Hopefully Helpless

Pain has a funny way of making us feel desperately helpless.

Discomfort and pain are a part of the human experience. Most of the time, pain is a protective mechanism. Any part of your body that becomes damaged or is ill sends an immediate signal to your brain, making sense of what is happening and creating a plan of response. This sensation of pain or PPI (Perceived Pain Intensity) is then assessed and connected with other parts of your brain associated with emotions, anxiety, sleep, etc. It’s very personal from there, you’d be surprised how every mind perceives pain. You’ve heard people mention having a “high or low pain tolerance,” but no matter your threshold, all will experience pain, emotional or physical, in their lives. Every pain has its own (painful) story to tell. 

A couple of weeks ago in the wee hours of the morning, I awoke to pain and nausea that was utterly overwhelming. Lying in my bed, I felt helpless and almost outside of my own body. I struggled to make sense of what was going on besides the thought that something was wrong. After 12 hours of nausea and vomiting, I found myself at the urgent care and then the ER waiting for tests and scans. If you know anything about my story, you may know that pain like this is not altogether new for me. I have a reproductive illness called Endometriosis. Endometriosis is a disorder in which tissue similar to the tissue lining the inside of the uterus (the endometrium) grows outside of the uterus. 

Sitting there waiting on the doctors, I couldn't help wondering what this meant for the next few weeks and months. Was I back where I started? Was I going back on the Ferris wheel of pain and fatigue that seemed never-ending and way less fun than a real amusement ride?

One of my hardest moments of all was waiting to be escorted by an orderly back to the waiting room. It was 10 pm, I had already been at the hospital for around 5 hours and had just completed 2 hours of painful imaging. I sat in a wheelchair, alone in a sterile hospital hallway. I had no phone or source of connection and no one was nearby. I let the hot tears silently roll down my swollen cheeks and began to pray. I prayed for someone to listen.

I felt in that moment, an overwhelming peace. A prayer that was answered almost 24 hours before on the tile floor of my bathroom. I prayed someone would take notice of my pain. 

Sin has hardwired our DNA for self-reliance. I don’t like feeling helpless. I definitely don’t like being dependent on someone else for even something like being pushed around in a wheelchair. But recognizing my helplessness is the first step to finding hopefulness.

There are two accounts of suffering in the Psalms that I’d like to point out.

 I call upon you, for you will answer me, O God;

    incline your ear to me; hear my words.

Wondrously show your steadfast love,

    O Savior of those who seek refuge

    from their adversaries at your right hand.

Keep me as the apple of your eye;

    hide me in the shadow of your wings. Psalm 17:6-8

I adore those two bold words in the passage. First, incline gives me an image of someone leaning toward you. Drawing close to hear an almost inaudible plea. He will hide me in the shadow of His wings. Near to His side, protected, and covered. 

There is a desperation, in another Psalm of David. He says, “I am greatly afflicted,” and “For you have delivered my soul from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling.” But if we were to follow the progression of the lament we would see David’s desperate plea for God’s grace! Acknowledgment of a soul utterly dependent and powerless to produce the peace and salvation He longs for. When we praise the Lord, it is an automatic acknowledgment of our own weakness. 

Gracious is the Lord, and righteous;

    our God is merciful.

The Lord preserves the simple;

    when I was brought low, he saved me.

Return, O my soul, to your rest;

    for the Lord has dealt bountifully with you. Psalm 116:6-7

Our own weakness and need makes God’s grace such good news to us at any time. Being weak is our greatest strength as humans. 

My greatest battle in the last few weeks has been not exalting my own worries and fears about my health and my body. But to offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving for His faithfulness to me. His deliverance is my steadfast hope through any trial. He takes notice of my pain.

Cited

https://www.mhanational.org/chronic-pain-and-mental-health

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3141369/

A Little Less Conversation: Music and Empathy

I’ve been working with children, specifically in the arts for several years now, and have been particularly interested in how they respond to music. Music has a special way of sparking our interest and grasping out attention when other stimuli can’t. I’m always interested in seeing, what songs my kids like or dislike, and what makes them want to dance or sing along. This has led to a deep dive I did into the psychology of music over the past 4-5 years. I plan to write a few posts on this subject this year, maybe spread out. Please enjoy this first post where I define empathy and its perceived link to music.

Prince Eric sweeps Ariel off her feet in the musical The Little Mermaid, with this line, “Dancing is a language that is felt instead of heard.” I would like to add he is singing this to a nonverbal young woman he just met, but it does make me wonder: can music be heard and felt? How does music affect our emotional sensibilities and help us tap into a deeper communication than only words or nonverbal social ques? Music as a whole is an expression through the medium of sound, but what moves us about music? Do we cry or laugh because a song reaches a part of us that is familiar or because we empathize with the artist? Music is about communication and understanding emotions that are being conveyed through music. I’ve been gathering information and my personal observations and I’d like to share with you some of what I’ve learned on the link between music and empathy.

I watched the TV show Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist on NBC during quarantine. It is the story of an introverted coder who finds herself transformed during an MRI in an earthquake. The impact of the earthquake results in songs from all the playlists on the technician’s computer entering her subconscious, as a result she hears people’s thoughts through song. The “superpower” allows her to hear coworkers, family members, and stranger’s deepest desires or concerns as ballads or elaborate dance numbers! She is able to communicate with her father who was diagnosed with a rare neurological disease, supranuclear palsy (PSP), less than a year before. Though he doesn’t speak, he can sing to her and she sees how he still feels about his family. Her friend and music enthusiast Moe, tells Zoey, “songs are all just an expression of our deepest wants and desires... Joy, pain, heartbreak, yearning, forgiveness, revenge. Good music can make you feel things you can’t express in words.” Music has this “superpower,” but how do we harness it without magical MRI’s?

Empathy on its own can be difficult to define. It is often mistaken for sympathy, which is the understanding or expressed sorrow for another person’s feelings. Empathy is to take on the feelings of another from their perspective, not just your own. Marieke C. Sittler, in his journal article, “Is Empathy Involved in our Emotional Response to Music?” describes two forms of empathy. There’s affective empathy, the ability to experience the emotional state of others and cognitive empathy, the ability to put yourself in one’s shoes. Stittler’s study explores how music evokes emotions and human empathy. What interested me about this study was a distinct assessment of genetic trait empathy in the individuals. The study took a total of 160 participants swabbed for genetic analysis and listened to 10 happy and sad musical excerpts. They assessed their empathy through an IRI questionnaire which assessed the affective and cognitive facets of empathy with 4 subscales, each rated between 1-5.

The result of this study showed that those with higher scores on the subscales, meaning higher empathy evaluated sad songs and their emotions better than those with lower scores (Sittler). Affective empathy or felt emotions were helpful in observing personal distress (PD) and empathetic concern (EC). Those with higher PD scores revealed a correlation between their empathetic reaction to distress of others, and so they in a way, suffer with those who are suffering. People with lower PD have more boundaries between the distress of others personally affecting them. EC is the reaction correlated to trying to fulfill other’s needs or to help them in their distress. Those with high scores in EC and FS (ability to empathize with fictional characters) were more accurate in evaluation of sad and happy songs (Sittler). This explains the cognitive processing of music evoking sadness using perceived emotions. Other than the correlation of PD in evoking distress in higher empathetic individuals, music may not be as relevant to affective processing. I think this may be because some enjoy listening to “sad” music. It sometimes calms instead of distressing them emotionally, and so confirming empathy is involved in the process of perceiving emotions from music.

A study showed that individuals with higher empathy were found to be more aware of, and affected by the emotions induced via music. Intense sadness, for example, was identified and felt more keenly, compared to less empathetic people. There was shown to be increased activity in individuals with higher empathy when listening to familiar music, whether they liked the music or not. This related to how the students discussed music as well. Individuals with higher empathy were generally more passionate about their music of interest. This makes sense, because artists are generally people who feel strongly about their passions and are enthusiastic talking about them. For example, my papa gets excited when talking about his days as the lead singer in a cover band in the 60’s!

Another thing I found interesting, was the results of the FMRI showed that musical perception uses the same areas of the brain that help us process or make sense of our social world. “The temporoparietal junction, which is critical to analyzing and understanding others’ behaviors and intentions,” according to the study is activated when listening to music (SMU). This area is activated when processing or thinking about other people or having social interaction. So music helps us make sense of our social world, and is related to how we communicate like reading nonverbal or social ques. This was found regardless of a participants EQ (emotional intelligence or empathy) score (SMU).

As I said previously, music is expression through organized sound, but we are sensitive to that expression when it expresses some part of the human condition like deep pain or intense sadness (Goleman). Even people without a high EQ can easily identify intense joy or feelings of infatuation from listening to music. There is also notable involvement of the reward system area of the brain indicating pleasure felt when listening to music, especially those with a higher EQ (SMU).

One more study to mention tested whether musical group interaction has a positive influence on children’s empathy. Their hypothesis was that long term music group interaction (MGI) would increase empathy in children even outside of the musical context. The study tested primary school aged children with musical games implementing empathy-promoting musical components (EMPC’s) for an entire school year (Rabinowitch). The games included different aspects of play like imitation, synchronization, and musical communication between the children. The studies showed that over time began to “pick up” on the intention of other subjects through cognitive dynamics, a process similar to empathy. The study focused on 8-11 year-old children because they have already developed what’s called theory of mind or the ability to perceive other people’s thoughts and feelings.

The concept of Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist, while fascinating, is obviously not how humans communicate emotionally. Having a sense of empathy is important to develop because it motivates our concern for the emotional and physical state of others. The emotional process involved in simply listening to music is related to how humans process social interactions. I believe that the more we, in a way, “tap in” to these emotional processing through empathy we can become more empathy-guided beings. This can be accomplished either with our own emotions and music, or even by cognitively processing the emotions of other artists as we perform or watch them perform.

My favorite moment of Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist, is when she is able to communicate with her ill father by hearing him express his heart by singing “True Colors.” The emotion she processes from hearing his song helps put herself in his shoes and help him. The emotional properties involved in musical interaction or listening to music can increase our empathy. Returning to my quote from the TV show, music is a way humans express or communicate our emotions or thoughts. Often the thoughts we express in music are beyond surface level emotions and open a window to the soul. When I hear an artist sing a song that has a personal resonance for them, it touches me more than if they just casually were familiar with the piece. We can use music as a catalyst to share and understand each other’s emotions and put ourselves in their shoes.

Works Cited

Miu, A. C., & Vuoskoski, J. K. (2017). The social side of music listening: Empathy and contagion in music-induced emotions. In E. King & C. Waddington (Eds.), Music and empathy. (pp. 124–138). Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group.

Southern Methodist University (2018, June 12). Higher Empathy People Process Music Differently in the Brain. NeuroscienceNews. Retrieved June 12, 2018 from http://neurosciencenews.com/empathy-music-processing-9313/

Rabinowitch, Tal-Chen & Cross, Ian & Burnard, Pamela. (2012). Long-term musical group interaction has a positive influence on empathy in children. Psychology of Music. 41. 484-498. 10.1177/0305735612440609.

Balteș, F. R., & Miu, A. C. (2014). Emotions during live music performance: Links with individual differences in empathy, visual imagery, and mood. Psychomusicology: Music, Mind, and Brain, 24(1), 58–65. https://doi-org.ezproxy.obu.edu:2443/10.1037/pmu0000030

Goleman D (1998). Emotional Intelligence. Why "EQ" is more important than "IQ". Hellinika Grammata, Athens (In Modern Greek)

Sittler, M. C., Cooper, A. J., & Montag, C. (2019). Is empathy involved in our emotional response to music? The role of the PRL gene, empathy, and arousal in response to happy and sad music. Psychomusicology: Music, Mind, and Brain, 29(1), 10–21. https://doi- org.ezproxy.obu.edu:2443/10.1037/pmu0000230.supp