How much do you enjoy your life? Does life feel dull? A bit grey? Do you feel as if your emotions have flatlined?

This is anhedonia – a word only a few of us have heard of but one that explains why so many of us feel we are sleepwalking through life.

In the first book to tackle this missing piece in mental health, writer Tanith Carey joins the dots on how convenience culture, stressful lifestyles, modern diets and both female and male hormonal changes can dial down our ability to feel excitement and joy.

We were delighted that Tanith agreed to our Q&A for The Narrative. Read on to discover the questions we asked about Feeling ‘Blah’? including the one simple strategy we can all adopt right now to feel better.

What inspired you to write Feeling ‘Blah’?

I was inspired to write ‘Feeling Blah’?  because we talk so much about depression at one end of the spectrum and happiness at the other, but say nothing much about the gray space in between, which is where lots of us are living our lives.

We tend to believe that feeling blah, stuck, unmotivated, numb or like we are emotionally flat-lining is the price we have to pay for the stresses of the modern world

We have started to accept it as the norm.

So I wrote ‘Feeling Blah?’ to show it doesn’t have to be this way. 

Yes, modern life is stressful, so much so that it overloads our brain’s reward circuit. 

But the good news is that we know more about how good feelings are made in the brain than at any point in human history, thanks to advances in neuroscience and tech like fMRI scanners.

I wrote the book to harness the latest science about how we feel joy, and bring it to a bigger audience in a readable way –  so that more of us can use this knowledge in our lives and start flourishing again. 

You have a fantastic narrator in Antonia Beamish. What attributes did you look for in a narrator and what do you enjoy most about the audiobook?

I was sent a few choices, and immediately I was drawn to Antonia’s warm intelligent voice. She has the sort of tone I would love to have – so I thought that would help make the audio version more authentic.

In Chapter Three you talk about the introduction of the smartphone, and the relentless bombardment from email, texts, apps and more. Since writing your book are there any changes you have made personally to the way you use your phone?

I believe we are what we pay attention to.

So I curate my experience on social media  

 I only follow social media which boosts my feel-good chemicals – or which I can learn from (so lots of nature, animal and psychology accounts) and unfollow any that make me feel stressed or ‘less than.’

I also use my Out-of-Office reply on my email much more, so I don’t feel the pressure to respond right away,

This means that incoming messages don’t interrupt my ability to sink into an experience and savour it.

By ring-fencing my time, that also allows my cortisol levels to reset.

That’s important because stress is quite simply the biggest enemy of joy there is.

Over time, a build-up of cortisol dampens the effect of our feel-good chemicals, so we can end up feeling numb and struggle to really feel joy in the moment.

What is one simple strategy from the book that our listeners could adopt easily, that you think will have the most impact?

Quite simply, knowing there is a word for this state – anhedonia – and you don’t have to be depressed to have it, is the first simple step. You can be ticking along, getting on with life, appearing just fine to everyone else, with everything you need, except the mental bandwidth to enjoy it. 

I think we shouldn’t just accept feeling blah as the status quo, as so many of us have started to do.  It’s no way to live our lives.

The opposite of anhedonia is flourishing. That’s more than just a pleasanter experience.

Studies have found when you psychologically flourish, you feel less helpless, your life goals are clearer, you’re more engaged with others and you are more resilient. There are physical benefits, too, like better heart health and a reduced risk of chronic disease.

Simply knowing there are reasons for feeling blah is an important first step in being able to address it and move beyond it. 

Is the audiobook designed to be listened to in a certain way? How do you think listeners will get the most out of it?

I have been really pleased to hear from readers that they find the book explains the neuroscience of joy in a really easy-to-understand, readable way so you won’t lose your thread if you want to dip in and out of it. 

It’s also broken down into three main parts The first explains what anhedonia is, the second how joy is made in the brain and what happens to your brain’s reward circuits when they go ‘off-line’ , so to speak. The third part is an evidence-based toolkit of how to get it online again, so you really start to enjoy life again.

So that gives the book it’s structure.

What are you listening to at the moment? 

I am currently writing a new book which is the third in the “What’s My Child Thinking?” series for DK books.

This time it’s for parents of tweens,  out in January 2024.

As an author who writes about  parenting and psychology, I am always interested in how we can avoid carrying over any traumatic or negative messages from our own childhood and ancestry into our parenting,

So a friend has recommended the Julia Samuel book ‘Every Family Has a Story: How we inherit love and loss’ and I am really looking forward to listening to it.

We hope you enjoyed our Q&A with Tanith Carey, author of Feeling Blah? and we’d like to say a big thank you to Tanith for taking the time to answer our questions.

You can download ‘Feeling ‘Blah’? on xigxag now for £7.99 with no subscription required. It’s also an x-book® so you’ll get the audiobook and ebook in one integrated format, allowing you to listen, read, search, save quotes, and more!