Welcome to Emotional Wellness Daily, a project of SIMHA, the Sephardic Initiative for Mental Health Awareness.
I'd like to start off with an interesting story that I heard from Rav Wolbe many years ago. (I tried to find it inside but I was not able to, you'll just have to trust me) He said that the Chafetz. Chaim, lo alenu, lost a grandchild, and it was obviously a tremendous tragedy. Everybody was in the home morning before the funeral, and obviously it was a terrible scene, with the people getting ready to go to the funeral. But the Chafetz Chaim stopped everyone and said, We must all eat now. Everyone looked at that as strange.
Everybody has to eat? Now?
The explanation behind it is that even when things are going on that are difficult and stressful, we still have a responsibility to what, in the modern world, is called self-care. This is an important point. Self-care is not selfish.
Hillel, before his shower, would say, “I'm taking care of my host. My body is my host.”
I've gotten quite a few calls, by and large, from the female population, about feeling guilty for doing anything mundane. So we have to understand what I think was the Chafetz Chaim’s lesson, that the Satan will interfere with anything, and he knows that if he causes you to burn out, you're not going to be able to deal with stressful situations properly. So therefore, to prevent burnout, one must realize that those things that we do for self-care aren't selfish.
We're doing them because we need to function. We need to sleep well, we need to eat well, we need to exercise, and we sometimes need to relax.
It's interesting that in wartime, they send entertainment to the soldiers. Somebody showed me a got a beautiful video clip on Erev Shabbat, of two Israeli soldiers playing Shalom Alechem on their guitars. Why were they doing that? Don't they know that they're going into wartime?
The answer is that they understand that if they're moping and crying, they're not going to be successful. They needed that pick-me up. And the same is true with us. We're in a situation that's not going away in a day or two. We're here for the long haul. Hopefully there'll be a very fast, successful Gaza operation, but the difficulty will be there. And therefore, we cannot just go on, high adrenaline, no sleep, no eating, no mundane forever.
We have to pace ourselves, be balanced and realize that it is not selfish to have self-care. The Chafetz Chaim was giving that message to his family- that even though, Lo Alenu, there was a tragedy, you must eat, you must sleep, you must take care of yourself.
It may take a bit of a recalibration to realize that eating is not selfish.
The things that we're doing in our physical lives are supposed to be a service to Hashem. Rabbi Miller used to say that before you go to sleep at night, you should say, ‘I'm going to sleep so that I have strength to serve my Creator.’ Rambam actually discusses this. So maybe that is something we can do. We love to add spirituality to mental health, so maybe the person that feels guilty, so to say, that they're eating or sleeping or exercising or walking or running, or whatever else they do for self-care, can say those words out loud before their self-care.
I am now taking care of myself so that I will have strength and energy to do what I need to do to help. Whether it's sending packages, saying tehilim, selling candies at the corner, or whatever it may be that I'm doing, I need strength and energy and I can’t burn out.
This is an important concept in these times.
Have a wonderful day.