Abortion, Dissociation & Development of Emotional Diversity Lexicons

Several years ago, during a time of professional prosperity, I participated in every opportunity that came my way to inspire young girls in the early stages of their careers (ages 12-30). I told them about myself and answered their questions. Mostly I was there to expose them to possible career options and say "if you'd like it too, it is possible".

I was in the 11th week of pregnancy when I came in for another day of work. That day high school girls came, and I volunteered to tell them what we were researching. It was after a difficult night, in which our little son was crying for many hours. When he finally fell asleep and I shut my eyes, I woke up from a bad dream about the pregnancy and did not fall asleep again until the morning.

I was standing that day on a stage in front of the school girls, presenting the Eyes-of-Watson. I felt that something was wrong. It was so weird. I usually loved to teach and mentor. Teaching fills me with joy and satisfaction. I am filled with energy when I teach. But at that moment those feelings did not ignite, but the opposite. It was as if a great darkness had fallen. I felt that my face could not smile. I didn't know what was wrong with me, I felt extremely sad and didn't know to tell exactly why. I kept asking myself "what is wrong with me?" And also "What am I doing here?". I felt a wave of mourning wash over me.

Two weeks later, in the 13th week of pregnancy, I had a routine pregnancy test. The doctor said: "I'm sorry...", to which I replied "I knew it. It happened two weeks ago, right?"

Indeed.

I left the doctor's room. I shed tears, than I cried and sobbed. After a few minutes I calmed down and went into the doctor's room again for him to explain what should be done next.

I searched the internet and read in professional forums regarding the various options. I read also in non-professional forums testimonies of women about the terrible suffering of waiting until the scraping and I had no idea what they were talking about.

I felt nothing. Nothing at all.

After the surgery,
I wanted to draw in panda colors, which requires the use of force,
and smearing, working with the hands, close to the material,
with bold colors, of red and blood
as if the body wanted to bring out aggression in a subtle way.

During my previous maternity leaves,
I painted colorful and abstract paintings with a brush.

For half a year after that, I suffered from the side effects of pregnancy without being pregnant. As if the body had not completely come to terms with it being over.

No one around me knew (not even my parents). We did not yet tell anyone of the pregnancy, so there was also no point in telling that it ended.

It was only after a few months that I told a close friend. While I was telling him, he told me, "You know, it's very strange. It seems that you went through something very difficult, while you tell it with such nonchalance."

It was the first time I had thought about how it is that women usually report abortion as a mentally and spiritually painful experience, while I did not feel anything.

~ * ~

In current research I am involved in, we examine the emotions expressed in text. One of the topics that came up in a brainstorming session was about “emotional disconnection”. For example, a patient might describe an experience using certain emotion words that are not consistent to the emotional state reported by him (like experiencing a painful event without feeling the negative emotion). That was the first time I wondered if I have ever experienced emotional dissociation. With respect to the abortion I went through, it is hard to tell. Inside, I had a feeling of full awareness and did not feel something is different or missing. But that might be an illusion or a blind spot, like a defense mechanism designed to protect me.

~ * ~

By the way, the emotional analysis of texts started two years ago, while I was leading psychology students in a research practicum, where students chose a topic and researched it. There were a couple of students that chose to review 'emotional diversity', which made me curious to learn more about it.

From Ong et al. (2018) paper -
differentiating between a patient with that experiences diverse emotions
 vs. a patient that lacks some of the emotional experience.  

In order to be able to explore emotional diversity from a text, one needs the ability to identify emotions in the texts. 

So in the following year, the practicum helped develop lexicons for various emotions, by suggesting and tagging emotion words for the different emotions.

We have also publicly released the lexicons and an accompanying software package for common use.

At the same time, we developed a software based on deep learning on Hebrew Twitter data (emotion-rich text) for predicting text-based emoji ("emotion faces").

"Are you happy?" (from Rita's song )

~ * ~

With respect to my doctoral studies, I completed my duties to the psychotherapy research lab. 

Tomorrow I start an internship at Amazon on the subject of humor. I hope the new research topic will bring feelings of humor and happiness!

The Corona and Me (2)

 

We are today at the end of the third lockdown in Israel. A lockdown that lasted six weeks in which parents are supposed to continue with the routine of their lives to work and function vigorously while simultaneously caring and educating their children.

We all grew up in a year. For my little daughter it's half her total life.

We learned to adapt to the situation.

The children learned to manage themselves. They developed the responsibility to get by on the zoom and to take care of food for themselves (they even once prepared for us!).

My husband and I found it more efficient and relaxed to divide the time by days of the week: 'Today I take care of the children, maintain the house and take care of meals for everyone and you work from morning to night and tomorrow the opposite' (unlike previous lockdowns that we tried to manage every day in shifts - 8 hours of work and  8 hours being with the kids - It was exhausting).

This time it was a lot less stressful (and even fun).

Writing code while the little one curls up on me and the third one practices with the ring-fit