Welcome to Emotional Wellness Daily. There’s a beautiful sefer that I've quoted in the past called Etzot V’Hadrachot/ Advice and Direction. It's based on correspondence between Dr. Greenwald and the great Steipler. Dr. Greenwald was a ben Torah who was also a psychologist, and he had a lot of correspondence with great rabbis on the topic of psychology.
There are many very interesting thoughts in the book that I'd like to share. He starts off by saying that from the moment a child is in the crib, he is impacted and influenced by the external things going on around him. That's well known, and he quotes a source from the Rambam, that human beings are influenced in the way they think and act by their friends, and by their surroundings. He says, and Rav Wolbe writes as well, that this impact is not something that's necessarily learned in the way you learn other things.
It's learned by modeling. You see what your mother does, and you act that way. You see the way the street acts and you act that way. This influence happens both on a conscious and a subconscious level. Therefore, he says, it's possible that people get a lot of ideas without even realizing it (by what we call osmosis today). These ideas are not at all sourced in logic, and definitely not from the Torah. They’re just misconceptions. These cognitions and preconceived notions cause pain, fear, anxiety, and scattered souls for no reason. Therefore, he says, we have to realize that there is no one in the world who doesn't make mistakes. We're all full of mistakes. That's human nature. He quotes a Pele Yoetz on a pasuk from David Hamelech, All people make mistakes.
It's not something to be embarrassed of, to say, I made a mistake. What's worse is to hold on to your mistake and say, I didn't make a mistake. That's a problem.
I’ll add the famous saying that I learned in elementary school, ‘To err is human, to forgive, divine.’
Human beings make mistakes. Who is greater than Moshe Rebbenu, about whom it says that he heard what his nephews told him,” and he wasn't embarrassed to say, ‘I made a mistake.’
A person always has to remember that he is prone to mistakes, and there's nothing wrong with knowing it.
In modern psychology, these errors are called cognitive distortions or thinking errors.
In the next day or so, we'll discuss some examples from Dr. Greenwald Today I just wanted to provide a background on the concept that people have unspoken rules that they live by, but they’re mistaken rules that they somehow just absorbed.
Some people just can’t admit that they a mistake, to the extent that they try to find another way of saying it. Rabbi Ades and his brother Rav David looked alike. Someone once came over to Rav Yehuda and started talking, and he realized that this fellow was though that he was talking to Rav David. He said, “You made a mistake. I'm Yehuda.
And the man said, “I didn't make a mistake. I thought you were David.” The man just couldn't say he made a mistake. He had to just reword it in a way that I didn't make a mistake. I just thought you were your brother. That's a type of cognitive distortion. It’s an unspoken rule. It’s not a conscious thought. We don't mean to think inaccurately, these things just happen automatically.
Somehow, they’ve crept into our thinking system over the years, and unless we learn to notice them, they can have powerful yet invisible effects upon our moods and our lives.
These distortions don't have any concrete evidence. As we said, they're not based on any logic or any Torah. They just somehow got into our brains as ways to think.
Be"H we will share some of his examples and some other common ones.
Have a wonderful day.