I used to think that the Taos Hum was humbug. Most people don't hear it. So I used to wonder about the kind of people who whine about continuous low-frequency rumbling sounds, persistent enough to drive them half mad. Or so they claimed.---
Perhaps they were crazy to begin with?
I don't disparage people like that any more. Who am I to say certain people don't hear the distant sound of a diesel engine, minus the engine? Who am I to say they are sane, minus their sanity?
Part of the reason for my change of heart is due to the people I work with who describe experiences similar to the Taos Hum, but that involve emotional instead of auditory sensitivities.
How can you disprove something just because you can't hear it? Or disprove an emotion just because you can't feel it?
Like the Taos Hum, there are no scientific instruments that adequately measure the emotional phenomenon many of my clients experience. Not everybody hears the Taos Hum and not everybody feels the emotional equivalent of the Taos Hum. But when somebody enters my office suffering from the persistent, inescapable, thrumming presence of emotional background noise, I take it seriously.
As I write this, we in northern New Mexico are waiting for our first sustained and quenching rains of summer (or spring, for that matter). I grew up in farming country, in the breadbasket of the nation, the heartland of the homeland. Farmers either complained about too much rain at the right times, or about too little rain at the wrong times. Severe drought of the kind we are experiencing takes complaining about precipitation to a whole other level. When scrub oak leaves are miniscule or skip a season to bud, when pinon trees begin to lose needles in June, when footprints on dirt paths don't disappear after a week (or more)--that's drought that transcends whining. That's drought that is seriously serious.
For the past several weeks, we have endured daytime temperatures over 90 degrees for several weeks. Not only are these temperatures above 90; they flirt with the century mark. Has global warming arrived, without knocking politely at the door to be let in? Ideologues (not scientists) may argue about the fact of global warming and, if it exists, what has caused or not caused it. But its existence is as real for many of my clients as that of a cancer diagnosis or of a letter declaring they are in default of their mortgage.
Which leads me to the economy. Whether it was Wall Street greed, political incompetence, the inevitable result of an unsustainable growth-driven consumer economy, global economic forces beyond our control, the decline of the American empire--this fact remains: many of us are hurting financially. The construction industry is on life support; portfolios (for those lucky enough to have them) have atrophied; housing has declined in value; and the costs for everything from food to gas to movies to college education have continued to grow beyond most wages.
As if these anxiety-provoking situations aren't enough, we are experiencing a political season that has fractured hope, trust, and patience. This political season has perhaps even fractured our grasp on reality. We are left clinging to anything that seems true, even if there is nothing factual to support it. We are forced to listen to hysterical gibberish that has nothing to do with our everyday experience, gibberish that is intended to exploit the most negative aspects of our everyday lives. This political season can easily be characterized as one in which there is a drought of reason and an increase in the heat of discussion. Certainly there appears to be a dearth of respect for ideas or the public's intelligence. Both conservative and liberal clients of mine shake their heads in wonder that political dialogue has devolved to sandbox levels. Each party seems to blame the other for the grit in their underwear. They resort to political tactics that involve bullying their opponent more skillfully than their opponent can bully them. In other words, they try to buy the most airtime to bash whoever they are running against.
Airtime? The air fairly thrums with the political messages that come through our TVs and computers and iPads and iPhones. Taos Hum? It has nothing on Election-Year Humbug.
Without exception, the people who come through my door have wonderful and profound psychological adventures to embark upon. But drought, climate change, hard economic times, and political insanity often complicate those adventures--or even keep them from starting. The increasingly persistent and insidious emotional factors of contemporary life are as crazy-making as an annoying low-frequency hum that can be heard by some and not by others, that seem to grow louder the more sensitized one becomes to them.
Taos Hum-caliber anxiety is very real in the lives of many people. It is caused by not knowing how crucial aspects of life with turn out, by suspecting that good does not prevail over evil, that chance is more powerful than positive attitudes and talent and hard work.
Many of my fellow shrinks find that they must address this anxiety before their clients can embark on whatever psychological adventures bring them, staggering, into their offices. It is a sign of our times, that the hum of anxiety can keep many of us from listening to our own hearts. Such anxiety can keep us from becoming tuned to our own spirits.
Simply being aware of the anxiety that pervades much of their lives allows my clients to focus on core issues. It is hard to appreciate the symphony of life while listening to the Taos Hum. Likewise, it is hard to explore life while entangled by the emotional equivalent of the Taos Hum.
Yes, drought and climate change and economic stress and political craziness must be dealt with. But they must be separated out and dealt with separately from the core emotional issues that cause people to seek the help of shrinks.
Sometimes, helping clients separate the Hum from the Humbug is my biggest challenge.
