Tag Archives: stress

Cyberpsychology in the Time of Pandemic

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Yes, that is a cheap headline. Sue me.

As a cyberpsychology researcher and generally internet thinky-person, I spend a lot of time defending electronic forms of communication and community from the “get off my lawn” crowd who tend to view it as an abomination, or hotbed for addiction, or being solely comprised of the worst that it embodies. However, research (including mine) has shown, the internet is just us. Good, bad, ugly, beautiful, wise, and ignorant. Like any creation of humanity, it’s just us.

Similarly, coming from a very Dawkins-esk background, I heard a lot of “religion makes people stupid” and “religion is irrational” growing up. Nope. Religion is people. It is the best and worst of us and everything in between. Dogmatic beliefs are in no way relegated to just believers. Whether or not you experience the divine, the range of human experience can’t be bracketed out of the institutions we create. Religion doesn’t make people stupid. People make people stupid. The internet does not make people cruel. People make people cruel.

Does this mean that the internet is the same as non-digital socialization? Nope. So while the whole internet addiction mishigas has taken a backseat in a world where the internet is the only thing that connects us to people outside our homes, the news, medical information, and myriad other things, I’m now taking a hard look at what digital communication leaves out.

I’ve always believed that digital communication enhances human connection and that people are way too quick to judge the quality of digital communication. Sometimes they don’t even realize it’s taking place. A student told me about a time she and her shy, adolescent cousin were texting each other in the same room. Her mom chewed them out for being antisocial when it was actually one of the best conversations they’d had. A friend spotted me and my husband looking at our phones instead of each other in a restaurant. She gave us a hard time for not “connecting.” One of our favorite things to do is read quietly together, and we hadn’t been able to do it in months because we had a young child. So date night was when we would read together, at dinner, on our phones. These instances of misinterpretation are minor but telling about the value people place on digital activity. For people who are homebound due to illness or disability, digital connection may be the primary form of human connection they have.

In the time of Covid-19, those of us who have access to the internet are relying on our computers and phones to connect with friends and family with whom we can’t meet in person. I often find myself feeling unsettled or sad after Zoom sessions with friends, and drained after Zoom classes and student meetings. It’s funny because one of my main struggles during the not end-times is with social anxiety and hypervigilance. I tend to worry after being social if I have done something insensitive or humiliating or exposing. I’ve worked pretty successfully on methods to diffuse this anxiety, especially since my job entails potentially making an ass of myself about 9 times a week in front of an audience and I don’t have time to freak out about it. Social anxiety can be released as it is just unsettled energy in my body. Stop ruminating and relax the body and presto. Okay, it took a lot of therapy and practice, but still, presto. I can let that shit go most of the time.

But now I face a whole new set of struggles, and this time it’s not particular to my psyche. I still have some social anxiety from online interaction, but less than in FTF interaction. What I have more of is this sense of being drained of energy and feeling emotionally unfulfilled. The more intimate the relationships, the more intense the feelings. I talked to a friend who is a therapist and she posited that our brains are in search mode for the other social cues we get during face to face interaction. This is similar to an article I read on the exhaustion many of us feel around quarantine. In both situations it’s like that spinning search thing on your computer – it’s like a background process that’s always going and not finding what it needs but is draining computational power. In the case of connection, it’s our psyche’s need for physical proximity and the information that we don’t get online. Sympathetic nervous systems stuff, the full range of visual information, movement, microexpressions, pheromones, smell, and touch if the relationship involves that.

I miss proximity. I miss it a lot.

In many of my classes, I emphasize research that has shown that strong social connections and close relationships are significant predictors for longevity. They are much more highly correlated with longevity than diet or exercise (just a lot harder to commoditize). These connections are also interdependent – a thing US culture has a really fucking hard time with, as evidenced by our inability to recognize that our individual and collective survival during this pandemic are inexorably linked. So when I talk to my students about it, I urge them to remember to prioritize social connection as they move into a period of their lives that can be very isolating. Whether it’s graduate school or their first job-job, social connection is no longer built into the environment and is, in fact, fraught in ways that it is not during their undergraduate years. Friendships at work are tricky and need to form over time. Dating at work is risky at best. Graduate school is notoriously isolating and graduate students tend to have very poor mental health. I try to teach them that we have to really push against our perfectionistic,  bootstrappy, individualistic culture because it can be quite literally bad for our health.

Which leaves us where, exactly, right now? I really feel the loss of connection day-to-day. Seeing my students and talking to them after class while we walk to our next stops. Lunches with friends. Hanging out with other parents on the weekends and letting our kids play while we chat. Chatting with servers, and checkers, and other random people in my usually friendly city. Just sharing eye contact and a smile. I’m learning how to read smiles through masks, but I’m not out often enough for it to feed that part of me that is just starving right now.

I’m glad Zoom is a thing. I’m lucky to have internet-linked devices and good wifi at home. I love all the different ways I can contact my people, and sharing memes and stupid videos and random thoughts or pictures of my kid being extra. But I still feel this tug in my heart. I want to be with my people. Just near them. I am maintaining the rules of social distancing because I understand how this virus works and I do not want to get sick with it or god forbid, give it to other people. So this isn’t complaining. I’m just reflecting on the realization that I am suffering from withdrawal from a drug that we all need. And that I will not take for granted again.

There will be lots of studies on this. Actually, there are a crapton of studies already starting. They will measure the effectiveness of coping, and mental health among different quarantined demographics, and the effects of socioeconomic status on mental health, and cortisol levels before and after a video chat with a friend, and lots more necessary stuff. But I hope that we also, as researchers, really dig into the emotional and physical phenomena that we and others are experiencing during this time due to separation. What is happening to our bodies when it feels like our hearts are shriveling up? What does loneliness taste like during this weird-ass time? How do we and others describe it? What will we experience when we come out of our caves again? Will it look like PTSD or will it be something new?

Who will we be, and who will we be to each other, once this is over?

Hit the wall and keep trudging.

. Education, Figuring Shit Out, Little Thoughts . , , , . Leave a comment

Catchy, no?

I keep hitting walls, picking myself up, and trudging on. Last semester was fairly awful. This semester has been great in many ways, but exhausting and stressful nonetheless. I have to generate at a major paper draft in the next few weeks, hopefully sooner. I’ve pulled two new syllabi out of my ass this semester, but still have a whole new class to teach starting later this week (after I wrap up the last one, today).

In the meantime, I may be getting back to the food blogging, since my body has decided that it won’t digest lactose or gluten. Because that’s helpful. Keep in mind I am a snobby foodie daughter and sister of professional cooks and food writers.  I often sneer at restrictive fad diets while eating my locally sourced meat, cheese, bread, and vegetables. Except now two of those things are gone forever (or at least until after menopause–there’s hope). Re-learning how to eat has been stressful. Speaking of menopause, that’s fun too. And don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t have symptoms before 50, because I will personally fly to wherever you live and bitch-slap them for you.

I feel like I have academia-induced bipolar disorder. One hour or minute or half day I’m full of amazing ideas, I’m speed reading articles, mind-mapping, and writing super cool stuff. The next minute or hour or half-day I’m exhausted, filled with self-doubt, sure I’m going to be sniffed out as a total imposter, and curled up in the corner with my laptop and Pinterest trying to find all the best gluten and dairy free recipes that I will never have time to cook.

This is my life. My poor husband and daughter have to deal with my epic mood swings, periodic isolation, and caffeine induced tantrums. I can’t seem to totally unwind enough to sleep well, cry, or just fucking relax. I take everything personally. I know that most of my problems qualify as “too much of a good thing” rather than all of the really horrible things that could happen, but that knowledge doesn’t help me figure out how to cope right now. I know getting a PhD is a gauntlet that I am willingly running, but the difference between this and other gauntlets I’ve run is that there is no settling in. It’s always changing, evolving, and getting harder. There’s very little room to breathe. That’s what it feels like to me, anyway.

That’s my whinge for today. I’ll see you on the next upswing.

Déjà vu

. Figuring Shit Out . , , , , , . 4 Comments

In January of 1989, When I was  barely 17 years old, I moved into a flat in San Francisco and became a student at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. I had studied music since the age of 7 (I was a harpist for five years), taken piano, and then fallen in love with singing in my teens, starting voice lessons at 14. I was the star of my junior college choir (I had tested out of high school), and was a fairly well-trained young musician. I expected to take the school by storm. Instead, I got told to sit down, shut up, and sing the 24 Italian Arias (kind of the primer for singers) until my technique was good enough to handle anything else.

I had a sight-reading teacher who was older than the hills and gloried in humiliating her students until they cried. My voice teacher wanted me to talk in a squeaky voice to help my upper registers get stronger. I just wanted to perform. But Freshmen didn’t get solos in the big Sing-it-Yourself Messiah with orchestra at Davies Symphony Hall. They didn’t get roles in the yearly opera production. They couldn’t even take the opera scenes class, which was reserved for upper-classmen.  I was bored and frustrated (and a teenager on my own for the first time). Not a good combo.

So I took up a couple of new hobbies–Anorexia, and jazz. The first is fairly self-explanatory and stopped when I started getting dizzy spells and had to see a doctor. I think it was a way of feeling in control of something when my artistic life seemed very regimented and controlled (growing up in thin-obsessed California was no help) and the onset of adulthood was so scary. On the positive side, I decided to take jazz singing lessons with a teacher in town to have some artistic outlet while I was waiting to become good enough to sing La chi darem la mano with a zitty young baritone. Unfortunately, my conservatory voice teacher got wind of my extracurricular activities and told me to stop. She said it could taint my vocal training. I was crushed.

The Conservatory was hugely snobbish, particularly in the voice department. Anyone who sang musical theater  was looked down on. Anyone who sang early music did so because they didn’t have the voice for grand opera. The pecking order was clear and the grapevine was brutal. A huge controversy erupted when Luciano Pavarotti, Plácido Domingo and José Carreras formed the opera supergroup, The Three Tenors. Were they betraying the sanctity of their art? How dare they sing pop music in giant, sold-out stadiums while creating thousands of new opera fans?

So I was young, frustrated, and artistically unfulfilled. Due to some unforeseen circumstances, I switched teachers early in my first year. My second teacher was elderly and a bit more worldly. His career had  been mainly in American art song, which was mostly ignored in the US in favor of European music. His students were usually the stars of the school due to their impeccable technique. He worked with me on a lovely Bach Cantata and encouraged me to compete in a local youth competition. I did well. Through those first few years, he helped me find outside opportunities to perform in various environments, including churches, Gilbert and Sullivan troupes, competitions, and home recitals he held for all his students. His general approach was strict, but generally compassionate and a little nontraditional. He would suggest less-known arias for auditions, instead of the typical Quando m’en vo and other top 10 favorites that conductors heard 100 times a day. He prepared me to eventually get the roles I coveted when I’d paid my Conservatory dues.  He didn’t pretend to be a Life Guru as many of the other teachers did, he stuck to the music and spent a lot of time on expression and finding my unique talents, rather than trying to make me match the masses of other young sopranos looking to fill the same few spots. I was much more fulfilled as an artist, and learned to take a more pragmatic view of the ups and downs of my chosen field.

The other side of being pragmatic was learning to manage my image, and manage the reactions of others. In a word, manipulation.

The music world is brutal. Auditioning is not all that far from what you see on American Idol. You might not get crucified by judge the minute you finish singing, but you’ll get it on an adjudication sheet later, or through the grapevine, and that feedback will also reflect all the politics going on between the rival voice teachers and their studios. In the face of such competition, some try to tear down their competition (gossip, rumors), but that’s unethical, ugly, and will eventually bite them in the ass. Instant karma is a real thing in any small, incestuous, competitive community. If you’re a PhD student, is any of this starting to sound familiar? Because I’m finding it creepily familiar.

So I became a master ass-kisser. There’s an art to it. Don’t flirt with your teachers. Just don’t. I’m a teacher now and I’ve had students try it on me–it’s obvious and tacky, I promise. Light compliments are fine, just don’t trowel them on. Ask their advice on something you know they love to lecture about. Sing arias from their favorite roles if you’re auditioning for them. Offer to help with mundane stuff (costuming, programs). Be reliable, friendly, and avoid drama. I got a number of gigs because something fell through, and the teachers knew I was a reliable, quick study. I wasn’t as flashy as some of the other singers, but they knew I would commit and get the job done.

The problem in the end was that there were too many drama queens in the positions of power, and not enough people I could trust for honest feedback and support. There were also too many abusive fuckwads. There were a lot of those. I think the average emotional age in that business is about 14. Teachers can be horribly abusive (I had several after my college teacher, all of whom had boundary issues).  As students we’re taught that it’s okay for teachers (and conductors and directors) to be temperamental, yell, scream and make personal attacks (and sexually harass). It’s really not. So I quit, in stages, and eventually found out I liked using my brain for thinking and my voice for talking and I left it behind me. Though my heart still hurts at Christmastime because I  miss singing the soprano solos in Messiah. That was magic.

Welcome to my present. I’m in a PhD program, essentially a Sophomore, and am dealing with a lot of the same stuff. Or at least the stuff I’m dealing with reminds me a lot of the stuff I dealt with 20something years ago as a young, unseasoned musician. Except now I’m 42, I have two masters degrees, and a whole lot of life experience (and some published articles). Yet I feel as if I need to bow to the masters, and say “Thank you sir/ma’am may I have another” when I get unhelpful criticism. It’s this labyrinth full of challenges that are hard enough without feeling like I have to subjugate myself to the will of others. My conservatory-learned skills have come in handy; I know to show appreciation to people who help me, and try to steer clear of those who hinder, but I’m starting to have doubts about how to get through this mess. Every scholar has his or her own set of issues, blind spots, paradoxes, and axes to grind (including me). Yet I have to convince a whole slew of them that my particular set of foibles doesn’t preclude me from becoming a member of this elite set.

Recently, I’ve spent some time thinking about why I want this degree:

  1. I want to teach full-time. I love teaching; it’s my favorite, most meaningful, rewarding job ever.
  2. I want to write books and articles on stuff that I think is important.
  3. I love learning and thinking.

You’ll notice “being an academic” is not on the list. When I break it down, the only reason I need this degree is #1. Life as an undergraduate adjunct, while rewarding as a practice, sucks for job security, career growth, and pay. I would like some more of those, and the ability to support my family if my husband can’t. The rest of the reasons are things I could truly do myself, even though this little voice in my head whispers that I won’t be legitimate unless I have those three letters after my name. But the kind of legitimacy that happens within academia is far less important to me than the kind that comes with touching people’s lives, either through teaching, writing, or speaking.

Therein lies the rub. I have to get through this grueling process of gaining the legitimacy necessary to teach without buying into the dogma. It’s hard! In spite of my Gen-X non-joiner tendencies, I want to be liked, respected, and generally well thought of by all these smart, accomplished people with degrees from Harvard and the like. So my ego ends up right back in 1989, struggling to figure out how to learn my craft without losing my soul. I’m struggling to stay a grownup in an environment that makes me feel like a kid. The whole setup of my non-traditional school is to create peer relationships with students and faculty, but I can’t quite get there. It still feels paternalistic at times, which is unsurprising when you view the industry as a whole.

In 2001, I hit a crisis with music. I realized I couldn’t become an adult in that environment, and I desperately wanted to grow up. So I left, and built a new life where I mostly feel and act adult. Lots of therapy helps. Now I feel like I’m having a similar crisis, but I’ve been living as something like an adult for the last 13 years, and I don’t know how to handle it. I can’t go back to being a teenager. I can’t hope for a single mentor to guide me through the labyrinth.

I guess that’s why I’m blogging about it. I am hoping that my internal guide will help me find my way, and my inner voice will be louder or more persistent than the voices of those (internal and external) that tell me my past experiences have no value and I have to rely solely on others to decide who I am and what I’m good at.

When I blog about this stuff, I feel a bit like that 17 year old taking jazz lessons on the side. Am I breaking the rules? Am I corrupting my ability to write and think academically? Or am I making sure that my voice shines clearly through all the noise? Maybe instead of continuing to hope for a kindly guide, a wise-man like my college voice teacher, I can be my own guide, champion, and mentor. I hope so.

 

Dedicated, with love, to Donald Stenberg.