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AnOddBox – The Path through Anhedonia…

By Ronald Crampton Unpublished

  

AnOddBox – The Path through Anhedonia…

A flash of a day a long time ago… Here I stand… Six feet tall; weighing a buck thirty-five: Who am I to face you…? I have faced each part of you and each part of you has left a mark on me… You have bruised every part of me from my head to my toes… You burned my hands… You stuck spikes under the nails of my fingers… You took a tooth… You broke my leg… You beat me until I hated you… You beat me until I felt no more care… But today I know you… I know what to do when I face each part of you… There you are, an immovable object… Here I come, an unstoppable force… When we are done you will stay as you are and give me no thought… But I will stand before you again… And love you…

In the Marines I so loved running the obstacle course… What…? Did you think I was talking about something else…? Well, in a way I am… Living can often be like running through an obstacle course… As I have often stated, my predominate virtue is Humanities… As such my Vitality (life energy), and thus my happiness, is experienced more when I am with Humans… To not be with Humans is lonely, and thus life energy is grounded, meaning that the energy is dissipated without effect… Being without Humans is being grounded in Anhedonia…

Vitality is not needed if there is no course to run… Thus, my first obstacle is to find Humans… I always say that life is perfectly fair… People on the other hand… Not so much… A few years ago, as part of a qualitative study, I went to a local mall to observe the interaction of Humanities… Humanities is to acknowledge Humans… Thus, the goal was to witness how many people would acknowledge another person, other than who they were with and/or merchants… I highly value Respect, and it is my integrity to afford every person at least the first level of respect. When I am out and about it is rare that there would be a person within my field of vision that I not at least look at… The results of this qualitative study were disheartening… Humanities is to acknowledge Humans… Here, there were only people who do not even acknowledge each other as people… I cannot find Humans… I feel no Vitality… The energy of my course follows Anhedonia…

To find Humans I will need to care about what it is to be Human… My value of Altruism is very high, however I do wane to persevere… The obstacle to care is an effort in reciprocity… In my subdivision the speed limit is posted at 25mph... There are several caution signs indicating children at play… I have a good idea of what a car moving at 25mph looks like and I am fairly obsessive about observing my surroundings… When I see someone driving at excessive speeds I generally will do a calm hand gesture to the ground and gently mouth the words…, Slow down a bit… The driver is not intentional trying to harm anyone, and as I have experience designing roads, I know that common driving behaviors are influenced by the design flow of the road… Now the other day I was driving home. On the sidewalk was a man running with his children… The man looked at me with an angry scowl, crossed over the grass, out into the street, and cursed at me, SLOW DOWN…! First of all the needle pointed at less than 25mph… Second, I probably saw the man and children…, on the sidewalk…, way before they saw me… I understand a parents concern… BUT WHY SO RUDE…! Now I often say that I am a Marine who likes Little House on the Prairie… I highly value kindness and respect… But at that moment of rudeness the Marine in me slammed on my brakes, opened my door, and for a brief moment nearly stepped out to show this man what the scowl of a Devil Dog looks like… But… Only an animal acts from linear thought… I finished my drive home… I see no return in people… I find no Humans… I feel no Vitality… My course continues through Anhedonia…

My obstacle course in living is to be Human and to live with Humans… Easy right…? Looks like a duck… Sounds like a duck… You get the point… Duck however, is a Human word, which means a duck can only be a duck if it knows it is the definition of a duck… A duck is not Human… Thus a duck does not know the definition of a duck… Thus it is not a duck… It is an animal… Being Human follows the same course, and by observation of people… It is not so easy being Human… My course is difficult… Painful… Disheartening… And often feels defeating… Sometimes… Sometimes often… I feel such a lack of Vitality I want so much for it to just end… To just walk away from the course and succumb to the path of Anhedonia…

Anhedonia essentially means the inability to feel pleasure… Since pleasure is a biological form of energy I tend to associate the concept of pleasure as a form of Vitality… A form of life energy… Anhedonia is essentially a vice to Vitality… When we start an obstacle course we begin with energy… However, more often than not, because we do not know the obstacles we are going to face, the course is painful…, the course is exhausting…, the course is defeating…, and the course depresses pleasure… Depresses life energy… The course becomes a path through Anhedonia…

In what I do it is not unusual to observe an individual feeling sad, hopeless, and without pleasure in the course of finding happiness. In more of what I do, I see that the path through Anhedonia is not always a bad course… As I stated earlier… Vitality is not needed if there is no course to run…

I often teach groups… I know those in my profession will chastise me, for I am supposed to facilitate and counsel a group… Not teach… I am an Odd Duck that lives in AnOddBox and I do what I do… I teach… A while ago a group member presented an observation to the group… We do several groups, but this is the only group that afterwards, we gather outside and talk about… It is odd, because in this group we do not focus on textbook Positive Thoughts and Positive Talk, [in fact much of what was discussed was at times somber and often followed a course through Anhedonia]. This group often appears depressed, yet we walk away from the group sessions feeling the Vitality to continue… The Vitality to do more… [Yes… The group member did use the word Vitality… We talk about Vitality a lot…]

In my (their) groups we learn to see what the obstacle is that we face… We learn how to face the obstacle, and how to complete the obstacle… However, arguably the most important of what we learn is that without the obstacle we could not run the course… Thus could not reach the end… Thus we would not be capable of facing it again… Thus we would not travel through the path of Anhedonia… We would be ground in Anhedonia…

AnOddBox topic: There you are, an immovable object… Here I come, an unstoppable force… When we are done you will stay as you are and give me no thought… But I will stand before you again… And love you… How do you run your obstacle course…?

I encourage you to reply…

Thank you,

Ronald E. Crampton, MA, LAC, LPC

AV Treatment Services, LLC dba

AnOddBox,

PO Box 470396

Aurora, CO 80047

(720) 250-8432

Email: recrampton@avtreatment.com

Website: http://avtreatment.com

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