Active Participant: Stories about being a research subject

Research participants are sometimes the most important part of science. Without participants there is no data, and without data there are no findings. In this week’s episode, both of our storytellers become an active part of scientific research.

Part 1: Therapist Susan Fee signs up herself and her daughter for a stress management research study.

Susan Fee is a mental health therapist, living and working in Seattle. She is completing her certification as a Financial Therapist to help clients develop healthy stories around money. Susan is also the director of Brainpower Chronicles: Stories of Mental Health in support of the Washington Chapter of National Alliance on Mental Illness. Learn more at www.SusanFee.com.

Part 2: While suffering from a panic attack, comedian Kenice Mobley reflects on a psychology experiment about the impact of race on comfort that she took part in.

Kenice Mobley is a standup comedian and filmmaker who lives in Brooklyn, New York. Kenice performs stand up comedy around the world and recently made her late night debut on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. In 2021, she was listed as one of Vulture’s Comedians You Should and Will Know. In 2022, she performed at the Netflix is A Joke Festival as part of the taped show “Introducing….”.

Episode Transcript

Part 1

I'm in a dimly lit room looking through a two way mirror, watching my 15 year old daughter get questioned. I'm either the best mom in the world or the worst. Pretty sure I'm the worst.

We are both enrolled in a Stress Management study at Kent State University in Ohio. They're studying teenage daughters and their moms and I'm sure I don't have a problem with my stress but I do wonder if my daughter Gabrielle does, or maybe she's stressed about me and that's my real fear.

The researcher lady is just cold and deadpan. She makes Lilith from the TV show Frasier just look like a warm, cuddly bear. And she's explaining to Gabrielle how she's going to have to do these math problems in her head and give the answer out loud.

Now, this just puts me on edge right away. I mean, I did sign up for this study but I didn't really know everything it entailed. Here I am, staring at my daughter through a two way mirror and I know that she didn't know I was going to do that so it feels really invasive. But, also, come on, what mom doesn't want to know what her teenage daughter is really thinking?

Susan Fee shares her story at Jewelbox Theater in Seattle, WA in May 2023. Photo by Eliza Mercado.

So Gabrielle's sitting there with her long ponytail swinging around. She's got her soccer gear on, ready to go. And researcher lady says, “Okay, here's what's gonna happen. I'm going to give you a number, you subtract by sevens. So if I say 107, you say 100, and then 93.”

I think, “Okay, okay. Maybe this won't be so bad.”

She starts out and the researcher lady says to Gabrielle, “1,023”.

What? Like what kind of math bait and switch is that? I feel so anxious right now. I hate doing math in public. It sends me right back to being a teenager in seventh grade and I had to do the math problems on the chalkboard and I got it wrong and took that walk of shame back. And now I'm subjecting my own daughter to this.

But Gabrielle, she seems calm. She just starts in and she's giving these answers. She's about five deep and researcher lady says, “Stop. Wrong answer. Start over.”

I just want to take this lady out at her knees, but Gabrielle, she just takes a breath, she starts from the top and she keeps on going. This time, further. I'm impressed.

Then researcher lady, “Stop. Wrong answer. Start again.”

They do this one more round and then, finally, it's over. I just want to smash through this two way mirror, hug my daughter. She's not distraught but I am. I want to tell her the real reason we're doing this study, besides the reasons I already told her.

Yes, I'm in the mental health field and it's good to support research. And, yes, she's going to get paid and she likes money. And, yes, I may have pitched it as something fun and exciting to do. But the real reason is I want to find out how I'm doing as a mom.

All my life, I've asked two questions. What's it like to have a good mom and what's it like to be one. Because when I was Gabrielle's age, I had already been a caretaker of my mom for three years. That's when she had a massive stroke and was left in a vegetative state. It threw our family in into an uproar. My dad had to quit his job to take care of me and, together, we took care of my mom.

And as hard as that was, it was a relief. Because before that, my mom's alcoholism made our life so unpredictable and it left me in just this constant state of anxiety. Is this the day that she would show up at school drunk and naked or is this the day we'd be racing down the freeway with me captive in the back seat and we're eluding some phantom villains?

When I became a mom, I had one goal, don't be like my mother. But as far as what to do, I didn't really have a clue.

Researcher lady is back with Gabrielle and she tells her, “You're gonna have five minutes to come up with an original story and then you're gonna stand up in front and present it with no notes.”

Now, I want to hear this story, but then I don't, because like what if this is the time Gabrielle says my mother hasn't a clue. And then all the smart people come in and take her away. But instead, she tells a story about walking our dog to meet a friend.

And then researcher lady, about two sentences in, says, “Can you speak up? I can't hear you.”

Okay. This woman is in the wrong room. She needs to be in the casting audition for Mean Girls. Out of this business.

Gabrielle starts again, takes a deep breath, speaks louder. And then researcher lady cuts her off again and says, “I'm bored. Tell another story.”

On the spot, Gabrielle comes up with another story. 30 seconds in, researcher lady says, “That's enough. We're done.”

They put on this video of fish swimming and then take saliva from Gabrielle to test for her stress hormones. Meanwhile, they give me a questionnaire of my own, but they do not ask the hard questions. They don't ask what were you thinking when your daughter had walking pneumonia and you thought it was just a cold? And what kind of mom takes her kid biking for miles just assuming she's behind you but never checking if she's keeping up? She wasn't keeping up. Another family had to rescue her and reunite us.

It just seemed like I focused on the wrong things as a mom, like healthy eating. Isn't that what good moms do? I would pack Gabrielle lunch every day of quinoa and hummus, no fast food, no junk food. I thought it was doing the right thing but then all that meant that she was ostracized at school because nobody liked her food. They made fun of it.

We're back and finally, finally, finally they clear Gabrielle of the study. This horrible study is over and we're reunited. I can't get out of that office fast enough because in the hallway I finally have to ask Gabrielle, “Gabrielle, are you okay? How was it?”

She was, “Oh,” shrugs, “it was fine. We did some like test activities and… I don't know. I had to memorize stuff. It was fine.”

Now I wonder like should I tell her? Should I tell her now? What would a good mom do? Should I tell her that I saw her, I saw the whole thing?

I can't stand the guilt and I say, “I've got something to tell you.”

And she looks at me concerned, “What?”

And I explained that I didn't know but I watched and I had to watch the whole thing and I felt so bad and I'm so sorry.

She takes it all in and she looks at me and she says, “Wait? You, you saw all of that? You saw everything?”

“I did.”

“So you saw and heard everything, like even that researcher lady?”

“I did.”

A big smile breaks out and she says, “Oh, good, because now I don't have to try to explain to you what went on in there. Like she was horrible.”

And I said, “I know. She's horrible. I felt so bad but I felt so nervous for you.”

She stops me again and she said, “Did you ever think that they weren't studying me? They were studying you.”

On the car ride home, Gabrielle says, “Do you think just this once that we could get some fast food, like maybe chipotle?”

We both got double sour cream. We sat and we laughed and we laughed and we laughed about researcher lady and it was the best meal I ever had.

Thank you.

Part 2

I know this might be hard to believe but I have an anxiety disorder. Wow! Here at Caveat? Are you serious? Anxiety? We're going to get into it? Yes. Hello.

It really started manifesting itself when I worked at a startup. And when I say startup, I feel like some of you are thinking of like Google or something that has a lot of money and is making something that the world is asking for. I need you to lower those expectations tremendously. Think of like the third rate. Or like in colleges there's like Ivy League, not Community College level but right above it for startups.

Kenice Mobley shares her story at Caveat in New York, NY in December 2022. Photo by Zhen Qin.

I was going into the office and every day I would get so anxious. You know it's a bad job when you start to cry on the way in to work and then also leaving work, and that just kind of defines who you are as a person.

For one of my jobs, it was sales consulting in Boston, Massachusetts. Yes. We had to fly around the country to do sales consulting for lots of different companies. I should say I have claustrophobia and sometimes it's kind of mild, but when I am in a state where I am crying constantly it can get quite bad.

One time, I was on a plane and I had taken a pill so that I could calm down a little bit. But I woke up in the middle of the flight and my heart was racing. I was scared and I was doing that kind of quiet cry that you do as to not scare the people around you. Are you guys familiar? Where you're like, “I promise I'm not up to anything bad or anything. It's just a hard time.”

But I could feel in my body that a panic attack was building and it was going to happen and so it was like just breathe, breathe. Okay. I was like, “No. I'm gonna get a professional. I'm gonna get some help because this is a moment where I don't feel totally solid.”

So I go up to the flight attendant, because they're a sky professional. I start crying at this woman and I tell her I am about to have a panic attack. She looks at me confused and kind of scared and just like, “What do you want me to do?”

Simultaneously, a man who's 6'2 gets up and puts his hand on what looks to be a gun and says, “Do we need to land this plane?” Because, apparently, if you do want to find out who the air marshal is, having a panic attack is a way to do it. And if any of you, some of you, have anxiety, then you know that maybe a tall man with his hand on a gun shouting at you isn't the best way to de escalate your emotional state.

So then I have a full blown panic attack at both of them and everyone is doing that thing where you just like try to make it so that you're as far away from the incident as possible whereas you make no eye contact with the people. So a plane full of people looking elsewhere while I freak out in the middle. I'm hyperventilating and I can't get it together.

But then a very nice black flight attendant pops her head from the back and is like, “Girl, do you drink?”

Normally, a 9:30 flight to New Orleans, the answer is no. Normally. But I needed to calm down so she put me on a box in the middle of the aisle and fed me wine until I stopped scaring the other passengers. That was the strategy.

I was like, “Okay, I have a solution. I have a system.”

Unfortunately, that system does not work all the time. You cannot just drink wine and I mean even though it was New Orleans, let's be real. I mean, come on. You guys have been. But I had to figure out something because I worked in Boston.

So I would take the train every morning. Boston, I don't know have you guys been? You've been? My favorite description of Boston is actually from an onion article where they say a small town every morning wakes up and pretends to be a city. Yes, that's Boston and I was doing that work.

So I was putting on my little suits, because it's sales consulting and I was going in, and I was absolutely panicked. I was on the train. I have claustrophobia. It's packed. It's the middle of Boston winter so everyone not only is in there tightly but they're all wearing lots and lots of layers because it's like 20 degrees conservatively.

We stopped between train stations, which is very common. It kind of happens here but it happened in Boston all the time. So between two train stations the train just stops and I start panicking. I can feel my breath speeding up and I can feel my heart speeding up.

I've been to therapy for this so I'm trying to do all of the things they've taught me to do to calm down in these moments of panic. I'm thinking about a place that makes me calm and makes me feel centered and relaxed. I'm imagining my bedroom and then I'm imagining my bedroom on fire.

I'm doing the thing where they're like, “Okay, plant yourself in your feet. Really pay attention to how you feel, your toes, then your whole feet, then your ankles, then your legs.” I'm just slowly imagining all of those things being submerged in water and all of us just drowning and dying.

So I cannot get it together and I'm doing again the slow, it's starting, that little cry that you try to keep to yourself that everyone tries not to look at. But my body goes from being mildly chilly to approximately 500 degrees.

And I think, “Okay, the only thing I know to do in this moment is to take my clothes off.” So, I slowly start unzipping my jacket. And there's so many people. It's not like my clothes go anywhere. They're just like sitting around me based on all the people.

But I take my jacket off and I take the over layer of my pants. I'm wearing two pairs of pants because it's Boston, it's winter. And then I'm just in a button up shirt and leggings and starting to sob. I can't breathe and I can't control it.

Then this lady, she's white and she looks quite old. When I say old, she looks like have you guys been to a classic art museum and seen paintings of women in the 1880s? She looks like she was one of those women. Everything was wrinkled in such an interesting way but I didn't know that wrinkles how they could cover every possible part of one’s skin.

But she very nicely reaches out and is like, “Do you want to hold my hand?”

Very sweet, but a little bit of backstory. In college, I had lots of jobs and one of those jobs was working at Duke University's psychology research lab. One thing that they wanted to research, I was there for something else. We were doing a recreation of the Clark doll study wherein we present dolls of different colors to children and ask them which one is preferable. It's the study that was used in I think 1954 the Brown versus Board of Education. Thank you. It was used to tell school districts that this segregation was actively hurting the psyche of black children.

At any rate, we were recreating it and surprise, surprise, the results were the same. It hasn't changed much. But they did notice, they were like, “Hey, we noticed that you're black. Do you think you could come help us with a study?”

I was like, “Sure, I'd like to make some money.”

So what the study was is it was testing to see if race affected how comforted people were by holding someone's hand, because they knew that in studies of people, like white people, that holding hands with someone lowers someone's level of stress. And they wanted to see if that changed based on the hand of the person who was offering comfort.

So, for a summer, my job was to wait behind a curtain and they would tell, the researchers would tell a person to relive a horrible experience, describe the worst thing that ever happened to them. And at a moment indicated by the researchers, I would slip my hand through a curtain and just hold on to their hand. That was my job for a summer.

I heard stories about trauma and parenting and some things that you were like, “Okay, that's the worst thing that ever happened to you? Okay.” And at the end, they paid me.

They gave me the results of the study, although they didn't pay me as much as they should have. They gave me the results of the study. The race of the hand does affect how comforted the person is. So white people would be comforted by a white hand. Black people would be comforted by a black hand. White people would be comforted by a black hand but it was less so than if it had been offered by a white person.

So back to me, crappy startup, having a panic attack on a train, when this lady who was… let's call her Methuselah. When this lady offered me her hand, it was very frustrating because my first thought was I don't know if this is going to work in the way that you think it's going to work. But I was still panicking and I was still unable to control myself. And at that moment, I did take that woman's hand and I did feel comforted.

We held hands until the train finally moved and pulled into Harvard station. That's the station. We both got off and she gave me a hug and she told me that she hoped I would be okay. And it was just a clear sign to take help wherever you can get it, because, hey, some people are nice and that's all that you need at the moment.

I'm Kenice. Thanks.