Have you noticed that after months of tension, things that once brought you joy — morning coffee, an evening series, a meeting with a friend — stop bringing satisfaction? It's not fatigue and not weakness of character. According to psychologist Maria Tsanko, this is the result of a specific neurochemical process triggered by prolonged stress.
Two hormones we misunderstood
We're used to thinking of dopamine as the "hormone of happiness" and cortisol as the "stress hormone." But this oversimplified picture hides the main point: both are needed, and both are destructive only when they become imbalanced.
Dopamine is not about pleasure at the moment of receiving a reward. According to research published in Nature Neuroscience and Trends in Cognitive Sciences, it activates primarily in response to reward anticipation. This is why the process of achieving a goal often brings more satisfaction than the reward itself. Cortisol, in the short term, is useful: it mobilizes energy, sharpens attention, and allows you to act in danger.
The problem begins when cortisol doesn't turn off.
What happens in the brain during chronic stress
Aversive stressful events negatively regulate the dopaminergic reward system, disrupting sensitivity to rewards — and this mechanism is closely linked to chronic depression caused by stress. That is, the brain doesn't just "feel less joy" — it structurally reduces its ability to experience pleasure.
A 2023 study in the journal Biomedicines describes this state as an "anti-reward" state of the brain: depleted dopamine in reward centers and elevated cortisol in stress regulation centers. The result is anhedonia: clinical inability to feel pleasure. This is not a metaphor or an exaggeration.
"When we directly activated neurons — rather than waiting for stress to increase their activity — it also led to anhedonia and behavioral despair"
— researchers from the Medical College of Georgia, ScienceDaily, 2024
In people, this looks like: no longer wanting to see loved ones, loss of libido, favorite activities seeming empty. Not laziness. Not weakness.
Why "just rest" isn't enough
Chronic sleep deprivation reduces dopamine sensitivity — even if its level is formally normal, receptors respond poorly. This means: you can have "enough" dopamine but still feel nothing. This is why sleep quality is not a bonus to recovery, but a condition for it.
The second nuance is tyrosine. Dopamine is synthesized from this amino acid. A review of studies showed: tyrosine does improve cognitive function under stress, but only when the dopamine system is not yet exhausted. That is, nutrition is prevention, not treatment of acute depletion.
What really works: specific mechanisms
- Physical activity — increases dopamine synthesis and, importantly, restores receptor sensitivity. Not "improves mood" abstractly, but changes neurochemistry.
- Small achievable goals — breaking large tasks into small steps activates the dopamine anticipation system. The brain receives a signal "I'm achieving," even if the scale is small.
- Sleep routine — restores receptor sensitivity. Without it, other methods work half as well.
- Nutrition with tyrosine — turkey, eggs, dairy products, avocado, bananas — supports dopamine synthesis as a preventive measure.
What's common to all these methods is that they are slow. Neurochemical recovery doesn't happen in a week. But that doesn't mean it doesn't happen.
An open question: if anhedonia after chronic stress is a structural change in how the brain works, not just a "bad mood," are the current psychological support protocols in Ukraine sufficient to work specifically at this level — rather than just with symptoms?
