Learning How to Scream in the End Times
I’m in my 2012 Kia Sorrento after a particularly difficult day. I had my 6 month performance review, which was filled with praise but also concern and the stark reminder that it is difficult for me to engage with people. The world is humid outside which is adding to my frustration and nothing seems to go right, but I could feel this pressure building inside my chest that just needed a way out. So, in that Kia, that’s exactly what I did. It was deep, not high pitched like how it used to be when I was little, it wasn’t blood-curdling or banshee like. Quite frankly, it felt and sounded like an alien was trying out human vocal cords for the first time.
I’ve recently discovered that I cannot scream. At least, I don’t think I can. I’m not really someone who yells either. I’m a passive aggressive, keep that shit to yourself and die type of person. I could sit here and put the sole blame of this on the COVID-19 pandemic and being stuck in the same everyday routine for months on end, but that would be a disservice to the last 7 years of grief and all 25 years of anxiety. But I keep thinking to myself after that particular day, is screaming something necessary? Aside from the moments someone or something scares you? I didn’t think so, until I felt the need to do it and couldn’t. I was almost in a car accident the other day and still, I did not let out a sound.
I was bothered by the fact that the scream didn’t come out the way I had expected it to. I tried to remember the last time I screamed, whether that be out of fear, excitement or surprise but not much came up. I vaguely remember singing along and shouting at a Halsey concert recently, but even that was more muted, like I was just doing it because everyone else was. But, a memory surfaced of 14 year old me on my 8th grade field trip to Six Flags. I don’t remember which ride it was exactly, but we were standing instead of sitting and everyone around me was screaming out of glee or pure terror and there I was, body clenched and not a sound escaped me.
According to Psychology Today, there are 3 alarm screams and 3 non-alarm screams.
Anger/Rage (alarm screams)
Fear (alarm scream)
Pain (alarm scream)
Extreme Joy (positive non-alarm scream)
Intense Pleasure (positive non-alarm scream)
Grief/Sadness (desperate non-alarm cries)
Neuroscientists David Poeppell and Luc Arnal discovered in 2015 that a true scream isn’t necessarily about pitch or volume. It is about the acoustic feature called the “roughness”.
“When the frequency of a sound modulates more quickly than our ears can differentiate, it is considered “rough” and we perceive it as unpleasant. Hearing very rough sounds is correlated with activity in the brain's amygdala, a region associated with feelings of fear. Screams, along with dissonant chords and artificial alarm sounds, all fell within the “roughness domain.”, wrote Joseph Dussault for The Christian Science Monitor.
Okay, so what does any of this mean for me? Despite the research, which all it told me was how screaming works, which is fine, but I still found myself on Google typing out the simple question: why can’t I scream?
Dr. Jin Ong says that I’m embarrassed of screaming in my car, which could be accurate, it was a little uncomfortable but I was driving and I usually don’t think anyone is listening to me on the highway, unless they somehow can hear my loud singing, so I think I felt comfortable enough to scream. I think the discomfort came from the scream itself.
The rest of the Google search says I’m anxious and afraid, I have an emotional disconnection, lack of vocal training, etc…
Is it because I got older? I remember screaming and yelling as a child, mostly out of anger and frustration, I know this because I remember the pinching and hair pulling that came after.
Oh and the slipper.
Or broom.
Or wooden spoon.
You get it.
As I got older, the tantrums got less, and perhaps it had to do with the absolute humiliation tour my family would take me on every time I expressed a “negative” emotion, or maybe I just became a good kid.
For totally no reason at all.
I’m joking, it was probably the humiliation tour.
I have no answer as to why exactly I cannot scream properly. There’s a multitude of reasons, from physical to mental and emotional, and there’s even a chance I might be screaming okay enough, it just feels weird because I don’t do it a lot and this could all just be me being super dramatic and overthinking things. I briefly thought about screaming at least once a day to see if anything changed but that requires a patience I simply do not exude.
I hope you scream a little today and it doesn’t sound like an alien being human for the first time.
-Délia