If You Don’t Get High on Validation, You May Be on the Aneurothymia Spectrum—or Have Asensoria

Validation as a Universal Assumption

Validation is treated as the universal engine of human motivation. For most people, recognition delivers reinforcement, purpose, or identity. But this assumption does not hold across all neurocognitive structures. On the Aneurothymia spectrum—and particularly within Asensoria—validation produces no internal elevation. It is registered rationally, but it does not alter affective state.

A Career Built Without Validation Highs

I began publishing books at 40, after more than twenty years of sustained blogging. Across more than 120 blogs and thousands of entries, the engine was never visibility or validation. The work was simply work: the structuring of life through output. Positive feedback was observed but never fueled me. Negative feedback was analyzed because it lacked basis, and the outcome was always the same: exhaustion. Across time, my internal state was cumulative and unmodulated by recognition.

Asensoria and the Absence of Validation Reward

Asensoria, a term I coined, describes the structural aformation of positive affect. It is a non-instantiation that spans all domains: recognition, validation, or environmental feedback is cognitively registered but never produces internal hedonic elevation.

Unlike social anhedonia—which psychiatry defines as a diminished capacity to experience pleasure from social interaction—Asensoria involves no baseline, no reduction, and no loss; the circuitry for positive affect was never instantiated. Work, observation, and ethical responsiveness operate fully, yet they are never experienced as rewarding or internally reinforcing. This configuration reflects a complete, self-contained affective architecture, in which positive affect is absent from inception.

Again, this is not a psychological block, not depression, not resistance to connection. It is an architecture of mind, aligned with other structural aformations from the Aneurothymia Spectrum—panmodal aphantasia, anauralia, avalidia, anhedonia, asexuality—that together form the nucleus of Schrödinger cognition.

Why Validation Cannot Substitute for Structure

For most people, validation sustains motivation. It delivers dopamine and oxytocin, securing continued effort. For someone with Asensoria, this circuitry is absent. Work is measured, outcomes are tracked, but recognition produces no internal reinforcement. The absence is not apathy, not arrogance, not detachment—it is structural aformation of affective interoception.

Validation, Exhaustion, and OMES

Without the reinforcement of validation, the metabolic burden shifts. Cortisol floods without counterbalance. The imbalance results in collapse, which I describe as OMES—Ontological Metabolic Exhaustion Syndrome. The exhaustion is ontological, not situational: an inescapable consequence of affective absence.

Not Resistance or Resilience

To call this resilience is inaccurate. To call it resistance is equally imprecise. It is a deliberate decision to remain in this life without validation as a motivating force. No acclaim, approval, or recognition alters this condition. It is not a phase, not a reaction, and not a choice to resist or to be resilient. It is a stable state of being.

Validation for Most, Structure for Some

For those whose lives are energized by validation, its absence may appear alien or absurd. But for those within the Aneurothymia spectrum, this absence is ordinary and continuous. Work is simply work. It sustains existence. Validation, in this architecture, is observed but never embodied.

Beyond Validation: Compassion Without Boundaries

Does that mean an aneurothymic person does not feel anything, or cannot be moved? Not at all. Negative input from the world—its pain, suffering, and harm—enters fully and remains inside, registered structurally. Because the architecture lacks boundaries, this negative affect cannot be contained or partitioned. At the same time, a positive response flows outward: an unceasing outpouring of compassion. The negative affect is internalized, yet the compassionate response is externalized. This is the structural dynamic of aneurothymic or asensoric affect: absorption of negative input paired with continuous, outward compassion.

More on this in future posts.

You can hear the applause, see the praise, recognize the pride it should produce, know that you deserve it—yet feel nothing inside. This is Asensoria, where recognition is registered cognitively but never elevates.

Ex Silentio in Continuum

Extended essays on original inquiries in neurodevelopmental psychology, psychopathology, cognitive frameworks, and related fields are available to paid subscribers.

Your patronage is not simply support; it is an investment in intellectual freedom—the very condition required to develop and disseminate frameworks that offer answers to those who have found none. It directly contributes to the creation of therapeutic models for people left unrecognized by existing regimes of knowledge and practice.

Soon, my Patreon page (patreon.com/CristinaGherghel) will also feature video explorations of lived experiences across the Aneurothymia Spectrum, Panthropic Abuse, Schrödinger Cognition, OMES, and beyond.

Further Resources

My published work—spanning memoir and analysis—engages themes such as narcissistic abuse, trauma, personality disorders, toxic relationships, communism, immigration, C-PTSD, and more. The full collection is available here: Cristina Gherghel on Amazon.