Welcome to Emotional Wellness Daily. We continue with our discussion about why you cannot necessarily cure anxiety using religion.
At the Torah U’Mesorah convention that I attended this past week, a Dr. Steven Kurtz spoke on the topic of Anxiety, OCD and Selective Mutism. While he was talking about anxiety, he was wearing a button that said, “Be comfortable with being uncomfortable,” because basically, anxiety is about having a low frustration tolerance for anxiety.
The person is uncomfortable with the unknown. There is an inability to tolerate uncertainty.
They are uncomfortable with being uncomfortable, which all basically means that when a person has anxiety, he has this feeling that something's wrong, something's up, something's just uncomfortable. He doesn't really even know why.
In OCD, which is a type of anxiety disorder, the person feels that his hands are contaminated. He doesn't know why. He just has this feeling, and he obsesses about it. In order to calm down this uncomfortable feeling, he has a compulsion to wash his hands, to get rid of the bad feeling. But the problem with that is, every time you wash your hands, you're giving more credibility to that falsehood. And the you more you do it, the more real it becomes.
In another example, the more you avoid the dog, the bigger the dog becomes. The only way to deal with all of these issues is with what is called exposure therapy. You expose yourself to whatever it is, and you slowly begin to tolerate that uncomfortable feeling of the dog, the germs etc….
They tell the person to go touch the toilet seat, or whatever else they need to do, to expose them to the situations that they're avoiding. You have to be able to be uncomfortable. And being comfortable with being uncomfortable is the only cure.
During this speech, someone raised a hand and asked about religious people saying pesukim when they get scared, such as Shiviti Hashem L’Negdi Tamid to calm their anxiety.
Of course, he said, it doesn’t work, because you’re really not solving the problem. The problem is that you're having this uncomfortable feeling. You are walking down the street, and you see the dog. So you can go and say the pasuk, Lo Yichratz Kelev Leshono. It’s nice to use a religious one, but all you really just did was you said, I'm being uncomfortable.
I can’t tolerate being uncomfortable. This pasuk will make me comfortable, but you didn't really solve the problem. The way to solve the problem is by allowing yourself to be uncomfortable. Now, of course, there is a place for Bitachon when there really is something serious.
Of course, we all believe in bitachon. When you have a problem, rely on Hashem to get you out of the problem. But here, we're not relying on Hashem to get us out of a problem. We are using bitachon sometimes almost as a compulsion to deal with our negative feelings.
It could be a rabbit's foot or anything else that you're using, but you're not really relying on Hashem.
You're just trying to get away from that feeling by using religion. And if anything, it might make it even worse because you keep on seeking that assurance.
There are people that are addicted to listening to Bitachon classes because they listen to a Bitachon class, it calms them down, then their anxiety goes up again, so they listen to another Bitachon class.
It can almost become a compulsion of sorts.
And, again, of course we're not saying we don't believe in Emunah and bitachon. Of course we do. But if it's not used properly, it could exacerbate the problem and not really cure it.
Again, I am a big believer in Emunah and bitachon, but when we're dealing with mental illness, it can be misused. It’s like the man who says Keriat Shema 1,000 times because he thinks he got the words wrong. The Steipler wrotes letters to these people about how to deal with it. It’s like the person who always thinks he's unclean. Of course, it's religious to say Keriat Shema, but the man that keeps on saying it is not coming from a religious place. It's coming from a place of anxiety and disorder, and we have to treat the anxiety and disorder.
I hope this is clear.
Have a wonderful day.