedom. It feels creative. It feels that there's some flow. And again, I really have to be in the mood for it, but it's a good, it's a good mood. It's usually a good feeling when I'm going for it. When it's like, Oh wow, I have this time for myself. And I like that. And I think something about what you're saying with putting on the shirt or the jacket that you found that you liked, you really like yourself in it. Yeah. On some level. And that's pleasurable. It's pleasurable to like yourself.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:13:17
I never like it until I get it home. I never like it in the store.
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:13:23
That's interesting. But you must know something about it that you like that made you pick it up.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:13:29
Trying to describe a difference. It might not be applicable to our audience and everybody out there, but I'm just saying, for me, pleasure is like a destination: you get there. And then all of a sudden it feels good. So when I get the shirt home, put it on, I'm walking around in it and it feels good on my body. Now I'm feeling the pleasure of the shirt. Right? I am just curious about that difference between liking and wanting, because one of the things for me for pleasure and maybe again, maybe this is a male thing that I like the chase.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:14:10
Like if I'm going to go out to a special dinner, I know I'm going to go out to an expensive dinner. You know, the anticipation is terrific. But that's not the pleasure. And it's the actual eating and savoring and tasting of the food that there is the pleasure for me. And so for me, I'm always experiencing pleasure on a sort of elemental kind of grainy sensual level. To me, that's where all my pleasures lie. Although I was thinking, I like to read as well, and there's reading pleasure and that's very different than most of the pleasures that I identify with and look for and enjoy on a daily basis.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:14:57
And which brings us to this, during this pandemic, how do you find pleasure? There are no stores open, right? There is no place to go shopping. So if that's, for you, one of the big pleasures that's shut down. Do you find pleasure then in reading? I mean, what do you do to find pleasure in your mind?
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:15:22
Well, it's been tricky. I I've done some shopping online because I knew I needed to get some new clothes. I'm really tired of the clothes I've been wearing and I wanted something fresh. So I went online and I shop but it is so not pleasurable as going into the store. And, you know, you have to think a little bit more about is this right? You know, and I probably am not going to try things that I wouldn't normally try. Like I was going for my tried and true sort of designs and shapes that I know will look good. But then the fun thing about going shopping is trying on maybe new styles and seeing, Hey, does this work or not? You know, so I've felt it.
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:16:08
I felt the desire and the want to go shopping and I feel like my hands are tied. You know, it's such a kind of a sad feeling and I'm a little bit afraid of going shopping.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:16:23
Of course, of course. So do you find a substitute pleasure? Because I think most of us could find 10 pleasures of ours that have been caught and gone and cut off because of the pandemic. And that could be one of them. I mean, I miss the movies, right? You can't go to a movie. I never realized how much I loved going to a movie until I realized I wasn't allowed to go.
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:16:48
I've been able to walk my dog and that's become sort of a new pleasure and wandering around the city, kind of like I would have waundered around a store and looking in windows and looking for who's open and who isn't. And that kind of thing has been some pleasure. And also just being outside more, going over to the East river, I never walked over to the East river. And now I'm walking over to the East river.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:17:11
Right. So I don't know how to approach this because we could get into all of the things we've been denied, which I think everybody knows. We haven't been able to go to a stadium or an arena to watch anything. We haven't been able to go to live music. Right. We haven't been able to go to a play. You haven't been able to go to a movie, you almost can't go to a beach or up until recently, haven't been able to, you can't travel. So we could really go down that route, but I really want to stay with what pleasures are available, what pleasures are on your list now, and it's an effort, right?
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:17:55
I mean, it's effort because we're still sort of getting used to the idea that I don't have those pleasures that I took for granted available. I consciously have to have pleasure, make time for pleasure, maybe have new pleasures, create pleasures and that's work. And that there are some people who were throwning in the towel and can't have any pleasure and don't have any pleasures. And those people we call anhedonic.
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:18:28
And they may not have chosen to throw in the towel. It just maybe fell away, that you just lost the motivation to do it. And that's typical of the anhedonic too. You know, it starts with like a mild depression. It's kind of like what you were saying before. And little by little, you're doing less and less. You have less and less motivation to do the things you enjoyed and found pleasure in. And it just becomes kind of a vicious cycle. And maybe you're feeling like it would just take too much effort to start knitting or doing a coloring book or something different that you might be able to find pleasure in, right?
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:19:16
Someone who's
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:19:16
Stuck. And the good thing about having allies and people or living with family or living with others as you're going through this is that they might see it in you. You're not responding to the meals. You're sleeping later, you're watching TV or you're not cultivating anything there. You don't go out for walks. You're just kind of clenching and closing in on yourself. And of course, pleasure is going to go by the boards. It's going to be going out of your life. I mean, one of the things that I've noticed, the supermarkets would say people are shopping for food. One of these pleasures that's emerging is the kitchen and making meals with somebody or by yourself.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:20:02
And, that could be the highlight of your day. Two or three different meals that you're making, as opposed to buying them at work, having your lunch at your desk, different kinds of things. But to your point, some people just might not be inspired even to make a meal.
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:20:21
And people are baking bread.
Kevin O'Donoghue & Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:20:23
Really? Yes. Is there an upsale in flour? Eggs? Yeah.
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:20:28
Yes. They are finding that more and more people are ordering the flour to make bread with. And it's simple to make. It's a timed process. So people are home and they're able to let it rise, punch it down, let it rise and bake it. You know, all in one day you can bake your own loaf of bread and it's the most amazing smell. It's the most amazing feeling to cut into a fresh loaf of bread, butter it and eat it. I mean, it's just complete, it's manna from heaven. It really is the thing that makes everybody happy, except for those poor people who are lactose intolerant or gluten intolerant, but there's so many other kinds of bread out there, but it's so important to find these little pleasures.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:21:16
Yes. That's something that's connected down the centuries. Right. I bet in any pandemic, in the 18th century, what'd they do? They baked bread, at least they could do that in the 19th century. You know,
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:21:27
They baked bread. I'm sure it did.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:21:31
I think they microwave the bread.
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:21:33
No. They're actually baking it or people who have ovens and you can even bake bread on a stove.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:21:40
Isn't that one of the pleasures, a house filled with an aroma? How many bachelors out there haven't had that experience and that feeling in quite a long time and families, that parents work two jobs where they're not having the chance to cook every night, every morning. And yes, these households now are filled with the aroma of a meal and a creative meal, not just a fast food meal. And what does that do? So let's isolate that pleasure. Isn't that like one of the big pleasures, and before, when you were talking I was thinking about Christmas presents wrapped versus unwrapped, and it was so shiny, boxed, wrapped Christmas presents that with the ones filled with the most pleasure opening and excitement.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:22:30
So it's like there must be some kind of anticipatory pleasure connected with pleasure in general, when I anticipate I'm going to be satisfied, it enhances the pleasure.
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:22:45
Yeah. And it sounds like you have a sense of what that pleasure is because you've had that pleasure many times in your life. That one, that's always going to be a good one. Wrapped presents. Just the unwrapping of them is fun. Whether no matter what happens inside, it doesn't really matter on some level it's like pulling them open that's what's fun.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:23:09
Closure is something that you can count on. You know, you could count on it at the end, as a destination at the end of something. And it strikes me now, we can't count on pleasures. The old pleasures that we were having aren't working, they're not available to us. We're not having them. And we've had to find substitute pleasure. So you were talking about baking bread, a very simple pleasure, and maybe pleasure itself is something very simple. It connects to something very simple in us.
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:23:43
I think it could be. And that might be one of the silver linings in this, that people are starting to realize that you don't need hyped up experiences to experience pleasure. And maybe people in having to sort of drop back into their own lives and their own homes rediscovered some simpler, quieter pleasures and things that they liked that maybe they haven't had time for, or had the quiet time for. And then this show is about people who have a hard time sort of holding that and being able to stick with it. And maybe for someone who's anhedonic or depressive that time would sort of sink them into a deeper and deeper hole of not being able to feel pleasure, not have the motivation to go get pleasure out of the motivation to bake bread, or do things that might bring some pleasure.
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:24:39
They would slide down a slope. And that's something that I think we wanted to teach people about, just to watch in themselves are things becoming really sort of black and white and gray in your life
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:24:52
And do some things seem not worth it? Yeah. That's, I think, what would really cut everything off, and that's why it's aligned with depression, if it doesn't look even worth it, to make the dinner, to cook the meal, to bake the bread, to go for the walk, to do the exercise, to eat the right thing. If it does doesn't seem worth it, you're probably close to anhedonia,
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:25:20
Especially if it lasts for days and days, I can imagine one day of feeling that it's kind of normal. This is a stressful time.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:25:29
To become clinical it has to be two weeks. So this is like a gestation period. It just begins. And then lo and behold, before you know it, I'm not really wanting to be bothered to have any pleasure, which last week we were talking about alexithymia and being born out of the sense of not feeling anything is worth it. So we're connecting here that it just doesn't feel worth the effort. So why even pursue the pleasure? It's finding the motivation. It seems to me like alexithymia, finding the words for my emotions.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:26:10
Why bother? Why bother to pursue a pleasure or invent a pleasure or find a pleasure or bother myself to pursue a pleasure and the same thing with alexithymia, why even name an emotion, why having emotion, why even struggle to explain an emotion? I'm so fine, satisfied, not naming any emotions. Let me just be, but that is a clinical condition and that's risky territory. Niseema we want to tell our audience how these things are risky when you stopped having pleasure and you've stopped being able to name emotions, you're in risky territory. What is it we can do? How do you know you're in risky territory?
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:26:54
Well, when we were studying for the show, the risk factors for anhedonia seem to have amazing parallels to what's happening outside our door. Right now, the risk factors are a recent traumatic or stressful event. So this pandemic is a recent, traumatic, stressful event, a history of abuse or neglect. Many people have that. And I'm sure it's bringing them up in their risk factor and an illness that impacts your quality of life. So whether you've had COVID or been with somebody who's had COVID or not even had it, this illness of other people is having an impact.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:27:32
Well also, but if you've had diabetes your whole life, wouldn't you say, if you've had to prick your finger for every day of your life, that that might incline you to turn off your pleasure synapsis and your naming of emotion synapsis, you know what I mean?
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:27:51
You might feel like what's it worth. If I can't eat the foods I want to eat, if I can't continue to live the life I want to have those pleasures that are causing me diabetes. It might not seem worth it to give up the pleasures and find new ones.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:28:10
It's like dialysis. If you're having to go through dialysis three, four, or five times a week, I could see it increasing your inclination for anhedonia, because it's just the total opposite of pleasure. And if that's my life, if that's the routine I live in, then why bother myself with having any kind of pleasure there? These risk factors make a lot of sense.
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:28:36
Well, also as you describe any major illness, COPD anything that's limiting your life because of a chronic or major illness, or going through say cancer, something that can be so taxing to your system and can then come with all kinds of limitations afterwards.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:28:56
How about failed relationships? Like if you're in a marriage, in a relationship that never seems to be satisfying, like you're in this one long argument that never ends, that there doesn't seem to be a destination. You're not reaching to a place of pleasure with a partner in a relationship. So that could turn you off to the idea of pleasure also. Yeah,
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:29:21
It could absolutely. Because it's a major kind of stress on your life, right? Eating disorders are often linked to that As well. Think about it because people are sort of denying themselves pleasure of eating.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:29:37
Yes. And so that would be one of those. If somebody came into your office and said, I'm anorexic, you would naturally say, well, you're cut off from a pleasure principle, you're cut off from enjoying food. Right. And then of course, from connected to last week, we found that people who suffer from anorexic or bulemia or an eating disorder were often touch deprived, grew up in touch deprived homes. And we will talk more about that when we come back from our musical break. I am Kevin, O'Donnell your Licensed Mental Health Counselor in New York City. And I am Niseema Dyan Diemer, licensed massage therapist and trauma specialist.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:30:17
You're listening to The Positive Mind.
3
00:31:14
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:31:14
We're back on The Positive Mind. I'm Kevin O'Donoghue and I'm Niseema Dyan Diemer. And so Niseema we talked about during the break about replacement pleasures, have people discovered, have you out there discovered a replacement pleasure? More than one, right? You mentioned baking bread as a replacement pleasure. And we talked about cooking as a replacement pleasure. I think for me, one thing I've discovered is yoga, which I never thought I would have room for in my life, but because I'm the kind I need when life gets hectic, I'll go for a run or go for a swim or do some vigorous physical. And I'm not in the mood to do any of that.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:31:57
I haven't been inspired by any of that. And I kind of really hope that I've established a change in myself that I don't gravitate towards those things. Yoga is turning out to be incredibly nourishing and nurturing and easy and enjoyable. I'm not pushing this kind of yoga. Whereas when I was living my regular life, I wanted to always take something to the extreme, press really hard to get the right poses, run as far as I could, always being disappointed in my performance. Now it's like, no, I'm just going to take this slowly and methodically.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:32:40
And whether I feel pleasure from it or not, I'm just going to go through it. And of course I am feeling pleasure from it. So for me, the replacement is that voice that I used to have that you have to go do this. You have to run hard or you have to do a good performance at something but now. Nope, I'm going to spend 45 minutes just stretching, breathing, and enjoying it as I go. It's a clear sign to me, I am still available for pleasure and to receive pleasure. I'm not anhedonic, even though I was afraid I could have been, or I was.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:33:21
And I have other ones as well. And we can talk more about that.
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:33:27
I'm wondering if you've kind of noticed, if you remember, how you felt after going for a swim and how long that feeling would last and how long the feeling lasts after doing yoga. Is it different?
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:33:41
Totally different because the exercise from swimming has always been great and it's helped me manage my day. And so it could last for a few hours, actually the high from the exercise, whatever gets released biochemically, but with yoga and with the way I'm having my pleasures now they seem to be spread out over the entire day because I'm not rushed. And my moods and my day isn't like a rollercoaster. It's just one smooth highway, let's say. Niseema: It sounds like it's more even Kevin: it's much more even, and I'm staying connected to it because I'm remembering it.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:34:24
Whereas when I was recovering or feeding off of the exercise of swimming, it enabled me to do my work better and more, but I wasn't in touch with the pleasure of it. I think this is an important topic. I think this is a great thing for us to talk about and wondering like how people are dealing with the lack of their old pleasures and the creation of new ones and how pleasure is coming into their lives. You talked about anhedonia as the inability to hold onto a pleasure, right? Isn't that one of the hallmarks?
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:35:03
Yeah. It's like maybe you'll enjoy something, but it's gone and you almost don't remember it even happening. So say you did that yoga, but within half an hour, you were feeling tense again, and you were back in your own own mindset and you'd forgotten that you even did yoga. If you were a true anhedonic, that's probably how you would experience it. Like you would do it, but it just wouldn't stick. Like nothing seems to stick. And that's a quality to me in hearing it, I'm like, yeah, that's such a quality of traumatic childhood abuse, neglectful childhood, or something like that.
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:35:48
Like you just didn't get the ability or the reflection or the time to really feel good, right? Like to feel goodness in your body to feel liking something. And it makes sense in a chaotic, traumatic, violent, or potentially violent home feeling good is dangerous, feeling good is, and there is no space.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:36:17
Right. If everybody's unhappy and you're the one happy person in the home, boy, are you a target. What do you get to be so happy for? You know, so we call these things and I think this is connecting to when we left, we took the break with anorexia and the touch deprivation of anorexics that these are called adverse childhood experiences, that your system is set up for deprivation. And so why have pleasure in the first place? Because my system knows this deprivation that was chronic as a child, that I'm not going to bother myself to even expect or to have a pleasure.
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:37:01
And what's really interesting about the adverse childhood experiences, what that study proved was that people were more prone to having chronic major illnesses like diabetes and heart disease and COPD. So that's what fascinates me about how this is also connected. And I just want to put in here, there is hope, there's a lot of hope for treatment. So it's just that ACEs study was so important in recognizing the impact of adverse childhood experiences on the human psyche/body capacity to feel and be well in this world.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:37:39
I want to give the audience a sense of some of these. Like if you grew up in a home where there was a lot of fighting, or you saw power differentials, like the father dominant over the mother and humiliating the mother, or there was a lot of humiliation going on amongst the siblings. If you grew up in a household where there was punching and hitting, and that this was acceptable. And so you might never know when you were going to get hit next, or if you grew up in a home where the refrigerator was never full or always empty, imagine that as a kid, opening a fridge, needing food and seeing an empty refrigerator, an empty cabinet, this is a system that why even bother to get stimulated and look for pleasure And want pleasure or receive pleasure.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:38:31
Did somebody go to jail? I mean, somebody's chronically absent, right? Like for jail or for other reasons, addictions, traveling, parent that was chronically traveling. Let me see, are you a product of a divorce? I mean, if you're five years old and your parents divorced, it's different than if you're 15, right? So you haven't had 15 years of deprivation of a parental figure. You've had five, but if you're at five years of age and you're missing a mother or you're missing a father, that's a system that's going to get set up to not anticipate a lot of pleasure because pleasure, like you say is dangerous, right.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:39:15
Was there an alcoholic, substance abuser, somebody depressed, somebody mentally ill, schizophrenia, delusional, hallucination, somebody who's just mentally ill, bipolar, whatever, which is another way for saying something unpredictable, right? So you're sitting on edge, wondering what's going to happen next,
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:39:39
A certain instability in your life. There's no place to rest, no place to rest and feel safe because when you rest and feel safe, then you feel good, right. You can feel goodness in the world, right. If you didn't have that, it might be very hard for you to hold good feelings now. So it's important that those people who went through this and are now in their lives, it's important to recognize that you survived that and that you can learn and develop the skills and the tools to help you be able to hold that good feeling and hold that good mood that it can be real.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:40:19
Let's talk a little bit about that, but before you do, I'm discovering as we're going here. And one thing that strikes me about pleasure it has a beginning, middle and end, and there's a closure, like a finishing of a pleasure. So you having a pleasure, it's over with, and your body is recovering and getting geared up for the next pleasure where if you're someone who grew up with these adverse childhood experiences, these deprivations, your system isn't used to a closure Oh, that was a good experience. And then it's over. And then I go about my life and I have another pleasure and it's over. And then I go about my life, you know?
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:41:01
So it's like the system gets used to being opened up, experiencing something positive, closure and then normal life. And then again, opening, experiencing closing. And so again, if you are someone who has been subject chronically to a deprivation of some kind, then you are going to feel why bother.
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:41:28
And especially now it might be hitting you really hard. Like you might've been able to get through life before pandemic with the different things that you were engaging in. Maybe you had friends that you would go see, and even though it might not have felt as pleasurable as it seemed like they were having, at least there was something that was happening that you could engage with. But now with everything kind of closed or restricted and the fear and the whole pandemic story, the paranoia that can come in at this point too, can really be sort of showing you that, wow, you know, I'm struggling here.
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:42:07
I'm struggling to feel any goodness. There is still goodness, even though this is a really tough place that we're in, there's still a lot of good that's happening. There's a good, there's still potential for feeling good at this time, even though everything's going on. And that's interesting what you're saying about this moving into pleasure and the closure of it and feeling okay with the closure of that pleasure that doesn't send you into a depression, but that you're okay. And you still have a good mood and you can move into a pleasurable, maybe more heightened experience and come back down again.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:42:41
So Niseema let's go into a little bit of treating this. Like how can we revive people who may be, or are chronically used to, some kind of deprivation or people that are having a hard time in the pandemi finding a new pleasure, exploring a kind of pleasure. How do you revive that in yourself? You know, without the extremes, like I think drug addicts, people who take up substances, they're trying to, you know, bridge something in themselves. They're trying to bypass the struggle to really experience something. By going to the maximum, let me have the biggest dose, let me have something that's going to totally change my mind, change my chemistry and make me feel pleasure without me having to work for it.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:43:30
And so, you know, it makes sense that anhedonia is a symptom of substance abuse that people who struggle with substance abuse, also struggle with experiencing pleasure that how can we help them forego the substance and help them revive the capacity for pleasure without needing a substance.
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:43:54
That's the thing, that word "capacity", and you can't really revive it. You have to build it. You have to build capacity. It's like when you go to the gym, you're not going to be able to lift 500 pound weights first day, okay. You have no capacity to do that. You haven't built the muscles to do that. You haven't built the knowledge and the capacity to do that. So it's the same thing for somebody holding a good pleasure who's struggling with this problem. You're going to have to start small and really work on letting yourself sort of feel your body and feel maybe some sensual pleasures, like taking a nice hot shower or sitting in a tub with some nice scents, like starting some sensual things, going for a walk on the beach, dipping your toes in the water, feeling the sand.
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:44:50
Just notice if you get a sensation from that, if you get a feeling from that. And that's all just do little things first, because remember you're working with a system that isn't used to holding this good feeling. So see if there's some way you can sit outside, feel the sun on your face and, and maybe also feel the support of the seat you're sitting on or the ground you're standing on to give you a little bit of capacity and support for feeling that and saying to yourself, yeah, this is good. This is okay. I can feel this. And I'll be okay. You have to sort of orient yourself to the good feeling. It's something else I'll do with clients, especially who are in a lot of pain Is there one molecule in your body that doesn't feel the pain?
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:45:40
We can start that small one molecule that doesn't feel the pain and usually they can find it or imagine it, or maybe it's just one little part of their body like the tip of their pinky finger doesn't feel the pain. Okay. Let's pay attention to that. And it changes things. It changes the perspective. Kevin: Garlic Niseema: what about garlic?
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:46:04
I think you just get plate of garlic, saute it up in the pan and see how you react to that or onion, alive in the senses, somehow chocolate, or strawberry or buy some fruit, buy little pieces of fruit, close your eyes, maybe salt, something, you know? So like to me, which does start with smell to me, that's a sense that's very alive. And to really feel through my nose, feel something to revive something.They often make a connection between a scent and a memory, right.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:46:48
So if you smell coffee and it can transport you back to a time in childhood or bacon or a turkey roast or something that you start in the kitchen, start there as a way to revive something. And then these flavors, right. Take a strawberry and take an onion, take a lemon, right. To me, if you can feel disgust or repulsion, you can feel pleasure. Right. And not that you'd feel disgust or repulsion about garlic or onions or lemon or anything, but if you can go that, so as a spectrum, we could see you go from something that is pleasurable to something unpleasurable or vice versa.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:47:33
Right. So you're trying to revive a system like dark chocolate, right? I mean, if you can't respond to dark chocolate, something's going on.
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:47:41
Well, it could be a way of sort of menuing sort of figuring out what does bring me a pleasurable feeling. And sometimes people don't know what a pleasurable feeling is. It could be warmth, it could be tingling. It could be like butterflies in the stomach. I mean these are sensory experiences. And maybe if you're alexithymic, it'd be hard for you to even say what those experiences are. Right. And for someone who's really shut down, it would be great to have some support in it because you just might not know what you're feeling when you're feeling it. And like, to get some support and saying like, Oh, it feels cold where your hands are touching.
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:48:24
It's like, okay, well, that's something now notice if that's pleasurable or not. And again, it might be hard because if somebody iust doesn't even know the words for pleasure it's so slippery. So sometimes I work specifically with muscles that might support the containment of a feeling of an experience in your body. So why don't you do one for us? Well, let me just set it up a little bit around containments about activating large muscle groups that encase large areas of the body. So the first one I'll demonstrate is for the upper body, and it's about activating the muscles of the chest and the muscles of the back, and just think about it.
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:49:09
These muscles are sort of containing your heart center, your heart, your ability to feel others, and be with others. So taking your palms and pressing them in front of your chest with about 20% of your strength and then bring your shoulder blades together in the back. So you're doing both things together. And then just a couple of natural breaths here, nothing special, just holding it for one, two, three breaths, maybe. And then we're, this is the real key you have to release it slowly. So to a count of six, five, four, three, two, one, and just take a moment to just feel.
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:50:00
Do you feel a little more integrated in your body? Like a sense of your body, your upper body?
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:50:08
I feel a kind of relief, but not a big relief, like not ah, really? Is that the idea? You don't want the relief you want gradual kind of,
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:50:19
You want to be able to hold that feeling of relief that it's contained, like there's a sense of relief in your body that's that I can experience and feel and maybe keep a little longer than that.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:50:33
So do let's do that again, because I really want to tune into what you're saying is important. Let's do it again. So you put your near one hand over the other.
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:50:42
Yeah. Put your palms together and press them with about 20% of your strength. That doesn't have to be a huge strength and then bring your shoulder blades together in the back. So we're doing like kind of contrary things, but a dual thing. And you're just doing a couple of natural breaths here and then slowly releasing to a count of six, five, four, three, two, one. And just take a moment to just feel that. Hmm. What do you feel now in your body?
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:51:23
I feel kind of warm and expanded. I do feel the kind of vibration and expansion. And I do feel this idea of containment that you mentioned that now I am a container that something could come into like a pleasure. So I get it
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:51:41
And stay a little while. Right. I like to, when I describe it to my clients, it's like, when you take a sponge and you squeeze all the water out, which is what we kind of do when we create the tension. And then the slow release is really key here, because then you're kind of soaking that water back up. Like you can't just throw an open sponge on water. It's not going to soak anything in, you have to slowly release it. And it sucks up all the water and it's sucking up that capacity to hold that feeling. (Kevin: I see.) So we're kind of using the muscles in the body to, Oh yeah, here I have an adult container of a body to hold maybe this new feeling.
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:52:22
So I would suggest doing this, have a piece of chocolate and then do this exercise and see if you can contain that pleasure a little longer and hold it a little bit more. And then, return to it, keep doing this. This is again like building the muscles to be able to lift 500 pounds. You really have to build a capacity to do this. And people who grew up in a traumatic neglectful childhood, terrible place, this is really hard. You have very weak quote unquote "muscles" to be able to contain and hold these good feelings, right. This will also help you contain bad feelings so that they're not overwhelming you all the time, which is another side effect of coming up in a traumatic childhood.
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:53:12
So, so
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:53:14
Rehabilitative, I think your pleasure sources and your pleasure zones in your body are recoverable and rehabilitative. But another piece of this that we're not talking about is safety because people who did grow up in adverse childhood experience or any kind of trauma, or even people who didn't grow up with trauma, but were suffering from chronic illnesses and chronic pain things that they've had to adapt to as an adult that have dulled their capacity for pleasure. And the experience of pleasure can revive it by doing some of these practices. To me, that exercise was an eye opener because I could see having to do it maybe 20 times to really get the concept and then think of a pleasure being available to enter and me be being available to experience it.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:54:06
But what I was saying about safety is if you grew up being vigilant all the time for the next attack or on guard for some catastrophe that could be happening, that's another piece of this beyond the pleasure ability that we need to talk about, right? So I think rehabilitating this ability sense of pleasure is important and is a good first step, but then we should do a show also talking about safety and how lack of safety effects the system affects your bodily experience of enjoying life and safety as the basis for being able to enter into a relationship with somebody.
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:54:58
Well, in our next show, we're going to be talking to Nancy Napier, who is a child trauma expert, and talks all about this. It's going to be a really fantastic show.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:55:10
So you are listening to The Positive Mind. Thank you for tuning in to us today. My name is Kevin O'Donoghue, Licensed New York State Mental Health Counselor,
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:55:19
And I'm Niseema Dyan Diane Diemer, licensed massage therapist and trauma specialist. If you'd like to reach us for questions or comments about the show we're info@thepositivemindcenter.com that's info@thepositivemindcenter.com. And if you want to listen to the past shows
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:55:35
and the special shows we've done here for the COVID-19 virus. You can check into The Positive Mind Center.com To reach me, Kevin, you can reach me at Kevin@thepositivemind.com
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