Anxiety And Chassidus

MyLife Essay Contest

I’ve been living with anxiety for a long part of my life. Since anxiety comes so naturally, I became conscious of the dysfunction that it brings only once I was married and dealing with responsibilities for my own family.
I apply teachings and insights from chasidus to deal with my condition. Here is some of my background that helped shape my inner struggles.
I grew up as the second child in a family of nine, with a big age difference between myself and the siblings that followed. I felt very responsible to help my mother, and from quite early on I learned to put my needs second. I likewise learned from my domineering and loud, unpredictable, scandalizing, and condescending stepfather, that I was able to cope only by making sure I was not seen.

I learned to despise myself and to ignore my needs of joy and pleasure, becoming mainly driven by feelings of guilt and fear. I learned to please people and to avoid any friction.

Getting my early education in a Litvisher Yeshiva, there was congruence between my own self-hate and what I then perceived of as Mussar. For me, Judaism meant escaping from life. Physical life was a corridor[1] that I had to cross in order to get to the spiritual existence and away from my inner shame. I felt that I just needed to get through life without getting too dirty in the process.

And then I encountered Chassidus.

I learned about the concept of Dira Betachtonim[2] and it baffled and inspired me. Could it be that G-d so desperately wanted my lowly existence? Me? My body? My feelings? My history?

Likewise, until that point my Yetzer Hora had felt like a bad angel. It felt separate from me, an external being there only in order to tempt me. I was unable to understand it, and therefore, feared it. By changing its name to the animal soul[3] I realized that it too was a part of me – a relatable part, a part that I could get to know and learn to educate.

Equipped with this directive to be more accepting of myself, I realized that it was actually a religious matter to challenge myself! To engage myself! To not run away from myself!

The part of me that I have learnt to relate to as my animal soul was my primal, emotional, and instinctual self. It was my inner child and is well described in the image of the world of Tohu[4].

The inner child is disappointed in his failure to connect to others.

As I have since learned, it all started when my inner child felt needy of his parents. They were literally his whole life, and for him, every need was a matter of survival. They were everything and he was nothing. When the needs were provided he felt on top of the world, but without them he felt rejected and on the verge of death.

The child didn’t know how to ask for what he needed, and just acted out with the hope that he would be understood. In order to ask for his needs he needed to be a “somebody”, he needed to believe that he had a value and a right to be heard.

But the child didn’t know that he could achieve anything on his own, he felt as a totally depended being without a worth or rights. Therefore, he only tried to please or coerce the adult into providing him with what he needed. To the child, life looked black and white. Either he would live or he would die.

This tremendous dependency coupled with not feeling capable in any way on his own resulted in a disappointment and reliance upon the other. The parents were never able to fully provide for the powerful needs of the child, therefore the child felt rejected, unimportant, and unworthy of their time.

This pain is expressed in different ways by different people. Some people, who experience a similar pain, turn out to be emotionally needy and try unsuccessfully time and time again to gain the perfect parental figure. They continuously fail due to their desire to feel helpless as a way to finally get this outside force to do everything for them. They want to take no responsibilities nor give anything to the other, expecting only to receive in the same way a child was entitled to receive. Others learn to distance themselves from people in order to protect themselves from getting hurt, easing the pain of loneliness with wasteful pleasures.

The inner child of these people will produce a feeling of anxiety (or another post- traumatic response) whenever it is triggered with an experience that vaguely reminds it of the original pain. The responses are always irrational and intense[5], because, for that inner child at this moment, he is struggling with a life and death situation.

On the other hand, there is also a part of the person that has never abandoned the idea of living a life of connection, a life of trust, and a life of togetherness[6].This part is mature in its reactions, and looks at situations in a very specific manner. It embraces the complex, understands the concept of process, and knows how to put things into perspective.
It has a very secure sense of worth.

The triggers for my anxiety are all matters related to authority, usually associated with finances or dealing with formalities. I realized that at these moments I feel tremendous fear of rejection, fear of being misunderstood and not listened, fear that my life can be destroyed. I feel so alone. I naturally feel helpless and I freeze in the same way I did when I would face my stepfather’s scandals. The anxiety would be so strong that I would want it just to end. I felt at those moments that my life had nothing good about it and I would be completely consumed by the fear.

Today, I understand that the whole teachings of Chassidus are there to reestablish the trust in a relationship. Chassidus teaches that we must emulate the World of Tikun, which balances many different feelings that all need to be respected. Unlike the inner child that reacts like the World of Tohu, my conscious self is able to learn how to balance the positive against the negative and create a harmony, thereby growing as a human being.

I learned from Chassidus[7] that I am not worthless, that I will be heard, and that I’m never alone or abandoned, even if I do something wrong[8]. Regardless of my actions, I am still loved, and when something goes wrong in my life, there usually is enough good there for me to be able to deal with it. I learned that what I do counts and that I have the power to change things.

This is encapsulated in the understanding of Hashem’s unity. He is a Being without an ego or needs, and therefore, His capacity to connect with me is not based on any bias. He is with me regardless of my moral state and there is nothing too small for His attention[9]. That makes G-d the best possible friend I could have.

I use Davening as a vehicle for feeling this connection, and for reminding my traumatized self that I could learn to trust again. Usually my animal soul will not be responsive unless I first connect to the pain of being a lonely being[10]. Although the animal soul wants to stay alone and satisfy the pain with wasteful pleasures, through davening I explore another way. I try to replace the pain of loneliness with a yearning to find that I’m not alone, and the fear of abandonment in to a search for trust. I allow myself to see that life is not black and white – but it has shades. However, in order to see them I have to allow myself to understand things, learn to differentiate, and be more real.

Chassidus views the human struggle between feeling alone and being connected through a relationship as the essential struggle in life. The focus on Ahavas Yisroel that is found in Chassidus, is therefore core and essential[11] because the struggle between the two souls is all about whether a connected life is possible or not. A person who lives a life of connection will express it in all his interactions.
The animal soul, because of its misconceptions, has experienced a great pain in it’s failed attempt to connect. It painfully assumes itself unlovable. Therefore, it either creates neurotic[12] defenses against this pain or pursues a dysfunctional pattern of relationships that reproduces the pain all over again. On the other hand, the G-dly soul does not give up on living connected.[13]
Thus, to impact the views of my animal soul I have to educate it about my inherent unconditional worth, teach it to view reality with its complexity, experience life in a dialectic manner, and view life as a continuous ongoing process.

Here are the points of the above mentioned process.

1. Learn to identify the triggers for the anxiety.
2. Identify the theme of the triggers, identify the trauma.
3. Find the historical events that shaped the trauma to give the trauma a more precise definition and perspective. Usually related to the early relationship with parents.
4. Allow yourself to feel the pain of the trauma. Express it in a very simple one sentence. It will usually express a feeling where the self felt lost. “When this happens I feel worthless, unimportant, transparent, not loved, without a voice, helpless, abandoned, rejected, alone…”.
5. Allow yourself to see how the feeling is irrational, too intense, unrealistic.
6. Find and cultivate within yourself a mature voice that is able to hear and empathize with the negative feeling of the traumatized self in order to suit it.
7. Allow the mature self to see the more real and positive reality, by bringing out the person’s own capacities to deal with the given situation, that the situation is not as dramatic as perceived by the anxiety.
8. Allow yourself to feel how G-d is beyond and unrestricted by the given situation, that He gives importance to your connection with Him and creates events just in order to enhance this relationship. His love is unconditional. He wants you to act from a place of trust and not from a place of desperation. He will surely be there for you.

About the Author:

Rabbi Yossef Malkin is 43 years old and resides with his wife Navah and his 6 children in Betar Ilite, Israel. In the last 15 years since making Aliyah he has taught Chassidus and other Jewish subjects in Mayanot and Meorot Chabad, as well as numerous girls seminaries. For the past 10 years he has a private psychotherapy practice in Jerusalem where he receives clients for individual, marital and family therapy and works in English, French, Russian, Hebrew and Yiddish. He also has world wide clients via phone and skype. Rabbi Yossef Malkin can be reached at ynmalkin@013.net.

Footnotes and Sources:

1. Pirkei Avos 4, 16. Preface to Mesilas Yeshorim.

2. Basi Legani 5710

3. Tanya, Chapter 1

4. Tora Or Vayishlach
   The world of Tohu is described as a failed relationship between The Great Light and The Narrow Vessels in which the light couldn’t adapt itself to the vessels. This was due to the narrow view of the vessels that had only two options, full success or complete failure. This myopic point of view by the vessels resulted in the misconception that they were absolutely worthless in relationship to the light. Likewise, the unrelenting power of the light brought about the shattering of the vessels, in which they fell into a separate existence, believing that a relationship could never work for them again. In the world of Tikkun, however, the light was constantly adapting and the vessels were capable of complexities, each making itself reachable and understanding.

5. Since the world of Tohu has only two options, to be a king or die, every experience felt by this aspect of a person takes the intensity of survival, and is therefore irrational and intense.

6. The “healer” of the broken vessels is the name “Ma”, coming from the world of Tikun. See Tora Or Vayishlach.
   In this world the Light has adapted itself to the vessels, and therefore gave them an inherent sense of worth. The vessels are large and they inherently possess a dialectic and complex perspective that allows them to have a much more real appreciation of reality and have a more flexible view on success and failure. They therefore view life as a process.
   Also see Likutey Tora Tetze 37,4. The animal soul came through concealments and Tzimtzumim i.e. it has an inherent feeling of abandonment and rejection. However, the G-dly soul came directly from G-d without any intermediaries, and therefore it never feels abandoned.

7. Tanya, Chapter 33

8. Tanya, Chapter 24