Hysteria, by Gillian

The old black-and-white movie flickers and jumps. A woman screams. And laughs. And cries.

'You're hysterical,' booms a strong male voice.

A strong male hand slaps the woman's cheek. Silence; followed by a quiet sobbing.

That is hysteria in the movies.

I actually don't think I have ever experienced that kind of hysteria; my own or anyone else's. Perhaps it has never actually existed, outside of old movies. Or perhaps I have simply been extremely fortunate, having lived a life free of horrifying experiences which might create hysteria in myself or others.

No, I have not had to live such nightmares; but certainly I have seen them unfold on the TV. I have watched everything from terrorist attacks to mass shootings, from earthquakes and mudslides to tsunamis, hurricanes, and tornadoes. I have seen people's response to such things. But, you know, I honestly cannot recall hysteria. People run, sometimes screaming, but that is a simple reaction to danger - the good old fight or flight response. I have seen tears: strangers enfolding each other in comforting arms, injured individuals sitting on the ground, alone and confused. That is shock and grief. It is not hysteria. Desperate people wave to helicopters from rooftops barely protruding from floodwaters. They shout for help from beneath heaps of rubble. These are people trying to save themselves. They are not hysterics. It makes little sense to me that hysteria should be encouraged by Mother Nature, anyway. She has given us an overwhelming survival instinct. We will do whatever it takes to live. Hysteria is counterproductive; it interferes with our ability to save ourselves. I'm sure it's not listed on Mother Nature's list of approved survival tactics.

On the other hand, a much more dangerous form of hysteria is alive and well and ever expanding, especially in recent years with the phenomenal growth of social media; mass hysteria. Until recently, this kind of group emotion was of necessity engendered in a group - a physical group of people close together, shoulder to shoulder, acting in ways none of them would have alone. The New Year's Eve festivities downtown are great fun until a few idiots begin to egg each other on to break some windows. Before anyone realizes what is happening, dozens or even hundreds of people are heaving anything handy through windows, and the looting starts. Mass hysteria tends to lead to mass arrests. The soccer game is over and the crowds wending their way towards the stadium exits. A gang of lager-louts, till now only a little obnoxious as they react to the home team's win or loss, begin an argument with opposing supporters. Voices get louder. Voices get angry. One man swings a fist. In seconds dozens of fists are swinging. Innocent bystanders rush for the streets. Hundreds are trampled in the panic; dozens killed and injured. And even without physical violence, hysteria is ugly. Just watch our political conventions.

Lately an even more frightening, more pervasive, form of mass hysteria has appeared, fomented by social media. An angry young man no longer needs to fly to Syria and attend a mosque frequented by violent extremists to become what we now chose to call 'radicalized'. He can work himself into a frenzy of hatred and bigotry simply by reading what is offered in great abundance on his iPhone or laptop. He barely needs to get up off the couch. Perhaps he will never appear on any no-fly- or watch-list, but he is every bit as dangerous as those who do.

Mass hysteria is almost as scary even when involving no actual violence. These days all it takes is sound bites; Obama was not born in this country, Hillary is a crook. Repeat it often enough via all forms of social media, but particularly TV, and some of those listening will repeat it. Some of those hearing it will then repeat it, and in twenty-four hours there is this ground-swell of mass hysteria all based on a lie.

But strangely, I have observed recently, social media can create something which seems to me even stranger; almost the antithesis of hysteria. But if the opposite of hysterical is calm, this is behavior surpassing anything the word suggests to me. It is a level of denial for which I think we have no word. It seems to have appeared along with the universal inclusion of cameras in cellphones.

On the TV screen I see a man almost up to his armpits in swirling water. He holds one arm above his head, gripping his phone in his hand. Debris of all kinds swirls around him in the rising waters of Tropical Storm Sandy. He shouts breathlessly into his phone, capturing the image of himself struggling to remain upright. His commentary, as played on the television, consists mainly of beeps.

'I'm here in bleeping New Jersey, in my own bleeping house. I'm standing in my bleeping kitchen, man. I don't see how the bleep I'm gonna bleeping get out of here.'

He turns the camera off himself to show a jerky unfocused view from a window.

'And over there it bleeping looks like every bleeping thing is on fire, man. How the bleeping bleeping bleep do you get bleeping fire on bleeping floods? Bleep. Bleep.

I gotta bleeping get up to the bleeping roof. Bleep ... bleep ......'

After a few seconds of wildly gyrating film of ceiling and walls and water, everything goes blank and silent.

You see more and more of these death-defying shots, movies, and commentaries. People seem increasingly more interested in capturing their own images for posterity than in saving their own lives. Mother Nature must be very confused and frustrated!

Or perhaps she's happy to see them go, cleansing the gene pool.

My very favorite so far, and I say so far because I reluctantly doubt that this new phenomenon is going away, is a still shot of a young woman in a bikini who obviously waited for the perfect moment to get a selfie as the tsunami waves broke through the windows behind her.

What is wrong with these people? I have no training as a psychologist, but I'm not too sure that your average shrink understands why people act this way, though there is, doubtless, at this very moment, at least one Ph.D student studying the topic.

Apparently the two people I have just described must somehow have survived. We have the content of their presumably intact phones. But how many, I have to wonder, have died in the grip of this strange 'anti-hysteria'? I am starting to think that a good old-movie style face-slapping bout of hysterics might look downright healthy.

© August 2016

About the Author

I was born and raised in England. After graduation from college there, I moved to the U.S. and, having discovered Colorado, never left. I have lived in the Denver-Boulder area since 1965, working for 30 years at IBM. I married, raised four stepchildren, then got divorced after finally, in my forties, accepting myself as a lesbian. I have been with my wonderful partner Betsy for thirty years. We have been married since 2013.

Hysteria, by Will Stanton

I delayed writing about this subject longer than I normally do about selected topics because I was torn between writing about a painful truth regarding my mother or resisting it and writing something fictional and entertaining, simply as an antidote.  I finally decided to stick to facts but to keep it as short as possible.

First, you have to understand my mother's background.  Several terrible events combined to damage her emotionally.

First, apparently, her own mother was very fond of her first-born daughter but did not express much love or support for my mother.  This only enhanced my mother's deep attachment to her father, evidently a very caring, loving man, who also was highly admired for his many skills and successes.  He was a professor of physics and chemistry, kept bees, took the family on long camping trips (which included Colorado back when it had mostly dirt roads), collected Indian arrowheads, and played classical violin.  Unfortunately, he was exposed to radiation from his early lab experiments and died painfully of cancer at age forty-eight.  My mother, at the time, was at that critical age of fifteen and deeply suffered the loss of her father.

Next, her mother developed the strange notion that she needed to remarry but retain the same surname.  Consequently, she blindly married her late husband's uncle, until then unmarried and a whole generation older.  It turned out that this man became the “stepfather from Hell.”

To start with, he decided that the family must abandoned their beloved home (once owned by Mary Todd Lincoln's family) and move to his home-town.  My mother packed her few prized possessions into a trunk in anticipation of the move.  The stepfather, however, left the trunk behind, later stating that “there wasn't enough room to take it.”  My mother was very hurt and never forgot the callous loss of her possessions.

Everything went from bad to worse.  Very quickly, my mother and grandmother discovered that this man had a violent temper and frequently exploded into tirades of verbal and even physical abuse, hitting them.  When the stepfather discovered that my mother was saving a little money during summers working as a waitress so she could go to college, he stole all her money to pay for ill-chosen stocks that he had bought.  He lost all the stocks and money in the Great Depression.  This man chose not even to keep his disdain for the family private.  He frequently spoke ill of them to friends and neighbors, telling terrible falsehoods about them.

It wasn't until many years later when I was in my forties did I hear hints from my mother that this “stepfather from hell” had gone every morning into her bedroom.  Apparently, my grandmother never knew or was too afraid to do anything about it.  My comprehension of this trauma became clarified by my father, who spoke to me shortly before his passing.  He stated that, for a while after he and my mother were married, she would wake up every morning, screaming.  I was absolutely shocked.  In retrospect, I realized that this hysteria had been expressed in many ways during my childhood.

Throughout my childhood and adult life, I witnessed my mother's deep-seated fear and anxiety.  I realize that, no matter how hard she struggled to do the right things with her life and her family, to take on and excel in numerous activities, she continually was plagued by those fears and anxieties.  She feared the world; she feared people.  Many times, I heard her bitterly declare, “I hate men; I just hate men.”  She feared anyone whom she did not understand.  She feared blacks and foreigners.  She feared and disliked homosexuals.  Once, when I was watching a documentary on Africa, she rushed over to the TV and turned it off, stating, “I don't want you to watch that.  All white-hunters are homosexuals.”

As another consequence, she tried to control all people and the world around her.  Anyone or anything that she could not control upset her.  Everything had to be just the way she thought it should be, otherwise she would worry, sometimes even panic, and become hysterical.

An unfortunate, known psychological phenomenon is that one way traumatized people attempt to cope is to adopt many of the same hurtful behaviors that had caused them harm in the first place.  This was true with her.  When I was young, she once said that she hoped that she never would become like her stepfather - - - but she did.  Very often, when she feared that she was not in control, she shouted in rage.  I recall seeing her screaming at my oldest brother and beating him.  She hit my father so hard that she burst his eardrum.

When I went to university in Europe, my parents drove me to the university campus.  It was late evening and becoming dark.  My father took one wrong turn where there was very little street-light and no outlet.  He had to turn around.  Simple enough; however, my mother panicked and began screaming hysterically.  At the time, I did not understand.  Now I do.

My brothers and I have realized for some time that, even though we were, what psychologists call, a “looking good family,” word got around about my mother.  New neighbors were warned to avoid getting to know my mother.  We brothers and my father suffered long-term damage from that environment.  My father, early on, withdrew as much as he could into his own world, finding every reason to go to his office, take the car for a wash, or do some other chore that would take him away from the house.  My oldest brother adopted the same dictatorial and controlling behaviors with his family.  He also eventually disassociated himself from our parents and never went back to see them, even at their funerals.  My middle brother became the rebel and stayed away from the family as much as possible, even disappearing for some years after his marriage.  My late friend Dr. Bob observed in me, what he said was, a rare trait of reacting to my past experiences by instinctively developing an unusual degree of sensitivity and empathy for other people, something that apparently helped me to be affective in my profession.  Apparently, I was good at taking care of other people, but not myself.

Yet, despite the damage done to our family, I cannot but help but feel great sympathy for my poor mother.  She suffered greatly in her childhood, and I am not sure how much true joy or love that she felt in her life.  As for me, I know that, as they say, “I've carried a lot of baggage throughout my life.”  It took me some years to understand why. 

And, now that I have told you this story, I will put it on our blog for others to read and to think about.  But, for myself, now that I have read this unhappy tale to you, I will dispose of it and remove it from my computer.  It is too painful for me to keep or to read again.

© 14 June 2016 

About the Author 

I have had a life-long fascination with people and their life stories.  I also realize that, although my own life has not brought me particular fame or fortune, I too have had some noteworthy experiences and, at times, unusual ones.  Since I joined this Story Time group, I have derived pleasure and satisfaction participating in the group.  I do put some thought and effort into my stories, and I hope that you find them interesting.

Hysteria, by Ray S

I wonder how many of my friends here resorted to the same tactic as I have done? That is to look into what Mr. Webster had to tell me about today’s topic, Hysteria. 

HYSTERIA, Noun [Greek, hustera, uterus, orig. Thought to occur more often in women than in men] 1. A psychiatric condition characterized by excitability, anxiety, the simulation of organic disorders, etc. 2. Any outbreak of wild, uncontrolled feeling: also hysterics, hysterical, or hysteric, adj.,--hysterically adv.

After some pondering those defining words I had a “Eureka moment” and determined how I wear this hysteria word garment.

My thoughts and studies about who and what I am as a so-called QUEER concluded: an in-between creature, a genderless in-between combining masculine and feminine energies.

Permit me to subject you to another stolen quote lifted from the pages of an old copy of R.F.D., the magazine of the Radical Faeries:

“We embody masculine and feminine energies in a unique way… the unconscious regenerative Earth Mother and the conscious constructive Sky Father…. Our work as fairies is to bring harmony between the two—to take the gifts of the Father back to the Mother.”

With this new knowledge I now can continue my life’s journey, realizing that my feminine side is simply experiencing a fit of hysteria.

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Let’s hear it for some uncontrolled feeling—more power to you!

© August 2016

About the Author