Thus far in my posts I've painted a pretty bleak picture of pain from all vantage points. Pain routinely turns a sufferer inward, to the body that's crying out for help. But because the inside world is invisible, it's difficult to communicate how one feels to other people. Nor is it much easier for observers of pain, doctors and caregivers. The pain is equally invisible and difficult to imagine for them in their pain-free state. The net result is the dividing wall captured so well in Auden's poem (discussed in the last blog), a wall that can create endless frustration for both parties. That said I'm unwilling to believe that dialogue and understanding is impossible. My hope rests on exciting new research in psychology and neuroscience that points to a basic, instinctual human need to engage and be engaged with other people. We are wired to connect, writes Daniel Goleman, in his recent book, Social Intelligence.
On the part of a sufferer, there is a primal need to express his or her pain. Due in large measure to its urgency, pain often has life and death implications—a sufferer feels compelled to move his pain from the inside world to the outside, to share it with other people who might be able to help. Regardless of how physically and psychologically compromised (and when we are ill and in pain, we are compromised on both levels) and regardless of the inherent difficulties in communicating pain, we can't help but feel this way. Lous Heshusius claims she has given up trying to explain her pain to others, just as Pulitzer Prize-winning writer William Styron is paralyzed by pain's indescribability, and Auden its seeming unimaginability for the pain-free. And yet all three write very articulately about pain, each contributing to the ongoing, collective human endeavor to make the darkness visible. The same can be said for the countless, less famous sufferers, who struggle daily to voice their pain in support groups and on blog sites.
At the same time, an observer of pain cannot easily see pain and remain untouched. Because of mirror neurons and perhaps other cells and circuits in our brains, we are wired to empathize with those who suffer. Experiments have shown that watching someone in pain will actually produce a "simulated" feeling of pain in the watcher along with an urge to do something about it. Yes, the mere witnessing of a pinprick or a cry or a grimace can set off neurons in the brain of the observer that cause him to feel another's pain. Just ask any parent how much it hurts—literally—when their child falls and breaks a leg. And these feelings also extend to people unrelated to us. Who doesn't cringe and want to help out when shown pictures of people starving in Africa?
And yet if we are so wired, how is it possible that so much suffering goes ignored, exacerbated, or even worse, provoked. Think of the undertreatment of pain in medicine or the torture of prisoners at Abu Graib. Clearly in these cases, our primal, automatic responses (what Goleman calls "low road" brain responses) get inhibited or highjacked by more abstract and rationalizing ones (the "high road" responses). The more evolutionarily advanced parts of the brain begin to shift focus away from the pain at hand and onto other matters—the possibility of ulterior motivation or addiction (in the case of medicine) or the heinous acts of terrorism and the possibility of extracting potentially life-saving information (in the case of the military). And as the focus of thought veers off in these other directions, the observer no longer sees and feels the pain before him.
Is there a spectrum of empathy wiring in human beings, from people with high degrees (Mother Theresa) to those where it may be missing altogether (Hitler)? Is part of the tendency to look away from pain self-protective—if seeing pain puts us into a painful state, then looking away (or pretending it doesn't exist) might be a way of relieving it? The discovery of mirror neurons generates as many questions as it provides answers. But the fact is those neurons are likely present in all of us. So if we acknowledge that, along with the fact that our restless minds tend to race ahead, perhaps we can make a conscious effort to pull back the reins, force ourselves to return to the suffering at hand, and thereby re-inforce our instinctual, empathetic responses. In addition, the high road doesn't always have to take us in negative directions. As we will see in upcoming posts, its creative powers can also be harnessed to foster connection, through the use of the imagination and metaphor.
I believe the high and low roads can work together to dissolve the wall of pain, allowing for more dialogue and understanding to take place.
References
Daniel Goleman, Social Intelligence: The Revolutionary New Science of Human Relationships (Bantam, 2006).
Lous Heshusius, Inside Chronic Pain: An intimate and Critical Account (Cornell University Press, 2009)
Marco Iacoboni, Mirroring People: The New Science of How We Connect with Others (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008)
William Styron, Darkness Visible (Vintage, 1992)
