Step nine: realignment
According to sudism, the solution to chronic pain and anhedonia is to realign our affect and health, a process called affective realignment. Anyone can undertake this process at any time — all that’s needed is a little knowledge and a little willpower.
There are two ways to perform realignment:
1) Identify parts of our lives where we consume too much pleasure (relative to health benefits) and find ways to reduce that pleasure. Some common examples would be to:
- reduce the amount of sweeteners, salt, and MSG in our diets
- reduce the amount of pleasant but mindless entertainment we consume, and
- reduce the amount of pleasure-inducing drugs we take.
2) Identify places where we are not experiencing enough pain (relative to health costs) and find ways to increase that pain. Some simple ways to do this might include:
- doing more physical work by hand instead of relying on machines and devices
- letting ourselves experience wider temperature fluctuations both inside and outside our homes
- reducing the amount of painkillers we take to numb our physical aches, and
- reducing the amount of psychiatric medication we take to numb our emotional pains (always under the guidance of a qualified physician)
The more we realign our affect and health, the more our chronic pain and anhedonia will disappear. If we carry out the realignment process sufficiently enough, we can even eliminate chronic pain and anhedonia entirely. This means no more chronic depression and anxiety. No more chronic headaches or backaches. And no more anhedonia: we will experience life’s natural, everyday joys more strongly than ever.
This concludes our brief overview of sudism. Learn more about sudism—including dozens more strategies for overcoming depression, anxiety, and chronic pain—in the free book, The Sudist Way.