Tears Without Triggers

I think I've mentioned pseudobulbar effect before, but I think I'll mention it again, as it seems sufficiently interesting, as well as sufficiently weird, to warrant further consideration. 

The website, Healthline.com, summarizes this peculiar symptom as follows: 

Multiple sclerosis (MS) damages the nervous system, including the brain and spinal cord. The nervous system sends messages, or signals, between the brain and body to control bodily functions. Damage to this system can disrupt these signals.

Damage to the central nervous system by MS affects movement, feeling, vision, and even emotions.

Pseudobulbar affect (PBA) is a condition in which you suddenly start to laugh or cry (or have other emotional outbursts) without being triggered by anything in particular.

Normally, your cerebral cortex (at the front of your brain) communicates with your cerebellum (at the back of your brain) to control your emotional responses to situations. However, sometimes the cerebellum becomes damaged by lesions or nerve problems. This can disrupt communication between these two areas. PBA is thought to result from this miscommunication. Your brain “short circuits,” and you can no longer control your emotional response, which is called disinhibition.

So, as I dressed this morning, I decided to listen to some music. My mind was on nothing in particular, other than getting dressed. It had been  a normal morning thus far--getting up, preparing a cup of coffee, smoking a cigarette, checking out the news on the internet, taking a shower, and then getting dressed. For music, I chose a song by the country acapella group, Home Free. I don't remember the name of the song, and I experienced no particular response other than an appreciation of the harmony, the expertise of the singers. Next up was a Disney Medley. And that's when I suddenly burst into tears. The songs in the medley reminded me of nothing in particular, the words possessed no special meaning for me, I had not even seen, as far as I recall, the movies from which the songs were taken ... So, why was I crying? If the cause was anything in the medley itself, it would seem to have been merely the exuberance in the voices, the clarity, the rising and falling of the pitch.

Of course, many of us will react to music emotionally. That, after all, is the job of music as far as the listener is concerned. There are few, I think who would not shed, or at least nearly shed, at least one tear to Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings. But this is different, isn't it, than helplessly weeping throughout a medley of songs from Disney cartoons?

Up next was another song by Home Free--Try Everything--and more weeping. The tears are rolling down my face and my nose is running and my eyes are red, and I will need to stop my activities and compose myself before going out into public. I'm not sad, I'm not hurt, I'm not heartbroken, I'm not angry or upset or stressed--I just want to get my morning Starbucks!  Why am I wasting my time blubbering? 

For one thing, I've never been big on crying to begin with. My father taught me early on that men don't cry, and boys don't cry either. If anything, I had tended toward the unemotional side. I did not cry at movies. I did not cry after reading Love Story, despite the book jacket guarantee that I would. I did not cry at weddings or funerals or when my favorite team lost a football game--though these would have been reasonable triggers for weeping. But even when crying would have been reasonable, I tended not to do so.

I guess this is what pseudobulbar effect is all about. It needs no trigger, per se. It requires no event, no reason. It just happens. Or rather, something has happened deep within the system, in the brain, in the spinal cord, in the wiring that regulates everything that our bodies do. Just as neurologic damage is causing the pain n my shoulder and back, wherein I have sustained no other physical injury, so is it interfering with normal neurologic processes involved in emotion. 

Which leads me to say, in concluding, one additional thing about crying, which is that it is certainly preferable to the physical pain; for there is some pleasure to be had both in tears and in laughter, even when neither can name a trigger--an engagement in emotion ultimately resulting in release, whereas pain is just simply and only pain.