u/Double-Pizza-4506

Well I have a lot of symptom as you can see in my previous post but today I want to focus on something and if you want you can tell me what are your thought about it i’ll take it ! Thank you

What I don't understand is how my functions just progressively shut down. It feels like 6 months ago, I was still able to form an attachment to a girl despite everything. 4 months ago, I could still feel sexual attraction toward a girl, and even a bit after that. 3 months ago, I could still laugh a little and potentially even shed a tear. 2 months ago, it was difficult, but sometimes I could manage to get a bit of pleasure from watching a video or a movie. And now, for the past week, it’s just absolute emptiness. In the end, I find myself wondering what the truth behind all this really is—whether it's a desensitization of my receptors, a depletion of neurotransmitters, or my nervous system completely shutting down. figure that if it was still working even a little bit just a week ago, it means that the electrical currents were fundamentally still passing through.. that’s so weird
The fact that my body's system shut things down in such a progressive and coordinated way shows that it was clearly reacting to a signal, right? Everything was executed so systematically. that's what's so striking—and I feel like you can completely see the underlying logic behind it

Hi everyone, I have a few questions for you. I’ve been reading about a lot of PSSD cases, and I seem to have the main symptoms associated with it, but I also have some more specific symptoms. I was wondering if anyone here has experienced similar symptoms, or if I might actually be wrong about my medical diagnosis. For context, my symptoms started about a year ago.
I have severe emotional blunting and anhedonia (I can’t really feel emotions, laugh, cry, etc.), which have progressively gotten worse over the past few months. For example, about 3 months ago, I could still shed a few tears, laugh, and enjoy things at least a little bit.
I also have:
Brain fog (which I’ve had for a long time)
Almost complete loss of hunger and thirst (for about 11 months)
Extremely fragmented sleep (for maybe 10 months)
Chronic fatigue (for the past few months)
A relatively high heart rate for a 22-year-old, almost as if my body is stuck in fight-or-flight mode 24/7 (around 80–100 BPM while lying in bed) (for months)
My heart rate increases a lot during physical activity (for months)
Muscular intolerance during prolonged or intense physical activity (for months)
I also have a symptom that’s difficult to describe, but I just feel weird in my own body. Sometimes it feels like certain parts of my body are heavier than others or something along those lines (for months)
Constant nasal congestion. It switches sides, which I know can be normal, but my nose is basically always congested. I don’t know if this could be a sign of inflammation (for about a year)
Digestive issues, although those have actually been better recently
Just a week ago, I was still able to get an erection and ejaculate, but now I can’t anymore
I also feel a kind of numbness in my penis. I can still feel sensations, but it’s hard to explain — it mostly feels like I constantly have to stimulate it now, as if I can’t feel it as well as before (for about 2 weeks)
A strange nerve-like sensation around the upper left side of my chest/pectoral area, as if the overall sensation there isn’t the same as on the right side
The strange bodily sensations and chronic-fatigue-like symptoms also seem fairly unstable and fluctuate
I’ve seen a lot of doctors and have had most of my body investigated: a contrast-enhanced CT scan of my chest, abdomen, and pelvis, a brain MRI, gastroscopy, chest X-rays, and many other tests. Absolutely nothing significant has been found.
I’ve also had a lot of blood tests. The only real abnormalities were total IgE around 3,000 about 5 months ago, which increased to around 4,000 about 2 months ago, as well as a severe vitamin D deficiency. My vitamin D levels have since been corrected. My vitamin B12 was also relatively low — technically still within the normal range, but near the lower end.
At this point, I’m wondering whether everything I’m experiencing could really be explained by PSSD alone, whether there could be another functional disorder involved, or whether I could have multiple things going on at the same time.
Anyway, thank you very much for any responses!

Hi, I’m writing this because I strongly suspect that I have PSSD. I took fluoxetine over the course of about a year: for three months at first, and then I tried restarting it twice, taking about four pills each time, with roughly six months between those attempts.
I’ve spent a lot of time reading forums, and I’ve noticed that many people who recover seem to reach a point where they’ve accepted their situation. I believe we have to learn to live with it, keep doing the things we used to do, and give the brain reasons to make the changes that could eventually give us our humanity back.
I’m not trying to discredit PSSD as a real condition, but in my opinion, cortisol levels and chronic stress can seriously interfere with recovery. We have to understand that the body and brain prioritize survival over things that are less essential for immediate survival, such as pleasure, sex, and so on. When we’re constantly obsessing over the condition, the brain can remain in a state where it perceives danger, which may negatively affect these circuits.
Stress can also contribute to neuroinflammatory processes in the brain. I believe this kind of low-grade inflammation could potentially interfere with receptors and the circuits involved in emotions and pleasure.
Research also shows that neuroplasticity gives the brain an incredible capacity to adapt. This is one reason I find the “windows and waves” that some people experience interesting. From a logical perspective, it could represent the brain trying to adapt and return toward its previous state. Cortisol and neuroinflammation can negatively affect neuroplasticity, so if we want to create the best possible conditions for it, we should eat properly, get outside, stay active, and keep living.
I know that’s incredibly difficult. I potentially have this myself, or at the very least I have many of the horrible symptoms associated with it:
I don’t feel pleasure anymore.
I can’t cry.
I can’t feel love emotionally (only intellectually, in a way).
Watching a YouTube video is almost impossible — I can physically watch it, but it makes me feel absolutely nothing.
Loss of hunger and thirst.
Strange sensations throughout my body.
Brain fog and anxiety.
I clearly have other symptoms too, but at this point I don’t care as much about those. The most important things to me are the anhedonia and the emotional blunting.
But the neural circuits aren’t necessarily “dead.” And if people can recover, then clearly recovery is possible. When I say “functional,” I mean that I believe this could involve dysfunctional brain processes rather than neurons simply being destroyed. The human brain isn’t random. The human body is incredibly complex, and I hope that one day, for all of you, things will return to normal.
It’s also possible to imagine future treatments for these problems. PSSD is becoming increasingly recognized, and although PSSD itself may not be one of the most heavily researched areas right now, there is a lot of research being done on the brain’s reward circuitry, and that is a very active field.
Maybe PSSD itself is currently under-researched, but perhaps in the future we’ll become much better at manipulating and treating anhedonia and emotional dysfunction more broadly. The discoveries are becoming increasingly interesting.
It’s 2026, guys. AI is improving every day, and our scientific knowledge keeps expanding. We could see technological or medical breakthroughs that we don’t expect, and they might happen sooner than we think.
Keep hope. ❤️ You are strong, and you are not alone.