We spoke previously about the many voices inside of us, and how that traces itself back to Adam HaRishon before the sin. These concepts are also involved in mental health and we'll soon see how we can use mental health concepts to deal with our emotions, our desire, and even our Avodat Hashem.
In the book Brain Lock, Dr. Jonathan Schwartz writes about OCD and his approach when dealing with people who get stuck with intrusive thoughts. He says that the first step is to separate yourself from your thoughts and realize that your brain is creating messages. He likes to quote a line from one of his patients who used to say, “It's not me, it's my OCD.”
This concept, called CBT, Cognitive Behavior Therapy, is when a person learns to recognize his thoughts (cognition is thought), and tells himself to label the thought:
“That thought is an OCD thought. That's not me. It's something inside of me that's talking to me.”
And as we mentioned, we can apply this to Avodat Hashem as well. When you walk by an ice cream store and you say, I want the ice cream, you have to label it, “That's a desire thought. That's not me talking. My desire grabbed the microphone and is talking. The voice sounds like mine, but it's not.” You don't really want to eat it. But due to the sin, we can't separate ourselves from the voices inside of us.
Rav Wolbe bases this on a Gemara that discusses a person who gets angry, and says, “Today the Yetzer Hara tells you do this…then that… and then he tells you to worship idols.”
As the pasuk says,
EizehHu El Zar Asher BLibo shel Adam/ Who is the foreign god that is in your heart?
That's the Yetzer Hara.
Simply speaking, this means the Yetzer Hara is like a foreign God because you're worshiping the Yetzer Hara.
But Rav Wolbe gives a deeper explanation. He says the Yetzer Hara is a god of strangeness who makes you strange to yourself. He makes you think that the emotions and the feelings that are inside of you are you when they aren’t.
This is to the extent, he says, that when it comes to anger (specifically), a person will punch someone or punch a wall or break something. Then he’ll say, “I wasn't myself.”
You weren't yourself?!
That means you realized that that force wasn't you; it was something else inside of you that you thought was you. That's what anger does to you. And it's not just anger. The Yetzer Hara can cause you to think that you're someone else.
Stage number one is to peel yourself away and realize that that's not you- that’s an important step.
We're going be talking about Savlanut, which means to tolerate or hold something, and you can't tolerate or hold a feeling if you think you are the feeling. In order to work with a feeling or thought, the first step is to realize that that thought is not you. That feeling is not you. It's just a thought. It's just a feeling.
רַבּ֣וֹת מַחֲשָׁב֣וֹת בְּלֶב־אִ֑ישׁ וַעֲצַ֥ת ה׳ הִ֣יא תָקֽוּם
Many plans are in man's heart, but the counsel of Hashem will prevail.
This is an important first step in emotional wellness- to start realizing that your thoughts and your emotions and your feelings aren’t you.
Who are you? You’ll have to stay tuned to find out who you are.