Smells like human feelings
The scent of an emotion, dopamine dressing, emotional support gators, and that special kind of health anxiety that's just an internet search away
🥸 I smell how you’re feeling
It’s officially Pumpkin Spice Season, when our cups overfloweth with Starbucks specialty drinks, always a bit too early for the summer lovers and just in time for autumn enthusiasts. Whether you are a pumpkin spice lover or hater, you can’t deny that the scent of pumpkin spice is the modern-day equivalent of the Proustian madeleine dipped in lime-blossom tea.
Scent memories tend to be more emotionally charged than those triggered by sounds or visual cues. Neuroscientists think this is because the olfactory center is directly connected to the amygdala, the brain’s emotional center, and the hippocampus, which is responsible for encoding memories.
Because smell changes memory processing, sniffing all the sniffs is not just an amazing way to time travel to exotic locales or stir up nostalgia or simply lift the mood. Scent is starting to be used to treat trauma. Loss of smell is linked to the biomarkers for Alzheimer’s. For those who lost their sense of smell after covid-19, memory problems are more common—so much so that a persistent loss of smell is a better predictor of lingering cognitive symptoms than a particularly severe case of covid. I think I speak for all of us who have had a bout of covid anosmia (loss of smell), parosmia (distorted smell), or phantosmia (phantom smells), when I say “yikes”.
But it gets worse for those of us who suffer temporary olfactory impairment. Recent research at the University of São Paulo’s Institute of Psychology has found that smells influence our ability to see and interpret the emotions of other people. Smells, even if we aren’t aware of them, influence how we identify facial expressions of emotion in other people. If we smell something we think is pleasant, we perceive a positive emotion. If we smell something less pleasant, we pick up negative vibes.
So, wow! Many interesting implications in this tiny research study. If your sense of smell is distorted, it stands to reason that your perception of facial emotional expression may be a bit off too. If you’ve lost your sense of smell, it may be that you are less able to identify facial expressions of emotion.
Now let’s ponder what that might mean for emotion that’s mediated through technology, which typically is missing scent. Could this be why we are flummoxed by the feelings of fellow FaceTimers? Could this explain the shortage of sympathy on social channels (where we don’t see a facial expression or smell a smell)? Could this mean that VR really is an empathy machine so long as delightful scents are piped in? Will the next wave of emotion artificial intelligence focus on multisensory cues to improve how well it identifies facial expressions?
And my most pressing concern: will it help those of us with post-covid anosmia smell the human feelings?
🙌 Feels on the interwebz
Here’s an ultrafast roundup of hot takes and big moods from this week.
We all know how amazing it can feel to have a pet. It instantly brings your stress level down to watch little budgies flitting about in their cage. You breathe a sigh of relief as your cat winds its way around your legs. And what could be more peaceful than curling up on the couch right next to your pup? Heck, even virtual pet interactions can have a healing effect! But what if the pet has rows of razor-sharp teeth and is covered with armor? WallyGator, the emotional support alligator, has helped reptile enthusiast, Joseph Henney, through post-chemo depression officially qualifying as the world’s most intimidating (and newsworthy) emotional support creature.
As someone who dresses colorfully (especially for a New Yorker), how is it even possible that I missed the dopamine dressing trend? Apparently, the link between how we dress and how we feel is real (just ask J Lo or the cool kids of NYC or a behavioral psychologist if you prefer) but it might be a bit more complex than simply wearing Lisa-Frank-inspired looks or dressing like a K-pop superstar. Color is linked with psychological effects, to be sure. And novelty can help you to see the world from a fresh perspective. But the main thing is to dress for self-confidence—wear what makes you feel good! That means ignoring prissy rules about what’s appropriate for women of a certain age and paying no mind to whatever teenagers think about your skinny jeans.
Tiktok failed to load.Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser
Not one to miss out on the latest trend, Snapchat introduced a dual-camera, BeReal-style feature this week. Will they be too late for the Zs? I’ve witnessed the BeReal revolution first-hand on campus in New Haven and on the streets of NYC, so it’s hard to say whether Snapchat will be able to draw young people looking for authenticity away from BeReal before they tire of it completely. But it might just offer a way for the rest of us to become more comfortable with being a bit more spontaneous on social channels.
Friday Feeling > Cyberchondria
🔑 DEFINITION
Cyberchondria is a clinical phenomenon in which repeated internet searches for medical information result in excessive concerns about physical or mental health.
See also: Somatosensory amplification, virality, health anxiety, infodemic
📜 A BRIEF HISTORY
Cyberchondria was first used to describe "the excessive use of internet health sites to fuel health anxiety” by the BBC in 2001. But the idea has its roots in the work of cultural studies scholar Elaine Showalter who wrote about the internet as a new way to spread “pathogenic ideas” like Gulf War syndrome or myalgic encephalomyelitis (otherwise known as chronic fatigue syndrome) in her 1997 book, Hysteria.
Sine the early 2000s, a steady stream of scientific research has examined cyberchondria in terms of depression, obsessive compulsive disorder, teens, seniors, and covid-19. Supplementing online health information with statistics elaborating on incidence and prevalence is a solution under discussion in medical literature. Policy agencies have studied cyberchondria in terms of increases in outpatient appointments and medical tests.
In popular media, cyberchondria has been positioned as a temporary neurotic excess at best and hysteria at worst. Like hypochondria, extreme anxiety about health online or offline is stigmatized. Mental health professionals, in fact, have stopped using the term. Instead, hypochondria is known as illness anxiety disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5).
Likewise, the use of the term “cyberchondria” peaked pre-pandemic. It’s been on the decline in popular media since 2020, possibly because internet searching for health information became more prevalent when concerns about covid-19 were all-consuming and quarantine limited access to healthcare.
A compassionate approach to understanding mental and physical health conditions is typical of the post-pandemic internet with health professionals turning to TikTok and Instagram to counter misinformation and provide support.
🏁 TRIGGERS
A bout of cyberchondria can be triggered in a few different ways:
A new symptom or set of symptoms
A recent diagnosis
Family history of a serious illness
Past trauma
Chonic unmanaged stress
Generalized anxiety or other anxiety conditions
Temporary heightened awareness of bodily sensations
Or sensorimotor OCD
Some people are more prone to worry than others, especially people who experience post-traumatic stress disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, borderline personality disorder, and other anxiety conditions.
💬 EXPRESSION
Online symptom checking is a reflex. Pew Internet Research reports that 80% of Americans have searched for health information online. Figures for Canada, Europe, and India are similar. And, after a medical diagnosis the internet can be an excellent source of further information or emotional support. The quest for medical knowledge can go awry though, leading us to spiral into needless anxiety or become a devastating obsession.
There are two main ways that we express that feeling of cyberchondria. First, through internet searches. Using a search like Google for symptoms can quickly pop up other worrisome search terms by way of autocomplete. A search for “strange rash” suddenly reveals the anxieties of millions of others who have searched before you. Limit the search to images and you are beset with troubling pictures, medical and otherwise.
On YouTube, one search can gradually lead to progressively more and more extreme opinions and misinformation by way of recommended videos. On Instagram, TikTok, or other social media, a search for symptoms or conditions can pop you right into a filter bubble where you start to see related posts, whether personal accounts or professional advice, with increasing frequency.
💗 EXPERIENCE
Cyberchondria often strikes in moments of weakness, like a 3 am heart palpitations or noticing a strange bumpy rash on your shoulder, which can lead you to plumb the depths of internet rabbit holes in search of answers.
In the short-term, this emotional behavior can make symptoms feel more acute. Or it can leave you jumpy, irritable, or make it difficult to relax.
The more persistent the anxiety becomes, the more normal functions can feel like ominous indicators of disease. Longer-term it can result in difficulty concentrating, emotional outbursts, or problems sleeping. It can also prompt people to new behaviors, like ordering expensive and unproven alternative medicines or asking for unnecessary screenings, that can adversely affect health.
💪 PRO TIP
Coping with cyberchondria requires self-compassion. It’s normal to search for information about your health, and to feel a little anxious once in a while. But it’s important to make sure you don’t become overwhelmed by fear or fall into a state of despair.
The first step is to talk to a doctor about your symptoms. It’s possible to be anxious about health concerns and actually have valid health concerns. Online health information can help us know how to ask the right questions and develop a deeper understanding of conditions too. Experts say that if you have general symptoms, like fatigue or headache, it’s less likely you’ll be able to self-diagnose whereas a doctor will be better able to consider those factors.
The next step may be to talk to a mental health professional. If you are feeling more health-anxious than health-conscious, such as limiting activities due to fear of illness or spending more time ruminating about specific conditions, it may be time to get some help.
On your own, you can start with trusted sources like WebMD’s symptom checker, Mayo Clinic, or Healthline but know that algorithm-driven symptom checkers are still much less accurate than a physician's diagnosis according to scientific studies. Recognizing your triggers, whether travel or crowds or middle-of-the-night worries, can reduce the effects too.
💡 BIG PICTURE
Cyberchondria is one of the many types of anxieties exacerbated by technology. Online-induced health anxiety is real and far-reaching. Effects can be dire, leading people to panic and seek unnecessary treatment or dismiss a diagnosis.
For most, the anxiety is milder. You feel a twinge and your mind races off to all the worst possible outcomes depending on how vulnerable you’re feeling at that moment.
For some, internet health information can reduce anxiety. People seeking support for a specific medical condition can find solace in online communities. Using the internet to learn more about a condition after being diagnosed can allay fears.
With medical care becoming more expensive or more difficult to access, and the doctor-patient relationship going from a trusted long-term commitment to a mechanized interaction of corporatized medical conglomerates, people are apt to fill in the gaps with readily available information online.
As we get better at identifying credible sources and platforms develop new ways to flag misinformation and contextualize health information with supplementary statistics and physician annotations, it’s likely that the internet will contribute less to the underlying anxiety about health that many people already feel.
🤔 LEARN MORE
Go wayback to the first article about cyberchondria from The Independent in 2001
Read about how mental health content creators are defining their own ethics in the Washington Post
If you’re experiencing health anxiety, try out this cognitive behavioral therapy workbook from the Australian Centre for Clinical Interventions
That’s all the feels for this week!
xoxo
Pamela 💗