The Story I Couldn't Stop
In which Tinnitus, two Nobel Prize winning scientists and Lady Gaga explain my breakdown
Have you ever had tinnitus? The buzzing in your ear? You don’t hear it, you don’t hear it, you don’t hear it. Then one day you do hear it, a little hum that rises from the darkness when you’re trying to fall asleep.
(Maybe you have colon cancer.)
When tinnitus gets really bad, your head can become filled with sound — ringing, whistling, clicking and roaring — that no one but you can hear. It will whoosh when you’re hanging out with your friends.
(Something is terribly wrong with you, everyone wishes you weren’t here.)
If it gets bad enough, it will drown out all other sounds, until soon, all you can hear is this constant roar, so noisy it’s hard to work, all your energy is going to the task of keeping this noise from dragging you into despair.
(Everything is falling apart.)
When you have tinnitus, you know the sound isn’t real, in the sense that you know it is coming from inside your brain, and that no one else can hear it. But that doesn’t make it stop.
If you have tinnitus, you might try to turn up the volume on real sounds, to drown out the one roaring in your ear. That’s what I did. I told myself endless good stories, to try to drown out the rotten ones. But it doesn’t work on tinnitus, and it didn’t work on me. It was just a symphony of despair shouting in my ear, all the time.
But tinnitus is an imperfect metaphor here. White noise is white noise. It’s buzzing and roaring and whooshing. Depression and anxiety are voices. What makes them so painful is not the volume, but the content.
It was like having a rock concert playing in my head all the time, but the music was physically painful to listen to, and mean. And it was just… exhausting. So exhausting, after a while, that I withdrew. Answering the phone seemed like it would be too hard, because as soon as it rang, the tinnitus would start to shout,
Maybe you didn’t pay a bill and it’s a collection agency! Maybe it’s Steve! Maybe he got fired! Maybe it’s Dad! Something is wrong in Atlanta!
Or when hanging out with friends, I think you are much heavier than this person. Your face is weird. What the hell are you wearing?
I mean. No wonder I started to dissolve.
The question you might be asking, the question that most non-anxious people ask most anxious people, the question Steve used to ask me, is: why do you believe these rotten stories?
They’re not grounded in science. They’re certainly not peer-reviewed. And quite often they are categorically wrong. I had a colonoscopy. I did not have colon cancer. Steve was doing a good job at church. He was not about to be fired. But the voice didn’t stop talking, and I didn’t stop listening. Why?
I was frustrated by this paradox for years. This voice is destroying me. It doesn’t make any sense. Why can’t I stop listening to it?
It’s a complicated question. To answer it, I’m going to turn things over to two Nobel Prize winning scientists. One of them is insane.
The Story of Dug and Spock
In his book, Thinking Fast and Slow, the behavioral economist Daniel Kahneman tackles, among other things, the question of why human beings are often so unconvinced by logic and facts. Because we are. To be human is to be both capable of incredibly sophisticated thought, and also likely to overrule sophisticated thought — to believe stories that aren’t true. (If you follow current American politics at all, you know this.)
Per Kahneman, we have two systems in our brain. Think of them as two different narrators. System Two is the one that we identify with most often. It’s our internal Spock. It is grounded in logic, it’s thoughtful, it can spend hours figuring out how to explain depression (it’s kind of like tinnitus!).
Then there’s System One. System One is almost the precise opposite of System Two. Where System Two is thoughtful and methodical, System One is quick and impulsive. Where System Two is grounded in reason and intellect, System One is driven by emotion and logic. I think of System One as Dug, from Up. All instinct, very little rational thought.
And here’s the plot twist. Guess which of those Systems is stronger? When these two narrators are in disagreement, guess which story you’re likely to believe? No, don’t guess. I’ll let Kahneman tell you himself. He has a Nobel Prize, after all.
“When we think of ourselves, we identify with System 2, the conscious reasoning self that has beliefs, makes choices, and decides what to think about and what to do. Although System 2 believes itself to be where the action is, the automatic System 1 is the hero…System 1 (is the) effortlessly originating impressions and feelings that are the main sources of the explicit beliefs and deliberate choices of System 2.”
- Daniel Kahneman, Thinking Fast and Slow
In other words, in a battle of logic between Spock and Dug, Dug wins. I know. It makes no sense. Dug is a DOG. And yet. Even Spock would have to back me up, if he saw the evidence. When facts are in opposition with feelings, feelings win.
This, in a nutshell, is why human beings are notoriously unreliable narrators. Yes. Even you. Are you human? In a battle between emotion and evidence, you’re going to go with the emotion, every time.
As Lady Gaga sang, “We were born this way.”
This explains why I believed my feelings, more than all pertinent facts. Why I was compelled to listen to the deep story playing in my head.
It doesn’t explain, however, why I felt that way. Why was Dug so worked up? Why wasn’t he just bounding up to people with love?
Why was my System One narrator so panic stricken?
Where did that awful story come from?
Trust The Source
John Nash was a brilliant mathematician who, by his early 20s, had already made some unbelievable discoveries in his field. While he was still a Ph.D candidate at Princeton University, he discovered a system of nonlinear partial differential equations arising in Riemannian geometry. His insights about game theory and differential geometry changed the world. He won the Nobel Prize. Russell Crowe played him in the movie, and now you might realize where this story is going.
Because while he was at Princeton, this beautiful mind started hearing inexplicable voices. He became convinced that anyone wearing a red tie was part of a Communist Conspiracy. He started giving lectures that made no sense at all, offering up “proofs” that were demonstrably untrue. He eventually had a full psychotic break.
George Mackey, a Harvard professor, visited Nash in the mental institution, and was aghast. “How could you, a mathematician, a man devoted to reason and logical proof…how could you believe that extraterrestrials are sending you messages? How could you?”
As reported by Sylvia Nasar in her biography, Nash answered him slowly, in a quiet Southern drawl.
“Because,” Nash said, “those ideas came to me the same way that my mathematical voices did. So I had to take them seriously.”
My Unreliable Narrator
In literature and in life, when we talk about unreliable narrators, we’re tempted to depict people who are quite clearly not telling the truth. We point to 99% of the activity on Twitter, or the political candidate who is ABSOLUTELY OPPOSED TO EVERYTHING YOU BELIEVE IN, or the pundits who tell blatant lies with a straight face, or your abusive ex, or your callous corporate office.
Those unreliable narrators can do a lot of damage. But they’re not the most dangerous ones. If I don’t trust you, if I don’t believe you, sure. Your story can affect my life. But it can’t really infect my head.
But what if you’re the narrator who gave me all my best ideas about math?
(Everything is ruined.)
What if you’re the narrator whose wisdom and insight I prized above all others?
(You’re a monster.)
Some years ago, my stories were killing me, but I couldn’t stand to let them go. I couldn’t stop listening to these awful stories for one simple reason.
(Nothing will ever be okay again.)
They came from my most cherished source. The person I trust most in the world. The person whose love was the one truth I could always count on.
Why did I believe a story that was so plainly untrue? So obviously at odds with the facts about me and my own life? Because. My most destructive stories, the stories that were steering me straight into despair, those stories came from the same narrator who gave me all my best ideas about math, and everything else.
Mom.
This is one chapter in a year-long saga of love, grief, and the stories we tell to survive it all. To find out how it began, go here. Or subscribe for free to get a new chapter every week.
Brilliantly written Robyn. When I was a child I heard stories from my biological Father. He was a negative voice in my head. He had me convinced I would never be as great as his cherish stepson that finished Princeton in three years and did other incredible things. I was happy for that man. But in many ways I never felt good enough no matter how hard I tried or what kind of “good” kid I was. It was such a “walking on eggshells experience that I won’t get into. But when I was 21 he died and I have to say I was relieved. However for years he terrorized my dreams and the fear of him stuck with me.
Finally in time I came to realize my true Father was Jesus and that man who terrorized me was an alcoholic that had some serious issues and should have never had kids in his 50s. When I see myself through my biological father’s eyes I never measured up, but when I saw myself through my heavenly Father’s eyes, I realized that I am His precious child, and that what anybody else says or thinks doesn’t really matter to me anymore. It was like a light switch went off in me and my life was never the same. You just reminded me of that time in my life and how grateful I am that I don’t feel that way anymore. Love you, Robyn