No Desire For Anything

[Ryan_047]

Hello there!

I don't have any idea of what is wrong with me.First thing first's,I am not suffering from depression.To be honest I was suffering from depression and anhedonia for a good period of time,but now I am alright.Please don't make this kind of assumptions.

So,my problem is that I don't want anything,I have no desires or wishes.I can't get inspired by anything and I tried a lot of methods in order to "wake me up".I watched a lot of Leo's videos,or other inspirational videos on YouTube and nothing.I even tried to imagine that I would die in a short period of time and still nothing.I feel like nothing can motivate me to do anything,and I repeat I am not suffering from depression or anhedonia.

I am a 16 year old teenager that lives in a 2nd world country.I know for sure that in order to achieve something or to do something you need to want that thing very much.You need to wish for it.If this criteria isn't met we can't do amazing things.And it gets really frustrating for me because I can't find what I want out of my life.I mean,I don't wish for anything.I don't wish for money,a girlfriend,practicing my hobbies,finding passions,reading,helping other etc.

I know that I should be doing something and not wasting my time,but I can't be productive if I don't know what I want to achieve(I feel like I don't want to achieve nothing).For example I started to learn coding.I was coding and coding for like 3 months and then I fell of track.Then I started learning how to edit videos..same result.I even started meditating,and fell of track(I had meditated for 2 months).Don't get me wrong,these are all activities that I enjoy(I haven't mentioned reading,studying psychology and math),but I can't practice them.

Basiclly,I don't want nothing.I have a little problem with breathing,I am not willing to resolve even this problem.I searched for an answer to this problem on the internet and found that there are many other people like me.But no answer.Some other few points: I feel like my life is getting a little bit boring,and I get frustrated by school(many reasons,one of them being that is stopping me from practing my hobbies and teaching me a lot of useless stuff).

[vizual]

If you don't desire anything, why worry about it? Obviously you desire something or else you wouldn't be asking questions about it

[Ryan_047]

@vizual ...

Yeah..there is a little bit of logic in what you are saying.Read again the 4th paragraph.I know that I should be doing something.I am worrying about it because I know that I will be depressed again if I don't do nothing.

[NoOne]

You might consider that your problem is not a lack of want.  I spent 45 years of my life wanting to accomplish something, because my ego said it would be good to accomplish something and people would love me for it.  Our western culture is so driven to succeed, but the truth is, you are fooling yourself to think that you can accomplish anything.  There is no you to accomplish it.  Just BE and experience what it is to be you, and see where your exploration takes you.

[Ryan_047]

@NoOne I understand what you are saying.But let's forget about the need to accomplish something.

Wouldn't be normal for a person to want things from life?Is it normal not to care about my life?Because this is how I feel.I repeat,I don't want to travel,I don't want to try new things or food etc.I mean these are things that the most people want.

[NoOne]

3 minutes ago, Ryan_047 said:

@NoOne I understand what you are saying.But let's forget about the need to accomplish something.

Wouldn't be normal for a person to want things from life?Is it normal not to care about my life?Because this is how I feel.I repeat,I don't want to travel,I don't want to try new things or food etc.I mean these are things that the most people want.

Normal isn't always best.  You keep saying this is how you feel.  What is this feeling?  What are thoughts?  These are questions you have to ask yourself and be comfortable with not knowing.  Maybe someday you'll know, but for now this is what  you have to know:  your feelings and thoughts are not who you are; they are just sensations you experience.  You believe you are the center of the universe, and so did I and so does everyone (I imagine) at least at first.  This is not going to make any sense unless you spend the time reflecting on it.  The truth, unfortunately is that most people are probably going to have to experience a lot of suffering before they can start to understand this, because when you have experienced the injustice of suffering long enough, something inside you snaps and refuses to take any more.  I honestly can't say how it works for others, but I think perhaps one way of reaching this perspective has to do with forcing your brain to think about these concepts it doesn't understand until the sheer horror of how little  we understand of ourselves allows us to realize how ridiculous it is that we pretend to be an authority on our existence.  It gives you the ability to look at your thoughts and feelings objectively, like a scientist.  Observing the thoughts and feelings as they happen, and experiencing everything around you with a new sense of wonder.  Except the truth may be there is no observer, there is only existence, but that's a higher truth I haven't got my head around yet, but I look forward to discovering it.

 

[Eye]

Here's an advice for you:

Whenever you do something, whether it's coding or editing videos, do it just for the sake of doing it, without ANY expectations of what the outcome should be. If, at some point it stops exciting you, find something else to do and do it to the best of your ability. If you get bored, do something else. That's it. There's nothing wrong with that. Don't judge yourself that you should be doing this or that in order to become happy. Life is an experience, so experience it as it is.

Cheers.

[ZenBlue]

1 hour ago, Ryan_047 said:

@NoOne I understand what you are saying.But let's forget about the need to accomplish something.

Wouldn't be normal for a person to want things from life?Is it normal not to care about my life?Because this is how I feel.I repeat,I don't want to travel,I don't want to try new things or food etc.I mean these are things that the most people want.

Don't worry so much about the things other people want. Focus on what YOU want. You clearly want a better life and want something good for yourself. If you didn't then you wouldn't be spending time on this forum making a post about it.

You said you enjoy doing all sorts of activities, but you can't stick with them. The problem isn't a lack of want. You want a lot out of life otherwise you wouldn't have started these activities and you wouldn't enjoy learning new things and developing new skills. You clearly do enjoy learning new things and developing your skills. The real problem is that you don't believe that you can have all that you desire in this life. I'm telling you that you can live the life you want, but first you must re-program your mind and change yourself from within.

Don't put so much pressure on achieving external success. It's not a waste of time for you to do something for the sake of enjoyment even if you do not produce the results you want. Life isn't meant to be so serious. Life isn't meant to be about how much money you have, or how much "success" you can achieve. Learn to have fun and enjoy the journey. Take in all that life has to offer and be excited by the possibilities.

[ICSounds]

I have felt this way also and one thing that has helped me is when I am able to be in an enjoyable environment where I can have fun and enjoy myself, whether it is with people or just a place that I enjoy. I think you should look for ways to get out more because none of your activities seem to involve going anywhere. The times I feel like I don't want to do anything are always times when I am not getting out or feel like I am stuck inside my house. So I think you should find a way to enjoy yourself that gets you outside of your house.

[charlie2dogs]

On 3/26/2016 at 5:37 PM, NoOne said:

You might consider that your problem is not a lack of want.  I spent 45 years of my life wanting to accomplish something, because my ego said it would be good to accomplish something and people would love me for it.  Our western culture is so driven to succeed, but the truth is, you are fooling yourself to think that you can accomplish anything.  There is no you to accomplish it.  Just BE and experience what it is to be you, and see where your exploration takes you.

good answer

[Harry]

On 3/25/2016 at 10:21 PM, Eye said:

Whenever you do something, whether it's coding or editing videos, do it just for the sake of doing it, without ANY expectations of what the outcome should be. If, at some point it stops exciting you, find something else to do and do it to the best of your ability. If you get bored, do something else. That's it. There's nothing wrong with that. Don't judge yourself that you should be doing this or that in order to become happy. Life is an experience, so experience it as it is

1) I agree completely with what is underlined above.

You should focus on the day to day activity and DO NOT focus on the goal, or you will easily get frustrated that you are not progressing fast enough and will be ignoring the actual practice needed to get better.

 

2) However, with all respect, I completely disagree with the advice in bold.

 If you are ever to find lasting fulfillment in your work/hobbies you are going to have to push through stages where you completely lose motivation/interest in the subject. To give up every time the excitement wavers is to doom yourself to a life of dabbling, with no real passion, skills or fulfillment in your work. 

 

3) I recommend 'Mastery' by George Leonard if you want to learn the common traps when starting a practice (meditation, video editing, coding) and how to overcome them.

[NoOne]

On 3/30/2016 at 7:58 PM, Harry said:

If you are ever to find lasting fulfillment in your work/hobbies you are going to have to push through stages where you completely lose motivation/interest in the subject. To give up every time the excitement wavers is to doom yourself to a life of dabbling, with no real passion, skills or fulfillment in your work.

I think this might be a tiny bit dogmatic.  if YOUR desire is to have depth of knowledge in a specific area or specific skills that are difficult to attain,  you shouldn't have any problem doing the hard work, because you are living in the moment and what you are doing is what you want or will lead to what you want.  If you want to learn about lots of different things, there is nothing wrong with being a Renaissance-man.    I personally think that getting bored or tired or disinterested in something is just reality's way of telling you to take a break from it.

[likhil]

You have a desire "you want a desire"

[charlie2dogs]

On 3/26/2016 at 4:57 PM, Ryan_047 said:

Hello there!

I don't have any idea of what is wrong with me.First thing first's,I am not suffering from depression.To be honest I was suffering from depression and anhedonia for a good period of time,but now I am alright.Please don't make this kind of assumptions.

So,my problem is that I don't want anything,I have no desires or wishes.I can't get inspired by anything and I tried a lot of methods in order to "wake me up".I watched a lot of Leo's videos,or other inspirational videos on YouTube and nothing.I even tried to imagine that I would die in a short period of time and still nothing.I feel like nothing can motivate me to do anything,and I repeat I am not suffering from depression or anhedonia.

I am a 16 year old teenager that lives in a 2nd world country.I know for sure that in order to achieve something or to do something you need to want that thing very much.You need to wish for it.If this criteria isn't met we can't do amazing things.And it gets really frustrating for me because I can't find what I want out of my life.I mean,I don't wish for anything.I don't wish for money,a girlfriend,practicing my hobbies,finding passions,reading,helping other etc.

I know that I should be doing something and not wasting my time,but I can't be productive if I don't know what I want to achieve(I feel like I don't want to achieve nothing).For example I started to learn coding.I was coding and coding for like 3 months and then I fell of track.Then I started learning how to edit videos..same result.I even started meditating,and fell of track(I had meditated for 2 months).Don't get me wrong,these are all activities that I enjoy(I haven't mentioned reading,studying psychology and math),but I can't practice them.

Basiclly,I don't want nothing.I have a little problem with breathing,I am not willing to resolve even this problem.I searched for an answer to this problem on the internet and found that there are many other people like me.But no answer.Some other few points: I feel like my life is getting a little bit boring,and I get frustrated by school(many reasons,one of them being that is stopping me from practing my hobbies and teaching me a lot of useless stuff).

Ryan, enjoy what you are and what you have, be patient, life will bring something to you, stop feeling like you should be desiring something just be yourself and enjoy what you have, change will come, give it time and dont fret about it.

[Ryan_047]

@charlie2dogs Thanks.I went in more depth and I found out the root cause of my lack of wanting..it's called anhedonia(or emotioanl numbness),I created a topic on this,if you are curios.I can't believe I didn't realized this earlier.

[Nathalie]

On 25.3.2016 at 10:42 PM, Ryan_047 said:

Wouldn't be normal for a person to want things from life?

You don't really want to be "normal" do you?

Personally, I don't know anything which is more boring than a "normal life".. It's the best way to depression..

Go your own way.. even doing nothing seems to be a better solution in my point of view..

 

[Ryan_047]

@MartineF I don't think that I've sent the message that I wanted to send properly with the quote you brought from me.I was meaning about the usual stuff people enjoy,the stuff that are in our DNA..like eating.Hopefully you are not depressed as I,so please answer me this question: Do you feel any pleasure when you eat?Like ice cream?Actually today I ate ice cream and I felt nothing.For me eating ice cream and eggs are the same thing.

Also,I can give more examples like drinking,socializing etc.

[philosopherintherain]

Hello Ryan,

I've gone through a very very similar thing. I was depressed for a long time, since I was 15 to about 18. At 18 I started healing and I started feeling better. At this point I wanted a lot of things (I also wanted a lot of things while I was depressed, it's just that life seemed too hard to stay and achieve them at that time) and then I slowly started losing my desires.

It's great to hear that you are starting to get better and no longer feel you are depressed. However, really and truly healing from depression takes a long, long time. It's not about defining you as still depressed, since you say you aren't, I believe you you aren't. It's about you being in the process of healing though. 

It's a journey, you need to get to know yourself again, what makes you feel good, what looks right, the world becomes different all of a sudden and your thought routine that you had while depressed change so much that it leaves you feeling you aren't even sure who you are and what you want, it's like you don't really know yourself, because you knew the you who was depressed, but who is this new happy you? what does she want?

I can't tell you what will work, but what I did and am still doing (it's been 5 years since my depression left me and I've been struggling with break downs and change for all this time, I'm steal healing from my past), I looked back at what I used to want and thought why I don't want those things anymore, and that maybe I do. When I found that I really don't feel a desire for them but I think they are still the best fit for me, I adopted them first in a fake way - I would tell people that was my dream, I would tell myself how cool it would be, imaging it, thinking about it, making up scenarios, not because I was excited but because I forced myself at first. 

I remembered that it's ok to fall back, I told my closest friends and family that I was feeling this way, I let myself cry about it, about life, about not wanting anything, about losing the depressed me that I knew. I went easy on myself and didn't demand that things will change, but I knew in the back of my mind they probably will, one day. 

It's horrible to wake up with no goals, but your journey to finding those goals all over again, while probably difficult and painful, will leave you with so much new knowledge about yourself, what you like, how you operate and what you need that I feel excited for you.

Good luck darling, write me if you wish

Edited April 28, 2016 by philosopherintherain
editing problems

[charlie2dogs]

On 4/15/2016 at 5:56 AM, ___ said:

And watch this, just for fun

 

 

 

what a breath of fresh air, revives ones inner being