When I was growing up in North Carolina my father worked at a radio station and my next-door neighbor was a television repairman. This led me to develop an interest in electronics, back in the days of tubes and resistors and capacitors, before the solid state printed circuits of today. I studied wiring diagrams and remember building my first single diode radio, and then later a one-tube radio, which required stringing enormous amounts of wire from tree to tree in our front yard to make an antenna. After working on this project for some time, it was amazing to finally connect the batteries and watch the little vacuum tube begin to glow, and then begin recieving a radio broadcast from WOWO in Fort Wayne, Indiana. The electrical signal from this small radio was so tiny, however, that you could only hear the music when wearing a headset.
One of the concepts I learned in my study of electronics was that of amplification. Many times in working with electronics the source signal is too weak to really do anything with it. The current generated by sound waves striking a microphone generate a small electrical current, but not so large as to power a speaker. An amplifier is another electrically powered device that takes the small electrical signal and allows that signal to make large changes in its own voltage output, and these large changes are enough to then power speakers and so forth.
Another principle we learned about in electronics class was feedback. Feedback means that not all of the output voltage from the amplifier is used to power the speakers or other device, but is routed back to the source. In amplifiers, this voltage is often out of phase with the input voltage, and helps to dampen it. This helps to cancel out large swings in the system and add stability. This is negative feedback. Think of taking a marble and a bowl, and releasing the marble from one side of the bowl. The marble goes back and forth several times before settling at the bottom.
However, much of what we commonly call feedback is unintentional positive feedback. This typically occurs outside the amplifier when a microphone is placed near a speaker. Sound generated by the microphone creates sound from the speaker, which is then picked up by the microphone and so on until a loud squeal results and everyone covers their ears. The sound has gotten out of control. Think about our bowl and marble, but this time, the bowl is upside down. If you place the marble on top of the inverted bowl, it runs off out of control onto the floor.
Rarely does anyone feel your pain and suffering as acutely as you do. You may not actually be the one afflicted with a particular problem, but your loved one is, and sometimes watching them suffer generates enormous pain for us. In fact, I have seen many cases where the family members of ill patients were suffering far more than the patient, because the patient was medicated or unconscious. Most of the time, however, when we are not actually involved in the suffering process, we do not experience the same degree of distress.
As physicians, we are trained observers of others who suffer. We must assist others in their suffering, yet not yield to each and every pang, for if we did we would not be able to function and make some of the difficult decisions we must make and help others to make. Yet we must also not abandon all empathy. There has to be a middle ground, between cold-hearted dispassion on the one hand and hypersensitive blubbering on the other. We should not minimize the pain felt by others, for it is real. Yet sometimes the amplifiers get caught up with feedback and the whole system gets out of control.
What I am talking about is a loss of perspective. Sometimes when we suffer, the actual problem may not be so horrible, but by the time we finish worrying about it and obsessing over it and working out worst case scenarios we have allowed our problems and our minds to establish feedback to the point where we are escalating the problem to a loud squeal that drowns out what we need to hear from the Lord. I am very guilty of this myself with my own problems, yet perfectly capable of looking at someone else's difficulties and saying, "So what's the big deal?" We have different perspectives on our own problems compared to someone else's.
Still, when it is us who is suffering, I would encourage you try and stop the feedback loop that is amplifying your suffering and go to the Word of God, what He has done for you and His promises. One of my favorite writers, D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, once said that we must take ourselves in hand. We must talk to ourselves instead of allowing "ourselves" to talk to us. As he put it, "Most of our unhappiness in life is due to listening to yourself rather than talking to yourself. " Go back to the things you know are true-- what Christ did for you on the cross, your assurance in salvation. Stop listening to the voice that is turning up the volume on your anxiety and worry and distress and tell yourself the truths God has given us. If our worst-case scenario is death, then the worst the Christian can expect is to spend eternity in Paradise. (Luke 23:43) Take the microphone away from the speakers, and break the feedback squeal that keeps getting louder.
Peace and equanimity should follow. And even if you have lost all your marbles save one, at least turn your bowl right side up so it will stop rolling around and settle to a stop.
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