COUNTRYMAN – Stories about life, in and out of Guyana, from a Guyanese perspective

Jul 12, 2015 Countryman, Features / Columnists

LINT, and our continuous psychic pain

By Dennis Nichols
Last week I hinted that this Sunday I may write about the church’s response to the recent US Supreme Court ruling on same-sex marriage. But because of what I call LINT (local/international news trauma) I’m taking a detour to briefly traverse the road of pain – the lonely subjective kind, born of psychological trauma and empathy, including our reaction to unpleasant situations and events beyond our personal space, and our control.
It’s a human and global experience, and in little Guyana we are getting our share of it. The mental anguish we experience over personal problems is heightened, and interwoven with whatever distress we feel or imagine another person, family or community is going through. And in Guyana, where people so readily relate to one another, this psychic ‘pain’ may be expressed personally or communally, and often subliminally, so we may not be fully aware of why we feel the way we do.
This phenomenon, also referred to as emotional pain, is probably the most pervasive kind felt by human beings. The discomfort is described as functional, meaning there isn’t an organic cause. Under this broad heading also falls empathic pain, a sensation felt by someone who so understands another person’s trauma that he/she literally feels a degree of corresponding physical or emotional anguish and/or compassion, which if handled correctly, can have great therapeutic benefits.
The science behind it is not an exact one, and some medical/scientific experts still consider pain a strictly physical event, but to many who experience it, the feelings are subjectively real. And the person whose pain you empathize with doesn’t have to be physically present before you. I know, because I experience empathetic vibes almost daily when I pick up the Kaieteur News (or any other newspaper) watch the news on television, or surf the internet. It stares me in the face and kicks me in the gut, yet I find myself unable to stop myself from reading and listening to ‘bad’ news.
Furthermore, as I speak with family members and friends, and listen to street talk, I conclude that almost everyone experiences this kind of pain sensation in varying degrees. It confuses some of us, because it is often difficult to determine how and when our own feelings overlap and intermingle with those of others. Out of this confusion may emerge other feelings, for example, of our own helplessness, as well as non-reaction or over-reaction to someone else’s felt injury. And it’s difficult to be objective about it.
Consider how many of us feel about recent developments locally. From the PPP’s resurfaced ‘Cheated Not Defeated’ cry to the revelations of massive corruption in the previous administration; from the worrying escalation in criminal activity to Venezuela’s ominous border rumblings; from the friendly US nudge on the legalizing of same-sex marriage to last week’s 2 a.m. nightspot curfew, these happenings are stirring emotions and generating feelings of real or perceived apprehension. And nowhere is this felt more viscerally than in the present crime spike.
Many Guyanese are experiencing some degree of fear and apprehension, including some of us who less than two months ago experienced a sense of release; even euphoria, following the change of government and the concomitant promise of positive transformation. The fact that the new government is just eight weeks old and still ‘finding its feet’, is little consolation to the victims of crime and to those who empathize with their loss. Then of course there are the accidents and misadventures.
To the numerous acts of lawlessness, murder, rape, robbery, shootings, child abuse, trafficking, domestic violence, and white-collar misconduct, add the spate of fatal road accidents, river mishaps and mining pit disasters and you have, as I alluded to earlier, individual and national angst. Add further some elements of global chaos, and you can understand why people, especially the more religious or spiritually-inclined, are wondering just how close we may be to an apocalyptic doomsday, Guyana’s and Planet Earth’s.
Farfetched? Surf the internet and discover how much ‘chatter’ there is concerning current atrocities and the fear of some global cataclysm occurring before the end of September this year. I tend to dismiss these notions, but what do I know? I do know that when I see far less sensational local captions like ‘Judge and husband battered and robbed’ or ‘Mentally unsound youth killed by police’ or ‘Pandit caught raping sick girl’ and a hundred similar stories since the beginning of this year, they add to my cumulative psychic pain.
Don’t even ask about the savagery and lunacy of international and domestic terrorism and crime. To keep my sanity I actually force myself to wonder if the reported atrocities of groups like ISIS and Boko Haram are not mostly conspiracy propaganda; whether the KKK, Christian Identity, and other so-called hate groups aren’t more nationalistic than hateful, and if the nauseating reports of child homicide and infanticide actually happened. But of course I know they did. Then when I read about the case of the French woman who murdered eight of her babies and lied that she did so because they were born from an incestuous affair between her and her father, well …
Across the globe, and obviously in Guyana, we live our lives daily caught up in our own individual adversities and aspirations. Yet we either unconsciously or knowingly empathize with others, more so with each other’s painful experiences than with the joyful ones, which I guess is one of the reasons that bad news seems so much more contagious than good news, or perceived to be that way. (Of course this isn’t to say we don’t share each other’s’ joy; it’s just that we tend to feel each other’s pain more acutely)
Not surprisingly, empathetic people often mask their inner struggle. There’s the functional mask of efficiency worn in the workplace, the anger mask to keep people at a distance, the happy mask which fools everyone but you (Robin Williams, Habeeb Khan?) and the people-pleaser mask which makes us do what we think will make others happy, usually at the expense of our self-worth.
I am always struck by people who are obviously hurting but quickly invoke the ‘I’m too blessed to be stressed’ mantra often perfunctorily. Faith in God’s blessings is great, but a mask doesn’t banish emotional pain. Remove it. Maya Angelou says, “…we all have empathy; we may not have enough courage to display it.’
That’s what Dan Vento, who watched his nine year-old daughter degenerate and die from bone cancer, felt, and did. Speaking after the funeral, he said that both he and his wife felt as if the cancer was ripping through their bones too. He admitted, “I felt weak and lightheaded all the time like I might pass out, and needed to grab onto something – a chair, the wall, anything – to keep from falling.” Some psychologists are now declaring that such sensations are as much in the body as in the mind.
But empathizing with someone’s pain, whether physical or not, doesn’t have to be some profound gesture or traumatic episode. It could be like the simple but very real tug I felt in my chest after reading Sharon Westmaas’ letter to the editor (Friday’s KN) with regard to getting a simple statement from the National Insurance Scheme (NIS) confirming receipt of a pension by her late mother, Eileen Cox. I used to work at the NIS and I have a pretty good idea what she is writing about. So I ‘feel’ her distress.
Psychic pain is real, and serves many purposes. One is that it helps us to remember that the often repeated adage ‘no man is an island’ is more than a cliché. It is a reminder of our shared humanity with all its glory and gore. Here in Guyana, if we admit empathy’s therapeutic value, it may very well help us bond as a people who ‘look out’ for one another, and our country. And if Venezuela decides to do more than just talk, well, that’s another story. More LINT!