#966 - Dr Scott Eilers - Why Does Life Sometimes Feel Emotionally Numb?

Modern Wisdom

Chris Williamson

Society & Culture, Health & Fitness

4.7 • 4.6K Ratings

🗓️ 12 July 2025

⏱️ 76 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Dr. Scott Eilers is a clinical psychologist, mental health coach, and an author. Depression gets thrown around a lot these days. Feeling off for a day or two, and suddenly it’s labeled as depression. But what does real depression actually feel like? And more importantly, how do you claw your way out when it feels like there’s no light at the end of the tunnel? Expect to learn what the difference between feeling sad and actually being depressed is, if mental illnesses has biomarkers and what’s happening neurologically, why so many people feel emotionally flat even when their lives look objectively good, what the warning signs are for someone is becoming emotionally disconnected, the most important things to stop doing to fix depression, what most people misunderstand about depression, and much more… Sponsors: See discounts for all the products I use and recommend: https://chriswillx.com/deals Get 10% discount on all Gymshark’s products at https://gym.sh/modernwisdom (use code MODERNWISDOM10) Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period from Shopify at https://shopify.com/modernwisdom Get the brand new Whoop 5.0 at https://join.whoop.com/modernwisdom Extra Stuff: Get my free reading list of 100 books to read before you die: https://chriswillx.com/books Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic: https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom Timestamps: (00:00) What Does Depression Feel Like? (14:42) What Are The Biomarkers of Mental Illness? (30:06) Five Ways To Handle Sadness & Emptiness (48:00) What Should We Be Doing To Increase Happiness? (1:00:27) What is Psychosis? (1:02:44) Can We Have Too Much Self-Awareness? (1:07:37) Is There A Link Between Intelligence & Depression? (1:12:40) Find Out More About Dr Eilers Episodes You Might Enjoy: #577 - David Goggins - This Is How To Master Your Life: https://tinyurl.com/43hv6y59 #712 - Dr Jordan Peterson - How To Destroy Your Negative Beliefs: https://tinyurl.com/2rtz7avf #700 - Dr Andrew Huberman - The Secret Tools To Hack Your Brain: https://tinyurl.com/3ccn5vkp - Get In Touch: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact - Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	How would you describe to somebody who's never felt it what depression feels like?
0:06.0	It's tricky because it can feel like a lot of different things. It depends on the person. But for a lot of people, depression is not as much the sadness and the despair as it's often portrayed as. And it often is more of a numbness or an emptiness. So one of the core
0:22.9	symptoms of depression that nearly everyone experiences to some degree is what's called anhedonia.
0:28.4	The literal translation of anhedonia is the loss of joy. So the reward system in your brain,
0:34.7	right, your dopamine pathway that causes you to experience
0:38.1	emotions like enjoyment when you're doing something fun or achievement after you accomplish something,
0:44.3	it basically stops functioning. It can be a diminished functioning or it can be a completely
0:50.8	absent functioning. And what that feels like on a day-to-day basis is you can go out
0:55.9	and do the things you would normally do that would normally make you feel some certain way,
1:00.9	and the emotional reaction that you would expect to experience upon completion of those
1:06.5	tasks or activities is either significantly dulled from what you usually experience or it is just
1:13.3	not there at all. It's very much, I hear a lot of people describe it as if there were a black
1:19.5	hole inside of them where their emotions or their reactions should be. And obviously for many people,
1:25.1	when you start feeling this way, that's where the lack of motivation that we see with depression comes from.
1:30.3	It's not that these people actually stop caring about their lives or the people in them or their jobs or whatever.
1:36.8	It's that you don't feel anything when you do it.
1:39.9	And, you know, we're reward-based mammals, right?
1:42.5	And so if we don't feel anything when we do things that are hard or challenging that require
1:47.9	effort, the natural reaction is to stop doing them.
1:51.3	And that's where you see, that's where you see the person who, you know, can't get out of
1:54.8	bed, can't take care of their home, can't take care of their hygiene.
1:59.2	It's that there's no, there's no reward in it. It's like, you know,
	...

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