Psych-Out

…and my love stays bitterly glowing,
spasms of it will not sleep,
and I am helpless and thirsty and need shade
but there is no one to cover me –
not even God.
(from Divorce, Anne Sexton)

Cognitive scientist Steven Pinker writes that heartbreak is “an internal doomsday machine, pointless once it goes off, useful only as a deterrent.”(1) If you doubt that heartbreak breaks down the body, than you’ve never suffered its sting.

A mate’s comings and goings, his glances, her voice, what she does, what he doesn’t, directly influence our bodies. A mate’s life habits create a physiological familiarity that literally grafts itself into our regulatory thermostat. If disrupted, our bodies, as well as our emotions, are literally thrown “out of whack.”

Thomas Lewis calls it “limbic regulation.”(2) Our limbic system regulates our emotional response to the social world and affects every other system in our body – hormonal, behavioral, cognitive, and perceptual. When that soul mate shows up, he or she alters not only how we think and feel about ourselves and the world, but our hormone regulation, our heart function, sleep rhythms, and even our immune system.

Our body is an open loop. It’s dependent upon, as well as reactive to, what happens outside our skin. Consider a baby. That crying, pooping, gurgling ball of joy is maximally open-looped. Without moms and dads cooing, caressing, and burping, his vital rhythms collapse. He will grow deficient, if not die. We need people around not just for comfort. Our bodies need the regulation that other warm bodies bring. Research has established that life expectancy can be directly related to whether or not we have people in our lives, and to what extent.(3)

When the bad news comes — he’s leaving, she needs space – our first response is protest.(4) We urge, coax, bargain, and plead. Our heart rate and body temperature go up. Stress hormones are released. Our body compels us into desperate “search, seek, and hold on” mode. (Who in the initial throes of heartbreak hasn’t felt like Jennifer Holliday below!)

Jennifer Holliday - And I am Telling You

The purpose of all this frenetic activity is to bring back that person and thus, regain our physiological, as well as emotional, well-being. “Protest is the alarm that follows a breach in these life-sustaining adjustments. Protest is the behavioral response to the physiological changes.”(4) Those who protest are those most likely to recover their love and thus their bodily equilibrium. We’ll find him or her, we’ll urge him back, all is not lost!

And if the protest fails? That doomsday machine goes off. The disruption becomes widespread. There’s nothing we can do, nor want to do, but curl up, bury ourselves beneath our sheets, refuse human contact. We speak less. We eat less. Our heart rate, appetite, and body temperature decrease. Oxygen consumption, REM sleep, and cellular immunity break down. Indeed, our hearts and bodies break.

If you’ve been there you know that there is no magic pill, nor words of wisdom that comfort. There is no cover.

Isn’t there anything we can do? See my upcoming blog ”Sophie Calle’s Bed.” Take another little piece of my heart now, baby.

Janis Joplin, Take a Piece of my Heart
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1) Pinker, Steven. How the Mind Works. New York: W.W. Norton & C., Inc, 1997. p. 421
2) Lewis, Thomas, M.D., Amini, Fari, M.D.; Lannon, Richard, M.D. A General Theory of Love. New York: Vintage, 2001.
3) See Sapolsky, Robert M. Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers. New York: Owl Books, 2004. “The impact of social relationships on life expectancy appears to be at least as large as that of variable such as cigarette smoking, hypertension, obesity, and level of physical activity. For the same illness, people with the fewest social connections have approximately two-and-a-half times as much chance of dying as those with the most connections…” p.164
4) Lewis, Thomas,

from Dance Russe
by William Carlos Williams

…if I in my north room
dance naked, grotesquely
before my mirror
waving my shirt round my head
and singing softly to myself:
“I am lonely, lonely,
I was born to be lonely,
I am best so!”
If I admire my arms, my face,
my shoulders, flanks, buttocks
against the yellow drawn shades,–

Who shall say I am not
the happy genius of my household?

Our bodies delight in movement. Our movement is expressive. How we move communicates intention, state of mind, and our perceived station in the pecking order of our lives. We can be graceful, poised, fluid, slouching, crouching, steady. We convey submission, respect, fear, dominance. Watch a lion stalk an open savanna. He owns his space. Imagine yourself striding as fearlessly as that lion. You, too, will be struck by the sensation of owning the space around you.

Our brain and body are in constant communication. Every muscle, joint, and organ send signals to the brain via the peripheral nerves or through the bloodstream. Nearly all of the neural activity is funneled through the cerebellum (from the Latin for “little brain”). Of the 100 billion neurons in the human brain, half are packed into that “little brain” inside the brain. Our cerebellum helps set timing, equilibrium, posture, and coordinates all our skilled motor movements from threading a needle, to firing a jump shot, or dancing a tango.

Not only does the cerebellum coordinate movement, but also thought itself. It’s not just that movement helps us think. Movement and thought are intricately entwined. Neuroscientists have found movement to be crucial to memory, emotion, language, attention, and learning. The same motor cortex circuits that light up when we are in motion light up when we set to solving a problem.(1) How many times has a solution to some problem come to you while taking a walk or brushing your teeth? Our body and brain work together in an ensemble of continuous interaction. In fact, only organisms that move from place to place require brains. Movement and the brain are fundamental to each other’s existence.(2)

Pay attention to how you move. If you walk afraid, you will feel and think afraid. If you rush, you increase your heart rate, pump blood to your extremities, and literally trigger danger signals to your brain even when there is no danger present.(3) On the other hand, if you calmly stroll your neighborhood, or cheerfully throw a Frisbee you will give that “all clear” signal and thus open up the possibility that those wonderful endorphins will release and light up your brain’s pleasure centers. Even in simply watching others joyfully dance, your own brain-body ensemble will light up and respond as if you, too, were dancing right along with them. (4)

If at any moment you want to change your state of mind, get up and like that lion, or that dancer, move.

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1) The steps we employ in decision making – sequencing, adding, testing consequences, directing – are all grounded in our motor functions.
2) (Ratey, John J. A User’s Guide to the Brain: Perception, Attention, and the Four Theaters of the Brain. New York: First Vintage Books, 2002. “A tiny marine creature known as the sea squirt swims about like a tadpole in the early part of its live. It has a brain and a nerve cord to control its movements. When it matures, it attaches itself permanently to a rock. From that moment on the brain and the nerve cord are gradually absorbed and digested.” In essence, its body consumes its own brain for it’s no longer needed. (Ratey, p. 156)
3) Inhibiting the “rush response” is one of the first practical steps you can take if you suffer from anxiety. Rushing engages the sympathetic nervous system, which is our fight/flight emotional setting.
4) See Mirror Neurons if you want to follow up more on this.

How do most people die when lost in the wilds? They die of shame. (1) These are the thoughts spoken by Charles Morse (Anthony Hopkins) in the movie The Edge. He and Robert Green (Alec Baldwin) are lost in the Alaskan wilderness – on their tracks, a man-eating bear. (For scene from the movie, see video below.)

Charles: Yeah, see, they die of shame. “What did I do wrong? How could I have gotten myself into this?” And so they sit there and they…die…because they didn’t do the one thing that would save their lives.

Robert: And what is that, Charles?

Charles: Thinking.

Silvan Tomkins writes, “… shame strikes deepest into the heart of man…. shame is felt as inner torment, a sickness of the soul…the humiliated one feels himself naked, defeated, alienated, lacking in dignity and worth.”(2) Shame interferes with our capacity to think. Shame keeps us from acting decisively on our own behalf.

Shame is embedded in what can seem an uncontrollable physiological response, possibly akin to gestures of submission we see throughout the animal world. Lowered gaze. Cowering. Playing dead. Hiding. Making one’s body smaller and less threatening. (3) For human’s, shaming is arguably one of the oldest forms of social control.

Humans evolved in a mosaic of hostile environments. Group living was crucial to our survival. Greater numbers brought safety, but also a need for greater cooperation and social organization. We hunted in groups. We collected food in groups. Social cohesion radically changed humans from scavengers and opportunistic hunters into super-predators that could hunt almost any animal on earth.

Shaming was one way of ensuring cooperation. It could protect scarce resources from cheaters and non-cooperators by making them pay dearly through evoking feeling alone. (4) To be shamed, one has to be able to feel shame. This feeling is rooted deeply in our neurophysiology as well as in our own evolutionary history.

When shamed we are struck by an urge to withdraw toward life’s margins. We go into hiding. Today, we’re less likely to be shunned to the outskirts of a village or tribe. Instead, we hide into ourselves. We don’t speak. We don’t show up. We hide our faces inside masks and disguises.

Often, we are ashamed of shame itself. We deny carrying such a feeling. Shame? Me? Still, denial or not, it chases us into dozens of daily little deaths. We fail to go to the doctor – our symptoms shame us. We fail to go to the gym – our bodies shame us. We fail to raise our hand and ask that question – our lack of knowing that one thing shames us. We avoid that crucial discussion with partner or spouse. We fail to take that next step. We give in; stop trying. Shame stops thought. It diverts action. It absorbs us into an unsettling vortex. When shamed we don’t ask, “what do I need to do now?” or “what does this situation require of me?”, but instead, “where do I hide?”

Shame is an emotion always in hiding from itself.

We all get lost in the wilds of our own lives — however small or large those wilds be. Refuse to slink off because of some little whisper of shame. Face the bear that stalks you. Step up. Step out. Think. Then, go get it.

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1) Survival expert John Wiseman wrote, “When facing a disaster it is easy to let yourself go, to collapse and be consumed in self-pity,” he writes. “But it is no use giving up or burying your head in the sand and hoping that this is a bad dream that will soon pass.”
2) Nathanson, D. ed. The Many Faces of Shame. New York: The Guildford Press, 1987.
3) When a male lion is defeated by an intruding male lion, he is forced out of the territory. In essence, he must “leave his pride.”
4) Pinker, Steven. How the Mind Works. New York: W.W. Norton & C., Inc, 1997. (p. 404)

Your voice is your music. It has tone. Rhythm. Tempo. Pitch. It swings high. It swells deep. You soften it. Shrill it. Lilt it. Bark it. It’s hoarse. Breathy. It’s a lullaby. A Chopin Nocturne. Gangsta rap. It croons. Screeches. Chirps. Grunts. Eavesdrop on lovers newly in love. It’s not what they say, but how their tones caress the ears. Lovers coo like morning doves. If their love dries, their tones no longer soothe but strike in abrupt screeches and barks.

Nalini Ambady (1) found that we can accurately guess if a surgeon has been sued having no other information than hearing the tone in his voice. Marital researcher John Gottman can predict the prospects of a couple’s marriage after hearing but a few seconds of their conversation. If contempt rings in their tones, lawyers may be soon hawking their skies. (2)

Recent research has suggested our sensory-emotional system responds 70% to voice tone, 20% to body language, and 10% to the actual words spoken. (3) You want to be a dazzling flirt? Vary the pitch, rhythm and tone in your voice. You’ll create quivers of pleasure in the listener’s ear.

Speech is patterned sound. Patterned sound is music. Both music and human speech strike deep limbic (emotional-response) structures in our brain. Far more than the actual words spoken, the musical intonations in our voices help us and others identify crucial information about the emotional temperature of you and me. Angry. Distressed. Lusty. Threatening. Yearning.

All mammalian sounds are blends of growls, barks, and whines. These sounds hold crucial emotional signals for survival, mating (4) and just getting along. Think of how you and your pooch get your messages across. Babies sing their contentment or distress long before they can utter a first word. Human speech broke free through our evolved capacity to intricately shape these basic sounds.

Both speech and music show hemispheric dominance. In non-musicians(5), the right brain is dominant for the appreciation of melody and harmony. This hemisphere also plays a role in the musical as well as emotional properties of speech, itself. Damage to the right temporal-lobe language areas can cause a condition called aprosodia. (6) These patients speak in flat, monotone voices and miss the “feeling” content in conversation. Try to imagine speech without its musical intonations.

Musical tones can activate the brain’s pleasure/reward centers by increasing the release of dopamine. The same can be said of a lover’s cooing. Dr. Pietro A Modesti found that people with high blood pressure who listened to classical, Celtic or Indian (raga) music for one month for 30 minutes a day had significant reductions in their systolic blood pressure.(7) When trying to soothe the distress of someone you love, instinctively your voice will soften and thrum.

Yet, as sweet, cooing sounds stimulate our pleasure/reward centers, harsh discordant sounds awaken signals of distress. Once awakened, fight or flight takes hold. Think of your last argument. At some point, the actual words spoken lost all meaning. Your duet disintegrated into a discordant battle of tone against tone. Next time you want to get a point across, think of your voice as your music. Does it strike like a screech or battle cry? Or, does it sing in soothing, inviting tones?

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1) Ambady, Nalini et al. “Surgeons’ Tone of Voice: a Clue to Malpractice History,” Surgery 132, no. 1 (2002): 5-9.
2) Gladwell, Malcom. Blink. New York: Little Brown and Company, 2005.
3) I have yet to find the actual research that suggests this finding. I have years of anecdotal evidence from my clinical practice that confirms its basic truth.
4) Darwin, in The Descent of Man wrote, “I conclude that musical notes and rhythm were first acquired by the male or female progenitors of mankind for the sake of charming the opposite sex. Thus musical tones became firmly associated with some of the strongest passions an animal is capable or feeling, and are consequently used instinctively…”
5) Dr. Jeanette Norden, professor of Neuroscience at Vanderbilt, suggests that in musicians, the loss of musical ability may occur from damage to “language” areas in the brain (Wernicke’s area 22)
6) From Greek a- without + prosoidia a song set to music, from pros toward + oide song + ia indicating a condition or quality. This condition is sometimes linked to amusia, where such individuals show a loss of the ability to recognize musical tones or rhythms.
7) “Music can reduce blood pressure depending on tempo.” Medscape Today and WebMD.