Norman Farb is an associate professor of psychology at the University of Toronto Mississauga, where he directs the Regulatory and Affective Dynamics laboratory, and a fellow at the Mind & Life Institute. Zindel Segal is distinguished professor of psychology in mood disorders at the University of Toronto Scarborough. They are the authors of Better in Every Sense: How the New Science of Sensation Can Help You Reclaim Your Life.
The “dark and dreary” days of February recall the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem The Rainy Day, which draws the rich connections between bad weather and despair, a feeling of being trapped in an environment that drains rather than nourishes the spirit. In such weather, it is tempting to put our heads down and simply try to muddle through, to avoid the world around us until the season turns.
And in response to such desires, it’s never been easier to escape reality. Many of us carry smartphones and tablets through our waking hours, offering a constant escape from waking life into a more controllable world. The habit is now so strong that it might seem weird to smile at a stranger on the street, let alone on a crowded bus. Escape has become the default – kids now say “IRL” to clarify when something occurs in real life.
The trouble is this: When we get used to sticking our heads in the sand, who is to say that we will even notice when the weather improves?
The growing prevalence of mood and anxiety disorders in Canada suggests that our patterns of avoidance do not suddenly abate with spring sunshine. Last fall, Statistics Canada released sobering data: Anxiety and depression rates have doubled since 2012, a trend that is not a product of changing seasons. In our quest to avoid the “blahs” of everyday life, have we run into another sort of trap?
In one of the largest neuroimaging studies of formerly depressed patients to date, we provoked negative emotion by showing people sad film clips – a lab-grown analogue of Longfellow’s rainy day. Yet this was just the first step; after all, Longfellow cautions that “into each life some rain must fall.” The question we wanted to answer was: Why do some of us successfully navigate life’s dreary and stormy weather, while others get stuck in a rut?
So we checked in with our participants over the following two years to see who managed to stay afloat given their past struggles with depression. What we found surprised us – those who became depressed again were not those who had experienced negative emotion while watching the film clips. Instead, it was the tendency to suppress the sensory parts of the brain – the places where the visceral, embodied aspects of our feelings reside – that predicted future depression. The problem was not feeling too much – it was becoming too good at avoiding feeling altogether.
Over the past few decades of our work, we have repeatedly seen that negative emotion seems to rob people of their ability to sense – literally turning off the sensory parts of the brain. In their absence, the networks for self-judgment and rumination run unfettered – a neuroscience recipe for languishing and hopelessness. Our most recent work confirmed that the habit of avoiding bad feelings is a sort of Pyrrhic victory – replacing the dreary with an oppressive numbness and meaninglessness that is hard to shake.
Yet with this new insight, there is hope. We may be able to step out of despair and back into a world where growth is possible. By activating sensory parts of the brain, we naturally quiet brain networks for negative judgment and self-evaluation. Every performer who takes a deep breath before committing to action has already intuited how sensation can quiet the mind. The challenge is bringing this understanding to everyday life.
Fortunately, reactivating the brain’s sensory networks is accessible to us at any time; the only cost is making time to pay attention. Not searching for the next distraction, or some anticipated benefit, but intentionally meeting sensation in the moment. We call these acts of sensory attention the process of “sense foraging” – an analogue to training our bodies through exercise or our thinking through formal education.
If this sounds very Zen, that’s because many contemplative traditions have already figured out that sensation is a natural way of quieting an overactive mind. Neuroscience is only now catching up. Scientists have already established that sensory attention is sufficient to activate parts of our brains. What’s new is showing that sensory activation naturally inhibits the cognitive networks activated by stress.
We can see the advice resonating in different areas of our society. Last month, the Canadian Paediatric Society sent a strong advisory that we could improve childhood development by encouraging more “risky play” – perhaps we are keeping our children a little too safe from embracing the sensory chaos of the playground. The rise of horticultural therapy resonates with our youths’ neologism to “touch grass” when a person is spending too much time online. And harking back to our initial problem of seasonal affective disorder, even this relatively transient affliction has a known cure – literally taking the time to take in light through our eyes.
The evidence is growing that making time for sensation is essential for mental health. Perhaps each of us should carve out a moment for some sense foraging today, and see whether a little sunlight might shine in.