Lesson 1 of 6 · Naming the dryness
The one question that sorts them
Ask it plainly. Has everything gone flat, or only worship?
If your food tastes of nothing, if your children do not reach you, if work is grey and the things you used to look forward to have stopped working, then the flatness is not about religion. Religion is simply one more thing on a long list, and the list is the finding.
If everything else is roughly normal and the flatness is in the prayer mat, that is the state this course is about.
Do this honestly and do it before anything else, because the two need different help and one of them needs it soon.
The question is not a test, and nothing validates it as one. What sits behind it is that the diagnostic criterion for lost interest asks for it in all, or almost all, activities. Flatness confined to one part of a life is not what that criterion describes, which is why the breadth of it is the first thing to look at rather than the depth.
What the research says
The diagnostic criterion for losing interest or pleasure asks for it across all or almost all activities, so pervasiveness is written into the definition rather than added by us. If the flatness is only in worship and nowhere else, that is a different thing from depression.
The criterion for markedly diminished interest or pleasure asks for it in all, or almost all, activities, so pervasiveness across a life is written into the definition rather than added by us. What it does not do is validate a single question as a screening test, and nothing here should be used as one.
American Psychiatric Association (2022). Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition, Text Revision. American Psychiatric Association Publishing doi
Losing the capacity to anticipate and respond to reward is a dimension in its own right, which is why how broad the flatness is tells you something. It describes a mechanism and is not a way of sorting yourself into a category.
Reviews the loss of the capacity to anticipate and respond to reward as a dimension in its own right, which is what makes the breadth of the flatness informative. It describes a mechanism and not a way of sorting one person from another.
Pizzagalli DA (2014). Depression, stress, and anhedonia: toward a synthesis and integrated model. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 10, 393 to 423 doi