One other thing that helped with the anhedonia for me, it was that I had to start facing every fear I had.
Intensity and extreme emotions seemed to also open up pleasure for me again. It backfired plenty of times and I faced increased anxiety because of it, but I also began to feel intense joy and euphoria the more I faced huge fears and overcame them.
I remember at one time making a list of all my fear, and I began to conquer them all one by one. As I began to do that I began to feel more joy and love, alongside more intense anxiety and fear. The anxiety and fear would go away of course, but the love and joy and other emotions didn't go away.
Also just general emotional work also helped. I did a lot of surrendering practices, a lot of emotional unblocking techniques. pounding a pillow, screaming in the middle of a forest where nobody could hear me. The more I felt anything at all, the more I felt joy and love.
I'm still working on that, there are many things that I still fear and many of my emotions are still blocked because of all the shit I went through recently and also in my life in general. As I make progress though, I felt love more and more, and more and more intensely too. I wish I was high all the time like when I was younger and the positive emotions flowed so easily, but maybe that is just life. When I was younger I used to think so highly of the future, thinking I was destined for great things and would be rich, look great, and have a hot wife.
Then the LTC hit me and I basically lost my intelligence, ability to learn, earn, and to hope too. I lost everything pretty much. So I assume a HUGE amount of my positive emotions was based on having a bright outlook for the future, and the LTC took that away. As I work and work and work though, I'm starting to realize that my future can be bright again, but not because of hope or anything like that, but just because I am willing to work for it.
also, hope just feels euphoric as heck. When you know you can have good things by working for them, it just... idk, it just doesnt feel as good. it's like knowing you can have a 6 pack by waking up at 5 am everyday for 2 years and working out. Its a grimey feeling, but you know you can do it. Now contrast that feeling with the hope that someday you'll just decide to stop eating junk food and work out everyday. Knowing you can accomplish something through hard work, and hoping for a dream are two very different feelings.
When I was younger, I had the euphoria of hope around me all the damn time. And with the LTC, I lost that hope but gained the knowledge that I can work hard and achieve the things I always hoped for. The feeling just doesnt compare, even when I accomplish the things I always hoped for.
I guess that is just part of youth, hoping for the best and we just ride that high.
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last thing too. The more I became self-less, the more my love and positive emotions increased.
When I re-connected with my spirituality and began to serve others, my happiness began to slowly come back. At the same time, I had to give up the desire for my joy and happiness to come back in the serving of others.
Meaning, I didn't serve others as a way for my happiness to come back or to feel joy and love. I reached the end of my rope and was like "fuck it, if I can't be happy on my own, I can at least make other people happy" and I found that as I focused on helping others, profound happiness began to return to me.
and as I became selfish after that, my happiness would shut back off or would go numb again.