Welcome to Emotional Wellness Daily, a project of SIMHA, the Sephardic Initiative for Mental Health Awareness.
We have been going back and forth, myself and Dr. Katzenstein, discussing different skills and techniques for mental health. The last thing that Dr. Katzenstein mentioned was the concept of having a gauge of sorts for your values, so that whenever you're in question about what to do, you come back to that values- gauge.
He gave the example of how when pilots fly at very high speeds, they sometimes get confused and experience spatial disorientation, which is when the pilot does not know if he's up or down. The only way he knows where he is is by looking at the compass on the screen that tells him which way is up.
That's the psychological approach, of having your inner value system be a gauge, which is true.
And now I’d like to add a Torah twist. I heard almost the exact same mashal on the following: The Torah tells us in Devarim 17,8
כִּ֣י יִפָּלֵא֩ מִמְּךָ֨ דָבָ֜ר לַמִּשְׁפָּ֗ט
When you don't know what to do…
in a court case or judgment, etc…
Go to the Sanhedrin and ask them what the law is. And once they tell you the law, and you do based on what they tell you….
לֹ֣א תָס֗וּר מִן־הַדָּבָ֛ר אֲשֶׁר־יַגִּ֥ידֽוּ לְךָ֖ יָמִ֥ין וּשְׂמֹֽאל
Don't veer right or left.
Why is that term right or left used? Rashi says, quoting the Midrashim, that even if they say your right is left and your left is right, you must listen to them. That's a little strange. What does it mean? Why would they tell you your right is left and your left is right?
I know what I'm doing. How could that be?
And the mashal is given that there are times in life where you think you know what you're doing. Like in the case of that pilot, it where it looksd like he was going up. But if they say you're going down, you're going down. This is an important principle. You can't always trust yourself.
People have this a difficulty- we think we know what we're doing. To use another metaphor, a man driving home from a party doesn't think he's drunk. He has to trust the person that's telling him he’s drunk, even though he thinks he’s not.
This is important in emotional wellness as well. Quite often, there are people that are going through struggles and they don't know that they're struggling.
You have to be able to trust, sometimes not even your own values or your own system- sometimes you have to be able to trust outsiders, because it's not always so simple that your inner compass is working. We have to be aware of that. Sometimes someone tells you, “You need help.” Don't deny it. And sometimes a lot of people say you need help. And then, like the story of the guy driving down the highway in the wrong direction, he wonders what's wrong with everybody. He thinks they’re all lunatics, because they're all going against traffic. Well, if it seems like everyone's going against traffic, maybe you're the one going against traffic!
This concept might not be exactly the same lesson that was brought out by Dr. Katzenstein, but it’s important to have the ability to trust others when when your own compass is not working correctly.
Have a wonderful day.