Confronting the Suicide Crisis in Our Community: Rabbi YY Jacobson in Conversation with Leigh Ioffe

The Yeshiva.net Hi everyone. My name is Leah Fein. I'm the founder and director of The Long Short Road. The Long Short Road is a non-profit organization that was founded in 2019 to help foster resilience in the world through suicide prevention and mental wellness education. Our reach is global. We support everyone from all ages and stages of life, from teenagers to mental health professionals and everyone in between. Um with crisis management services and programs that help foster resilience through holistic mental wellness, including art and writing. It is my great honor and pleasure to now present to you the full conversation that I had with Rabbi YY Jacobson on suicide prevention, mental wellness, and doing the inner work to help heal the world. Enjoy. Okay. My guest today is Rabbi YY Jacobson. Rabbi Jacobson is one of the most sought-after speakers in the Jewish world today and a mentor to many thousands across the globe. He has traveled to hundreds of communities in six continents, educating and inspiring people of all backgrounds with the depth of Torah and Judaism. Rabbi Jacobson was the first rabbi to ever be invited by the Pentagon to deliver the religious keynote to the US military chief of chaplains and to the National Security Agency. Rabbi Jacobson, thank you for being here and welcome. Thank you so much for the opportunity and the privilege and the invitation. I'm glad to be here. Thank you. So, as someone who really has seen it all in terms of where the Jewish world is holding today, from your perspective Well, I guess actually before I ask the question, I'll preface by saying that we're having this conversation as of as of the time that we were having this conversation, there were unfortunately over 10 um confirmed suicides in the Jewish community around the United States. And that we're in a a level of crisis that feels unprecedented. I know that word is overused these days, but it feels unprecedented. From your perspective what would you say are the biggest um challenges that we're facing in the Jewish community today? Leah, before I answer I want to answer the question, but I would like to hear before I answer this question I would like to hear from you as somebody who's been dealing for a very, very long time with this suicide I don't know what to call it, the suicide plague, malady, tragedy, crisis that we have been dealing with for years in our community. Sometimes more exposed, sometimes less exposed. Some families have hidden it, they don't want people to know because of the family reputation. So, I would like to hear from you you know, as somebody with boots on the ground and really in the field and on I would say on the front lines in terms of your work and your your your the programs and the initiatives that you created and the education of the public I really want to hear from you what you're seeing and what you're experiencing and what your feedback is and if you could speak to a 16 million Jews today and you could speak to all of the communities, men, women, children, teenagers young men, young women, parents, young parents, older parents, you know, what would you tell them from your hands-on experience? Ooh, I didn't and then and then I'll give you my comment. expect that, but I I appreciate that you're turning the question on me. And then I'll give you my comment. It's not to avoid. I I just want to I I I I the reason is because, you know, since you you this is your specific field of work. Yeah. you know, you have sometimes a general practitioner who can give a general perspective. Sure. But sometimes you want to tune into the person, you know, the cardiologist who's dealing with the heart all day and all night. So, that's why I feel it'll just be a much more informed and enlightened uh response. I appreciate Can hear from you. So, I'll tell you. In terms of suicide I think what we're seeing and again, I use that word unprecedented and I don't like to use that word because it got so overused during COVID. But I I do think that we're seeing something happening now in the frum community. I don't I don't actually I mean, I know that suicide has always been a issue that we've struggled with. I don't know that it's actually ever been this bad. When I got started a decade ago, I don't remember hearing about so many numbers in such a short amount of time. And what's been happening in the last eight or nine weeks is unfortunately not new. Um I've been seeing patterns like this already for a year or two. Um I think that well, I know from the research, but also from lived experience that suicide is a symptom of underlying causes. It's not who the person is, it's not their identity. It's not, "Oh, this person is suicidal, they're a problem, they're unfixable." Underneath that underneath that psychache, that's the the psychological term that's used, is a host of challenges that are leading the person to feel "I can't go on with my life in this way." And their perspective is very narrowed on, "I have to look for a solution to end my pain and this is the solution and it will be better for everyone if I'm not here." Whether or not that's actually true, and it's and most often it's not true to a person who's struggling with suicide they're not they're not able to think logically and rationally. And I think if I could speak to the whole to everyone, and I do speak to people from all ages and all stages of life it's a twofold answer that I would say. One, we do have a very big problem on our hands. And the second thing is though is that I do have hope and I do know that it's possible for people with even chronic suicidal ideation and behavior to heal and to live meaningful healthy, strong lives. Um but I think that this issue is so misunderstood and more than depression, more than anxiety, more than trauma cuz we're talking about all that stuff now, I think. In the I mean main issue that's misunderstood? Could you pinpoint what is misunderstood? That I think that when people hear the word suicide, they panic. "Oh my god, this person is a liability. Oh my gosh, this person's going to do something. They're going to hurt themselves or they're going to try to hurt me or they're you know, we they're they're out of their minds, they're not in their bodies, they're crazy." That's where we tend to go. And I think we're much more understanding of people who struggle with depression or who have post-trauma. But then you add in suicide as a factor of the equation and then it's hands off, even with mental health professionals. I've been in this field for a decade. It's very hard to find mental health professionals that will take on a patient who openly acknowledges suicidal ideation because of the legal liability. So, you have hundreds of people walking around with this issue and the professionals who are supposed to help them are scared to. And I've heard this from their mouths. And what's your message to them? What's your message to all these mental health professionals and all members of our community when they hear or see a suicide potential? Stop being afraid of people. We all know pain. We all know what it's like to feel pain. We all know what it's like to be in so much pain that we will do anything to get out of it, even things that are extreme and make no sense logically. And you know, connection is the gateway to healing. And when people feel stigmatized and they feel othered, right? We're creating an us versus them mentality. It it it drives to separate us in a way that makes healing almost impossible. Powerful. I want to ask you two questions. Number one, in the recent suicides that have become frequently much more often, are you seeing a certain age demographic or anything specific in which you can categorize it or no, it's just No. That's what's you know, when I got started, it was mostly what I was aware of was teenagers because that was the demographic I was working with. And then as my view expanded and I started getting trained it's this is a not an issue that discriminates. Meaning you know, there are some populations that are at higher risk than others, but that's not to say that, you know, adult men don't struggle with this issue. Suicide is is a is I think the fourth leading cause of death in adult men ages 30 to 60. Like that's my my age group. I'm in my 30s. That's, you know, that's people that daven next to my husband in shul. And it's also teenagers and it's also older men. Um And we've seen it. I mean, the recent suicides that I was aware of were Monsey, Borough Park, Lakewood, Chicago, Miami, Texas, Los Angeles. And it's every it's everyone from Reform to ultra-Orthodox. It's not I it's not just a not a discriminatory issue, you know. And males and females also? Actually, with this most recent um challenges, it's been mostly men. Which is also congruent with the research. It's that's what from the statistics, that's what we know that men are more likely to They're not more likely to attempt, but they are more likely to die by suicide than women. Partially because the shame for men, you the masculinity thing, "Oh, I'm so weak, I couldn't even finish the job." So to speak, halila, we should never, you know so they feel like they have to go all the way because the shame of the other side of Right, I get it. Can you describe to us what is the nature of the pain that leads somebody not just to think of suicide or ponder it, but actually execute it? In other words, we all have pain. Right. We all know people that have mental illness. Right. We all know people, sometimes ourselves or others around us, children, friends, neighbors, relatives, siblings, who struggle struggle deeply Right. with all different types of internal anxiety, stress, and fear, overwhelming emotions. What is the border that one crosses experientially and energetically from the point of saying, "I am miserable. I hate my life. Why did you pick on me? I hate Pesach. I hate my I hate my parents. I hate my spouse. I hate I hate I hate I'm done. I'm finished. This is sick. I am miserable." From that point crossing the border of saying "It's time to terminate my life." Can you Can you take me as much as possible Give me a tour of that emotional shift? Sure. I think for every person it's such a It's a great question. It's also such a nuanced response because for every person it's so different. You know, one of the one of the main factors that I have seen is what keeps people from crossing that line is a sense of connection, having and it doesn't necessarily have to mean family. I've worked with hundreds of people who have literally no one to turn to. Right? Their parents are alive for all intents and purposes, this person is an orphan. Right? No one to turn to and still there is a sense of hopefulness that keeps them going. Um sometimes that hopefulness is so deep down buried inside they don't even recognize it's there, but is there there's almost it's you know, it's like a sense of it's like a it's a dance. It's like a sense of ambivalence. I don't want to die, but I want this pain to end and they kind of oscillate between the two. I think for every person it's it's so different. It could be something that triggers them. You know, they're leading up with hope for something something something something and then the thing that they're hoping for doesn't happen. Um or you know, it could be something as extreme as a marriage ending or a breakup or even a breakup between friends. Right? I've worked with young people that the the thing that pushed them over the line was that their friends ended you know, young girls, high school girls, yeshiva bachurim whose friends couldn't handle it and couldn't handle their intensity anymore from how much help was needed that they pushed them away and that's the that was the driving factor to lead them over the edge. But for every person it's so you know one of the ways that we describe it is that a person who's struggling with suicidal ideation kind of gets this feeling of tunnel vision where it's almost like they have binoculars glued to their eyes and it's very difficult for them to take perspective of what's happening outside of this view that they have. And so for people who stay over the stay you know, on the side of the line of I'm miserable, but I don't want to die, it's I can I have the capacity to get to my prefrontal cortex and take the binoculars down from time to time. Doesn't mean that I'm always able to access that part of myself but I can take the binoculars off and from time to time see that there's more going on than than that could contribute to my healing and not just my pain. For many people though, right? That ability to to get to here and to get to that you know, part of themselves that's able to think rationally and logically gets tipped over the edge by something and it could be very small. Um but that's also why so it's so imperative that as a community we have the resources and the ability to help people who are struggling because I've seen firsthand how one conversation makes the difference between life and death. So what would you suggest if somebody comes in to shul or to a house, tells a friend, a parent, a sibling, a neighbor a random person, "I want to kill myself." A mental health professional they may share with. You said one conversation could make the difference. What would that conversation look like that could make the difference? The conversation has to be like immersed, like bathed in compassion. And judgment has to have no place in this. Yeah. Just like you know, so the the thing I tell people is if you receive a disclosure, the first thing you do is take a very deep nourishing breath and ground yourself so that you can connect. Will you maybe panic? Maybe you Maybe you'll be overwhelmed? Okay. But have the wherewithal to have a human-to-human, heart-to-heart conversation with the person and not immediately, "Oh my god, what am I going to do?" Think them for sharing. Thank you for telling me. I can't imagine how scary that was for you to open up to me. You know, because sometimes and I've seen this, someone you know, let's say a man walking into shul, he will have already disclosed to three or four people that he was struggling and those people shut him down already. So he's coming to you and saying, "This is my last chance. I'm asking this person if they shut me down, that is proof that I should not be here." And when you can say to that person, "I know that was really scary. I can't imagine how much courage that took to tell me. Thank you and I want to hear more about what's going on." And create a sense of safety where you know it's almost like I've heard I've heard different therapists use this and I and I like to to use this also. It's almost like we're letting them borrow our nervous system. We're letting them what? We're letting them borrow our nervous system. Borrow our nervous system. That's a beautiful line. Like they're so dis co-regulation. But in a way if when a person is dysregulated, right? Rabbi, you know, when a kid is I mean to take it a different direction, when a child is having a tantrum, they're not hearing, "Why are you crying? Why are you upset? How can I help you? Let me get you an ice cream." All they hear is more noise. Chaos. So when a person is about to make a disclosure of suicide and by the way, it's usually not so straightforward that they say, "Help. I'm thinking about killing myself. Help me not." Right. Right? It's usually like they're kind of dancing around the issue and they're almost waiting for us to be um compassionate enough to say, "Hey, I noticed you're not doing so great." It's like a girl I know, her mother was in the middle of a conversation at the Shabbos table with some adults. She's a teenager. And you know, the mother stopped the conversation because the girl came in and she's like, you know, ran them. Matter of fact, she's like, "You don't have to be afraid to talk about suicide in front of me. I tried cutting myself five times." Wow. Wow. Boom. Oh my gosh. See if only God forbid that everyone should be that straightforward. But most often they're not. Right. Right. And and I think that the I would like to zoom into one point you made. We often don't realize that our deepest work in helping other people who are at the brink of suicide and at the brink of really at the brink of of you know, complete disaster and despair is really our own internal work. Yeah. That's really where it's at. You know, we often point fingers like, "You're too crazy for me to deal with you. Like go to a professional, you know, I wasn't trained for this." Which is essentially reinforcing their internal sense of despair and their internal sense that nothing and nobody can help me. You know, here is here is a calm person who even I managed to trigger and un-end their own nervous system. So it's really it's such such deep internal work of being fully fully present with yourself, like watching what just happened to you. How dysregulated I just become from what I just heard and can I actually display to the person a sense that I'm not afraid of them? Right. Because if they feel that I need to run away emotionally and detach and go offline because of them, it means that even the most normal people are completely rattled and destroyed from me. So it means I'm really a basket case. I am truly a loser. I am truly a curse to civilization and to society. I was actually talking today to a a non-Jewish therapist in England, a female Jewish not a non-Jewish female therapist in England who has has had a lot of success in a certain field of work and and you know, healing some severe severe trauma. And this person was telling me about a boy that she knows who suffers from psychosis, like serious serious psychosis and mental illness. And she was saying how when this boy displays psychosis towards friends or towards parents or towards siblings in many ways subconsciously he's testing them to see if they are afraid of his psychosis because he is frightened of himself, which is why he completely fragmented his personality. And she said the most important thing for his parents and people close to him do is not run away emotionally Yeah. when he breaks down to say, "I'm I'm not I'm not afraid of your psychosis. I'm not afraid of you. I'm fully fully present." The inner work that that requires is very very profound. And you can't fake it. You can't fake it. It's not about lies. It's not about saying the right thing. It's an inner energetic vibe Yeah. and frequency that the other person is going to experience. Well, because they're going to pick up on it. Right. Right? I often tell people if and this is I give this I say the same thing to everything, to parents, to educators, to therapists, to high school students to rabbis this person is this is this is a John Gottman's phrase. It's a bid for connection. Yeah. Their behavior is communication. They are communicating something to you and they're trying to connect with you and see, "Is my invitation going to be accepted? Right. Is this person going to see me as a whole person as a human being that is going through, you know, a very challenging human experience Beautiful line. Is this person going to see me as a human being or they're also going to have to run away from me? Right. And it's, you know, and I look, I'm going to be honest. When I got started in suicide prevention, I was terrified. The first person who disclosed suicidal ideation to me, I managed to somehow hold it together and I was with this person for almost 8 hours. And on the inside I was like, what in the world, Hashem, what am I supposed to do? Why did you send me here? What does this person want from me? I can't help. I'm not a professional. I went through all the motions that now I help support people not to go through. It's a very human It's a very human It's something so Right, so we also have to be empathetic to the people who might freak out. Not only not only do you have to be empathetic, it's I think even more than that. If I am afraid of my own emotions and my own challenging and difficult moments, how in the world am I supposed to coregulate a person who's literally at the brink of the abyss? Yeah. The fact that I am so afraid of his or her emotions is because that's how I dealt with my own emotions. I was afraid of feeling what I'm feeling. So I learned to either repress it, suppress it, bury it, deny it, divert my attention from it, find a cute or interesting, charming distraction. And I brilliantly I mean each of us in our own way, we created the coping mechanisms of avoiding Right. you know, those highways, those neural highways, those neural pathways where there is a lot of toxicity. Just like in when you're driving, you know, on your GPS your your Google Maps says there's a crazy accident there, you know, there's a ditch there, there's a police whatever it is, there's traffic, take another highway. So, you know, those neural pathways that bring us into messy places we often avoid at all costs and we do it very brilliantly. Some of us do it by becoming celebrities and some of us doing it by working, you know, 17 hours a day and some of us do it by becoming big tzadikim and some of us doing it do it whatever we do. This one is binging and this one is drinking and this one is distracting themselves by being the greatest mother whoever lived or the greatest rabbi or father whoever lived. And now some suddenly my own child or a friend's child or a student comes to me and reveals such disturbing such disturbing disturbing emotions, my instinctive, I would say, cellular reaction, my biological reaction, it's not even thinking, you know, it's like somebody said it's not my psychology that's blocking me, it's my biology. It's not even a thought process. My entire body is now uptight and afraid. And and the only message I can do is try to convince this person out of their thoughts. I'm going to I'm going to convince you. I'm going to prove it to you. I'm going to I'm going to pressure you with believing that you have to stop thinking this way and I really believe that through my lecture, my brilliant lecture and my preaching to you, you will forever eliminate these crazy, disastrous, disgusting thoughts out of your brain and in around 1 hour you'll become one of the most happiest people that ever lived because I gave you such a brilliant, brilliant, beautiful lecture on how you have to be happy and you shouldn't think this way and that's exactly what you needed to hear. Yep. You know, I once I had experienced this with post-trauma in my early 20s and I remember someone saying to me, but look at all the positive things. Look at the you know, I went I went through a marriage in my 20s that ended and it was very challenging and there was a lot of a lot of stuff to pick up and someone said, but at least you got your get. At least you didn't have Right, going on a list of here's all the reasons you should be happy, so why are you like lying in bed crying all day? And I looked at her sarcastically and I was like, you know what? You're right. I should just You know what? We're closing the the the lid is on the box. We're moving on. Goodbye. It doesn't work that way. And again, it goes back to the right, it goes back to that the nervous system. A dysregulated nervous system that doesn't have space to just be is not a nervous system that's going to say, okay, cool, I can heal now. Right? It's it's just looking for something to help keep them, you know, safe and and people I think people in pain just in that level of pain just want to be seen. Right? They want They don't want fix-its. They don't want a lecture. Everybody needs to be seen. We all need to be seen and people in pain are often just yearning to be seen. And you know what? You can't see others if nobody ever saw you and you haven't ever you never saw yourself. Right. It's one I would say it's one of the deepest gifts you can give a person in life is to see them. Not to see them for who you want them to be, not to see them for something you want them to do, not to see them because of the way you understand what their contribution to the world is, but really Right. see them. Really, really see them. And you know what? Some of us feel even guilty asking for it. We don't know that we deserve and are allowed to be seen. Yeah. You know, there was a mitzvah in the Torah that there is a mitzvah in the Torah that three times a year, Pesach, Shavuos, Sukkos, yeah, every every uh every Jew should come up to the Beis Hamikdash. It says yirah, to be seen by God. And the Gemara says kasheim shebalireh, kach balireh. It's just like you're coming to see, you're coming to be seen. So it's almost a mitzvah. It's a mitzvah to come to be seen. It's like a divine commandment that God says, I want to be able to see you in a way that you should know that you're coming to be seen. No, it's almost like there's a focus, like there's a time you're coming to be seen. And it's like a mitzvah. Wow, that just That's like so profound. Yeah. And you know what? It's interesting. I'm just thinking about it. Yirah kol is a mitzvah on the males. It's a mitzvah on the males and I'm realizing that you spoke about, you know, male suicide versus female suicide. I'm thinking because I guess it's really this profound idea that the female has to be able to find herself and see God inside of herself. Right. And the male has to go to the Beis Hamikdash and God says, I'm going to see you there. So the male-female dynamic, if I find God inside of myself or I find God as an authority above myself, you know, the male wears a yarmulke, it's above me and gets an aliya, you're going up to the Torah, whatever, all these different types of But the point here is that being seen is the gift of a lifetime or as you would say, an unprecedented gift using the word unprecedented, which allows me to see others. But how can I see anybody if nobody ever saw me and I never saw myself? I don't even know what it means. All I can do is try to control you and make sure you're in a safe spot where you're not thinking crazy things. Right. You know, for most of the decade that I've been doing suicide prevention, this pattern has emerged over and over again, especially with working with teens and their parents, which is a a bulk of my work is doing crisis management with teens in distress and then helping the family, right, navigate this the the mental health Like why would you ever have to know about the best insurance for a residential treatment center and right, like why would you ever have to know about these things until Hashem your child lo aleinu is hospitalized for a suicide attempt. And again and again and again, over and over again to the point that we created within the organization an entire umbrella just dedicated to this is that I noticed that when I would speak to parents, they were very fixated on how am I fixing my child? How How How are we doing this fast enough so we can get back to normal and look like the normal family on the street that we've always been and right, so this doesn't impact your heim and it doesn't impact the school they get into and we can keep our standing in society, da da da da da da da. How fast is this going to go? And when I tell them there's no such thing and this is going to be the journey it's going to be and also as the parent, what kind of tools do you have to help yourself and your child? Oh, no, I don't need help. It's not me. I This is the black This child is the black sheep of my family. We're fine. And then upon further investigation, upon further work, you realize there's so much work to be done and for parents, Hashem, I don't want to say that your child having a mental health challenge or suicidal ideation is a gift, but in many ways our children alert us to the healing that needs to be happening all around, not just with them. And for many parents, the journey becomes not only how do I support my child, but how do I also go back and give myself and re- kind of establish the roots of my needs that were never met that I whenever met for me when I was a child or when I was a teen. Um it's very it's very profound work to, you know, recognize that the only Extremely profound, very, very vulnerable. Yeah. Extremely humbling. And as I once heard from a mentor of mine, you know, we sometimes Actually, I heard this from my wife, who's a mentor of mine. We come we I She sent me a recording of a Tanya class that she gave to women in Monsey. She gave us a class and she said she said something so beautiful and profound, so I'm going to quote her. The wind beneath my wings, she said that parents think they were sent down to the world to heal those to heal their children. Sooner or later we often come to realize if we're vulnerable and honest enough that it's often our children who sacrificed their lives to come down to this world to heal us. You know? Wow. We sometimes think we're here, you know, to help our kids. They're actually each one of our children, if we allow them, the work, they are here to crack us open. One day we have to be so grateful to them because they endured so much pain and anguish and anxiety in this spiritual divine mission to crack open their parents. And fortunate are the parents who have the humility and the vulnerability and say, "Wow, thank you for the gift. Thank you for cracking me up." And I said the other day in a class, I once saw this a few years ago and I loved it. He said, "You know, on Pesach, we like hide the afikoman and then we have this custom where the children, you know, find it Yeah. and then they want a prize or they give it back to us. And what's the idea behind this? I said, "We all have broken matzahs, broken parts of our life that we hide. As parents, we hide them very, very well. And there's a very profound message here. Whatever we hide, our children are going to reveal. And they're going to give it back to us." Yeah. And when they give it to us, we have an option. We can either get upset at them and say, "How dare you destroy the beautiful reputation of our family?" Or we could look at them, shed a tear, and say, "Thank you. Thank you for allowing us the gift of healing that which has to be healed." And only then, when we embrace the afikoman with with presence and with serenity and with gratitude, can we complete our seder and say, "L'Shana Haba'ah B'Yerushalayim." Can we actually achieve redemption? So, I think I have a mentor who once shared with me and said, um "Our children are the manifestation of the fragmented parts of our personalities, the parts of the parents that we have not made peace with. Ooh. The parts inside of us that are so fragmented and chaotic and we're embarrassed of them and we never dealt with them, our children manifest those parts in their lives. Instead of pointing a finger at them, we should go inward and ask ourselves what parts of ourselves are they manifesting? And when we begin to heal those parts, energetically and automatically, they're like, "Okay, we don't have to manifest that anymore." Mhm. So, we're busy talking about, you know, the illnesses of our kids, of how crazy they are, weird, insane, meshuga. You know, we blame a lot of things and a lot of things can use correction. I mean, you know, addiction to technology and hours in screens is not a good thing. And we all need to heal ourselves and our homes in that area, no question. But a huge part of it has to do not with an objective reality outside of ourselves. They're literally manifesting our own deep, deep insanity that we did not deal with and we have repressed 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, 40, 30, 20, 10 years, whatever it is. And they're literally manifesting it to us. They're literally revealing our afikoman. You know, in the Haggadah, the afikoman is called safun, which means hidden. It's the parts of our brokenness that we hid away, maybe for generations. It's not about any It's not anybody's fault. And they're manifesting it and they're triggering us so deeply. You know why? Because they're holding up a mirror to who we really are. Yeah. And we have not acknowledged it and we have not dealt with it. And when we're ready to deal with it, they start manifesting their true light. Right. Right. I mean, I have found this as a parent and as a human being and as a teacher to many and as a mentor, I have found this truth to be a life-changing, incredibly powerful truth. Yeah. And it always is about going back inward. The Ba'al Shem Tov said that every person is a mirror. What you're seeing is a reflection of you. Yeah. And the question is, "Come on, that's not true. Mhm. That's not true. Sometimes I look at a person and I could say, 'They're depressed. They're broken. They're anxious. They have a lot of issues. They need healing. They need help. They're immoral. They're crazy. They're addicted.' Whatever it is. Like, the Ba'al Shem Tov didn't know that? Really, everybody is a mirror?" And I think one of the main messages of the Ba'al Shem Tov is what you're often seeing and the way you're seeing it and the way you're triggered by it has nothing to do with the objective reality. Of course, they may be struggling with something very, very deep. But the Ba'al Shem Tov says the way you're reacting, what you're seeing here is always a reflection of the work you did inside of yourself. How regulated are you? How present are you? How much fear or lack of it do you carry? That's always about you. Always, always. Your husband just said something. Your wife just said something. You were triggered. You were literally triggered to the point of of a breakdown. And nobody knows it, but you know it you cuz you're about to implode. That has very little to do with what your wife said. Right. It has everything to do with what you heard and what your nervous system experienced when you heard those words which triggered your nervous system into a space of fight or flight or freeze or fawn. Right. And when I can go there and I can observe all of this, it's not about blame, it's not about judgment. When I can observe this as a spectator and remain present, wow, that's powerful. Yeah. And then to ask you, you spoke about your own trauma and how somebody came to you and said, "But look at this. You got to get then you have this and you have that and you have that." And you're like sarcastically, "Yeah, sure. Let me snap my fingers and just start dancing and my trauma's gone." And you were basically intimating how absurd that was and how that person completely lacked any basic understanding of how trauma works, how it paralyzes us. If our nervous system is not giving the permission to be and to feel and to experience, it could never heal because it remains trapped in this crazy tightness that it has to protect. And and it's it's literally a physiological reality that anybody who has done this work emotionally and energetically knows. So, now I want to ask you another question, if I may. What did help you get out of your trauma? I know not that person who said, Yeah. "Come on, don't be a loser. Get out of bed and just get a life." So, what did help you? I think it was first and foremost the people who gave me permission to just be in the mess. Right? And it's interesting, my baruch Hashem, I'm married now for 7 and 1/2 years. We have three kids. Like, you know, I've done that work and we're on our our journey together. And it's interesting that my husband and I were talking about this just recently that it was in our marriage that I felt most safe to in some ways fall apart and deal with the stuff that had happened the first time around because up until I had that safety, it was very much like, "Okay, I just have to keep myself in line and I just have to keep going and no one can know how broken I feel and no one can know how, you know, how intense my depression and anxiety is because I'm helping so many people that I have to hold it together." And you know, all this stuff. It's interesting. I was having a conversation with someone once and I told them, you know, I started doing suicide prevention a year after my first marriage ended and he went, "Ah, you found an escape route to not have to deal with your problems." I'm like, "Ain't that the truth?" But I think having people in my life who helped me feel safe to be seen and to fall apart and to be angry and to be angry at Hashem and know that Hashem can handle my anger, right? So many people were like, "Why Hashgacha Pratit? It's Gamzu L'Tova. Hashem did this for a good reason." I was like, "I don't want to hear that. I don't I I don't Please don't tell me that. It doesn't feel good, right?" You All those things could be true, but there's a time and a place, right? I think giving myself permission to go inside and really investigate with compassion what was happening inside of myself and not leaving labeling myself as a broken person, not labeling myself as someone who couldn't heal because for many years that was my ideology. Everyone else can heal. I can help everybody, but I'm the broken one. I'm the mistake. Hashem sent everybody here on purpose and it's just a matter of time before he realizes like, "Oops, you know, mis labeled. Let's Let's be done." I think but it I really goes back to that foundational feeling of of connection. And it's interesting when I was when you were saying before about parents doing their work, one of the things that came up for me is this idea in attachment In attachment theory, we talk about earned security, right? That there's secure attachment, non-secure attachment, and then there's all the sub levels of non-secure attachment. And that many people, adults, are walking around with nervous systems that didn't receive the the proper type of attachment that would help them feel secure in the world. And that through doing their own work and avodah, they can earn security themselves. They're not necessarily getting it from their parents. Maybe their parents aren't alive anymore, right? But they can get it from within. And I think when I learned that, that was a game changer for me. But it had to start with having people who felt safe and learning how to feel safe in my own body. Um which, you know, through somatic practices, through plant medicine, through therapy, through having, you know, actually one of the most interesting things is that the thing that has one of the most profound gifts that I have received in my life is teaching others because I learn more from them every day than they learn from me. And we run um a trauma-informed expressive writing classes. We do narrative integration, writing about our stories so we can change our stories. I went into that to help women who were dealing with severe trauma heal. And I had already done it. So, I said, "Okay, this isn't about me. It's about them." The level of healing that I gained from being with these women every week, and I tell them all the time. I'm like, "You guys think you're here for yourselves. You're healing me. You don't even realize what you're doing for me." Um but I think And every person also has to find their own avenue to heal. You know, what works for me is not necessarily going to work for another person. Wow. I I would want to clarify just one point. I think it's just important cuz people can wonder and maybe question, you know, some of the ideas being conveyed here. You know, some people almost feel that this approach you're advocating is antithetical to the idea of Hashgacha Pratit by divine divine providence cuz like what you were saying is that people are telling you you know everything that happened to you is like a practice is by divine providence God runs this world he orchestrates everything that happens in this world including things that are difficult and challenging and the moment you can accept that and embrace that and trust him you could just snap out of your you know craziness and trauma and just start celebrating life and being a good mood. And and practice is obviously true right I'm I believe that and I want to clarify one thing practice includes the fact that my nervous system has been shattered that's also practice. So looking at my nervous system is part of studying the divine providence. In other words what I'm feeling right now what my body has experienced is part of the divine providence. So God is present in that. So by denying my feeling by denying my emotions by denying my energetic experience I'm actually amputating part of God's plan. I'm actually telling God oh I'm not ready to believe that you're also present in my emotions. You're only present in intellectual analysis of what emotions are supposed to look like. Can we actually experience God in the emotion itself trusting that whatever my nervous system went through that is part of the divine providence and giving a paying tribute to that embracing that with empathy and compassion is actually embracing divine providence. Wow. You get what I'm saying? Yes. Yeah and that's the very interesting when David when King David King David says in chapter 23 of Psalms of God the gates of Moses era team money I walk in the valley of the shadow of death. I walk through it. Yeah. And I'm not paralyzed by fear cuz you're with me. So we often intellectualize that oh it's not really the valley of the shadow of death because you're with me. That's not what he's saying. Right. That's not what he's saying. In Psalms 139 he says I go up to the heavens and you're there and then I go down into the abyss into the abyss and here you are. Right. You hold my hand even in the darkness you're there. What does that mean energetically? Energetically means he's not denying the experience is a very very deep experience of what I'm feeling and somehow behind that darkness lay the gems of your light so don't be afraid of that. Right. And I think that little piece is often misconstrued because we need role models to teach it to us. I could read the same verse. I could give the same lecture on practice. Somebody who did this work will radiate a different energy than somebody who didn't do the work. For somebody it just means stop feeling. Right. Stop feeling it's is an excuse and a crutch of avoiding. It's a way of avoiding and I get it I'm not judging. In fact I used to be there. You and me both trust me. Yeah yeah yeah I used to be there. It it was a way of overriding the system in the name of practice. The whole idea of practice means you don't have to override because God is here. Don't override. You understand? We use practice not to believe in practice. I got it until it comes to your nervous system. Sorry sorry that's a mistake. That's your get out of it. That's not practice. Right. Yeah no it's it's almost like we because Judaism is philosophical it's not embodied. When practice is here it's brainy. Right. So then it's just a brain idea. I got it sure when it's embodied it means God is not afraid of your darkness. In fact deep deep down inside your darkness you're going to find your deepest light. Right. Yeah and I I um I I to that point um someone who I supported during a suicide intervention at a very very very low point in their life. They were uh college age and the fact the idea of even living for the next 2 hours let alone you know another week was just didn't wasn't even registering to them. This is not happening right? Um they're now a medical professional they're now a psychiatrist. Wow. And and it you know uh I I often tell people that I wish that I hadn't gone through all of the negative experiences that I had because they were really painful and I felt very alone and it did feel at times if I'm honest that like Hashem kind of forgot that I'm around. But I think that that also gives me the ability to channel that energy now into help you know over a thousand crisis interventions later like I don't think I would be able to do that if I didn't know what this level of pain felt like. And and you know what empathy means. You can feel what they're going through. Right. It's very you know and I just part of me wonders like how can we like I don't know if this is the right way of asking this question but how can we wake people up? You know I think and and this is within within your work I can I know and I can imagine that you have spoken to literally thousands of people and that you know in recent years I mean you the topic of mental health has become so prominent it's something that you address all the time in your classes and your lectures. They personally you know your your weekly women's classes is is a staple in my house your Tuesday your Tuesday class. How can how is it possible like we've done so much right I think as a community. We're talking about this we're embracing this issues people are going to therapy people are getting help they're embracing the messiness of being human they're acknowledging but like what's it going to take I mean over 10 suicides in nine weeks what's it going to take to wait like what how could we shake people out of this this staunch nest of like no we have to stay up here intellectual and not and not embody our reality of we're in we are in the shamans and bodies and our bodies are and our shamans are going through very intense crisis is what's it going to take to get people to realize like oh this is actually a real issue in our community and we can't ignore it anymore. I don't know that's a that's a tall order but I figured I'd put it out there. Powerful powerful question. And you know the last words of that so many of us say every day and on this you know be of the AC Sean the era the rookie give me a C Hashem leave a lawyer so we know the words in Hebrew but the English translation of these words really drives home the potency of these words. What we're basically saying when I go to sleep the AC Sean I give him my spirit. I I deposit my spirit in God's hands cuz I'm going to sleep it's a reduced level of consciousness and then I wake up the era and as he is a C as my spirit comes into my which means it's embodied in my nervous system in my physical body God is with me and I'm not afraid. It's almost indicating that it's only when we embody things that we can liberate ourselves from fear. Right. When things are not embodied we get so stuck. Yeah. So we say it actually every morning in the alarm. To answer your question directly I want to I I'm I'm compelled to give all these different types of answers but I think probably the most authentic and real answer is that the same message that we're preaching to everybody else we should be preaching to ourselves right now and that is I think the answer to your question must go inward. I have to go inward. I think all of us have to go inward and ask myself what is it that inside of me still needs to be healed that after all my lectures and all my presentations and all the podcasts and all the WhatsApps and all the clips and all the good things that happened there is still so much resistance. So I could point fingers and say yeah you're sick you're sick you're sick everybody is sick and I'm the only healthy guy walking in the face of this planet but you know that's another form of illness. Right. And really just really going inward and asking you know what what can we heal what can I heal? And I have a lot to heal. I don't I I don't even have this question. I'm saying it in humor cuz I know I know I have a lot to heal. I have a lot to heal. Because I think you know I really think that back to the you know it's a mirror it's just a mirror for each of us to really say where am I getting stuck? Because when when I heal my triggers when I heal my trauma that energy heals other people. That's what happens. That's how things work. The Tanya says in chapter 27 unbelievably says when you have the courage to confront one thought one thought of dead energy of fake what he calls energy of of that one thought that it takes you away from the frequency of oneness of authenticity of bliss of God one thought that you confront and he says you create an explosion of divine infinity in all of the worlds. Quoting the Zohar and discuss the one thought that you confronted creates a domino effect and a ripple effect of divine oneness permeating all the worlds which means somebody may be living in another state in another city struggling with something and that energy of holiness that you imparted to the world literally gives them the power to be able to penetrate through their veil of trauma. Right. But obviously on a basic level, I think we must talk about this more than talking about we have to live it. And breathe it. And really live it. I've learned that preaching and it's maybe maybe pathetic for me to say this cuz I'm a speaker and I make my living off speaking, but I've learned that the good old cliche of how cheap words are are not a cliche. All preaching and the lectures in the world as powerful, entertaining, engaging as they are are are are are are almost worthless. If it's not embodied in our nervous system it's worthless. And I don't speak theory and all this from experience. I've been speaking, I'm not going to tell you how many years but a lot a lot of years. My first speech was as a 5-year-old at the dinner of my school. It's a school called the Holy Torah. And and I remember this because I was invited a few weeks ago to speak at their dinner. And I was standing in the same room in the same room and I started my speech. I said the one of the la- I gave a speech at this dinner of this institution. I think it was 1978. 1977 I think 1977 1978. I was I think 5 years old and I spoke in this room at this dinner. I pointed. I didn't know how many people in the room remembered that. I said it was maybe one person. My mother reminded me the details cuz she remembers it very clearly. Of course a mother nachas. And uh and I've been probably speaking since. I mean not as a career. I haven't spoken as a career since 5, but I've given a lot a lot of speeches in my life. And I have learned that all of them are worthless as long as they're not accompanied with the more important work. And the more important work is embodiment. Embodiment. Embodiment is in the nervous system. It's working through our emotions, working through our emotional responses, working through our triggers. Really really healing, not being afraid of the pain of the real pain, not having to go to disassociation, to numbing, to to distracting, to emotional death, to emotional paralysis, to freeze. These are all normal reactions that we have cultivated very well in the long traumatic exile and we survived and credit is due to all of us who worked so hard to repress so many parts of our personalities so that we can say Am Yisrael Chai. And Am Yisrael will will live forever, you know. One of the most moving things that I never understood as a child that I'm only starting to understand it now more and more, not with my head, not with my brain, but with my with my body, with my nervous system is I grew up at the feet of the Lubavitcher Rebbe. And he had this line that he coined in 1980 I think it was. I was a kid. I was there. And he loved repeating it. And because he came from Ukraine, so he had an he had a Russian Ukrainian accent. His mama loshen was was was Yiddish, not English. He spoke English with a heavy accent. So it was very interesting that he coined this phrase in English. Was We want Mashiach now. And they made it a song. You know, very famous Lubavitch song. We want Mashiach now. We want Mashiach now. We want Mashiach now. And at all the children matter at the farbrengens, I remember at the end the Rebbe would Rebbe was already he was he was an 80-year-old man. This was a yeah, 1980 81 82. Yeah, he was turning 80 at the time. He was an old and he would always turn to the children and ask them to start this song. And the Rebbe was so passionate about it. We want Mashiach now. We want Mashiach now. We want Mashiach now. And okay, I understood he believes in Mashiach. He wants Mashiach. He prays for Mashiach. He wants Mashiach to come today like we say in davening, you know, the kavenu kol hayom. I want him to come now. I don't want him to come tomorrow. But then I I realized today I realized there's something so much deeper about that. So what is he really saying? He's really saying we desperately need healing now. Like we want Mashiach now. We need healing now. Don't tell me Am Yisrael Chai another 3,000 years with our crazy trauma. Don't tell me we the Jewish people will we resilient and we survive and we thrive with all of our insanity. He's like we are ill. Exile is a is an illness. There's an illness. There there there is there is a darkness that envelops us and and people did not understand what he was saying. They thought he was talking about the rebuilding of a third temple on a temple mound somewhere in some geographical location in the Middle East that some Messiah is going to do. They did not realize what he was really talking about. What he was really talking about is we are so stuck. And then he he said it many times, but it was hard but today I get it. It's like we need redemption. We need real healing. We need liber- liberation. And he would always say a line I also never understood. He says you will never know that you're in darkness if you never experience your light. There's no way you can know that you're in darkness. No way. If darkness is your vocabulary of daily life, you start calling it light. Wow. That's I think the biggest crisis. The biggest crisis is when I know that I'm ill at least I have a name. I'm ill. Could anybody heal me? The real effects of our collective and individual traumas, we call that health. We call that sanity. We call it even religion. We have names for it. Religion. Kiddush Hashem. I love this idea that exposing sexual predators is a chillul Hashem. Great. It's a desecration of God's name to expose sec- You know why? Cuz everybody's going to find out that we have sexual predators among us. Interesting. Sexually molesting and raping a kid, that's not a desecration of God's name. That's not a problem cuz God doesn't notice it. God doesn't know it. The fact that everyone who was sexually molested has to live with such insane pain and many of them have to leave religion and leave every- That's not a desecration of God's name. Many of them are turned off from Yiddishkeit forever. That's not a desecration of God's name. Exposing it and actually letting people say, "Wow, this is a healthy community. They're dealing with their criminals. They're talking about it." That's a desecration of God's name. I'm just giving one example of how you can use God and religion to cover up crimes against humanity. That illness has seeped into many other areas of life and it's it's it's not it's not it's never about blaming anybody. We have my son when he wants to make fun of me, my 14-year-old son, he's like sometimes he sees I'm upset. He's like, "Tati, you did the best you can with the tools you have." He's of course making He's making fun of his father. You did the best you can with the tools you have. It is very funny. We did the best we can with the tools we had. We had very very limited tools. And and the Rebbe's saying was like we No, you could you could bring redemption into your life. Open your eyes, right? So it's it's it's very very powerful when you know that there is redemption. There is light. There is truth. There is healing. There is authenticity. And when you see that your life is miserable. When you see that your relationship is miserable. When you see that your marriage is not blissful. When you see that your Judaism is torturous. Your seder comes with a heavy heart. There's a dibbuk of anxiety that lives in you. There is healing. There is healing. These are symptoms of suffering that we're all going through. We are all not all, but many many of us are going through it. And the good news is that God has given our generation an enormous amount of gifts of healing. And the people that just make fun of these conversations. It's like, "Oh, what they talk about trauma?" These people they make fun of me. Sometimes in front of my face, it's fine. Oh, Rabbi YY trauma. Rabbi YY equals trauma. Oh, you gave a shiur on trauma. Trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma. Till you came around, Judaism wasn't about trauma. Now everything is trauma. Parshas Vayikra, trauma. Vayakhel Pekudei, trauma. How you going to connect Parshas Pekudei to trauma? What was the trauma? Oh, Moshe couldn't build the pick up the Mishkan. Trauma. Right? I have found that people who make fun of these types of conversations are usually hiding the deepest trauma not ready to deal with. And I'm not even saying as a judgment. You know why? Cuz I'm one of them. I'm one of these people. So I'm not even judging. I get it. I completely get it. I completely get it. And I know a lot a lot of people like there was somebody who told me your old Somebody once told me I was going to a big conference and this person said to me you should listen to your old speeches cuz they used to be good. They used to be good speeches. Your old speeches. Your old rhetorics. The theatrics, the message used to be very good. They didn't have to finish the end. Of course the message was that today, you know, you're just uh you're babble, you know, it's pop psychology, liberal, spineless, emotional, you know, stupidity. I get it. I really get it. And I used to give speeches in a very different way. In a way I worked harder on my speeches then. But it was much less me. It was much less authentic. It was a nice presentation. It was pretty good presentation. I I I don't want to completely defame myself. There was always an I always tried to be on some level authentic, but it was an inauthenticity that was subconscious, if you know what I mean. Yeah. It's a different type of inauthenticity. Right. It's an inauthenticity you don't even know you're being inauthentic because you're not used to it. Yeah. Today, I'm I'm I'm I'm usually disgusted by my my my my own inauthenticity when I feel it. I don't always feel it, unfortunately, when I feel it. So, I think for all of us, you know, for me, for all of us included, it's like this work is blessed, blessed, blessed work. It's hard, it's painful, but there's nothing nothing that is more rewarding than it because the Tanya says "Schar mitzva mitzva." The reward for the mitzva is the mitzva. The reward for this work is the work. You're not going to get a lollipop. And maybe you're not going to get a hundred billion dollars, but you know what? There's something more priceless than that something more precious than that. It's the work itself. It's the person that emerges as a result of this work. There's no replacing it. Right. Wow. That Yeah. That's exactly it. Um Rabbi Jacobson, thank you so much. I really I feel like I could talk to you for another hour. We could keep this going. There's so much to talk about, but thank you so much for making the time and for your willingness and your openness and your authenticity and working on yourself to be authentic so that we can all see it as a mirror to work on ourselves as well. Thank you. That means a lot. And uh you know, the moment we realize that deep deep down we're just all channels and there's no real hierarchy. There's really no hierarchy. We're just all channels and each one of us has the privilege of channeling whatever God chooses us to channel through ourselves. That's the moment where we experience our deepest bliss and our deepest health. And we're not afraid of our darkness. Yeah. Because our deepest darkness simply cannot stand up to our light. And and that's my message. Everyone's struggling and some of you struggle may have watching this or hearing this and you struggled with suicide or just struggling with deep deep deep darkness and and we always think that, you know, our darkness is worse than everybody else. And it makes sense because there is something about your darkness that is darker than everyone else and I'll tell you why. Because behind your darkness lay your light and there's something about your light that is unique Mhm. and is different than everybody else's light and that's why you think that your darkness is also worse than everybody else cuz what you're really feeling is your unique infinite light that God is channeling through you that nobody else has. So, you don't know your light yet, so you think it's your darkness that's unique. It's your light that's unique and your darkness is literally the shell that's hiding your your your light. It's like pearls that they discover in the stomach of an oyster, you know? Where where do they find pearls? The stomach of an oyster that comes because of an ulcer. Right. And and and and when you open it up, there's like a pearl. Wow. Our pearls are hiding behind our emotional ulcers and our emotional irritation. And that's why it feels so dark because the light is incredibly powerful. So, with all the love and empathy in the world, it's like don't give up on yourself because there's a lot a lot of healing. Your soul is not a mistake. Your body is not a mistake. Like God did not make Somebody once told me they were in a post office and there was this black African American woman who was always jolly and happy. You know, post offices are like one of those places where people get into bad moods, you know, there's long lines and they don't nobody wants to be there. It's like, you know, airports and post offices and, you know, DMV offices and social security. You know, it's these places where, you know, it's not it's not an amusement park or a cafe where you chose to go. You have to get you have to get a new license. So, the post office, this fellow was telling me he said, "Rabbi Import, why did he say this? There was an African American woman who was always happy and she made jokes and she was She once asked her, "What's your secret?" So, she says she has a plaque on her desk and then she showed him the plaque and she just looks at it whenever she gets into a bad mood and the plaque reads, "God made me and God no make no junk." "God made me and God no make no junk." Now, the words are meaningless, but the energy of it. Yeah. God did not make a mistake when he created you. Right. And even if your house was dysfunctional, even things happened to you as a child and things did happen to you as a child and we need a lot of empathy. Just realize that when we say that your soul is a chelek eloka mimaal mamash like the Tanya says and every morning we say elokai neshama she asata bi tohara hi. Your soul is sacred. It's light. It's perfect. It's real. It's real stuff. It's not a joke. Like your soul is really a piece of God. God is indestructible, you're indestructible and your body is sacred. The body was chosen by Hashem. It says in Zohar the gufa de la in kadisha, the body is holy. We violate the whole Torah to save a body. The Rambam writes in the laws of ethics, Hilchos Deos, chapter four, that keeping your body healthy and wholesome is one of the ways of Hashem. Midah Hashem hu. The Tanya says that when we say God chose us, it actually doesn't mean the soul, it means the body cuz the soul didn't have to be chosen cuz it's in its own category. It's the guf that that was chosen. So, realize your nervous system is holy. Your your neural pathways are are are holy. Your your your brain is holy. Your physical body is holy, not only your soul. And when your body is alerting you to pain, it knows what it's talking about. It's it's telling you a truth. It's asking you to intervene and embrace it and not run away from it and not repress it and not drink more or eat more. Uh I I had a huge binging problem because I didn't drink, I didn't gamble, I didn't do other stuff, but I ate cuz eating is a very kosher addiction. I ate. I always ate. I was so interesting for me. I would finish a lecture and within a half an hour when I got back to my house or the hotel, I found myself eating uncontrollably. Wow. And I didn't know why. I ate supper. It was actually a very good dinner at the lecture. Mhm. Right? If it was a good lecture, if it was a bad lecture, I understood, but it was a good lecture and I didn't understand. If it's a bad lecture, I understand. I'm trying to fill the void cuz it didn't go well. I didn't get my standing ovation. But if it was a good lecture, I got a standing ovation. Everybody loved it. Why am I eating? Right. And then I realized, I think I realized, I hope I realized that really there was still a torturous feeling. The torturous feeling was there was a dissonance cuz I didn't embody what I was saying. So, my soul and body were crying. They said, "You really rejected us for the validation of the audience." Yeah. And the binging was a good distraction from that pain cuz a chocolate Danish Right. does miracles and distracts you from pain at least for 25 minutes. And then after 25 minutes, there's a second chocolate Danish and then there's a cinnamon Danish and then there's always meatballs and spaghetti or another Chinese healthy dish. Anyway, my point here is that, you know, I think we all it's it's really a very deep trauma that we cannot feel our light and the moment we start feeling it, it's a game changer. Yeah. And then we shouldn't be afraid to feel it because sometimes we take a we take that step forward into feeling our light and it's like, "Oh, this is too scary. I got to go back to the darkness." Yeah, yeah, yeah. My wife sent me a beautiful clip from somebody why so many people start the work and they quit in the middle. Yeah. Cuz what happens is when you start the work, so the trauma floats to the top. The pain floats to the top cuz it's waiting to be liberated. It wants to be embraced. It wants to be redeemed. And then okay, so one thing floats to the top and you deal with it and then another thing and then the more you do the work, the more your body feels safe to bring things to the fore. Till then it didn't feel safe. It had to bury everything. It was trapped. It was literally trapped in the cells. Now it feels safe enough and some of us get so scared. OH MY GOD. OH MY GOD. ANOTHER DEMON. ANOTHER DEMON. ANOTHER DEMON. I'M DONE. YEP. And we detach and this time the detachment has to be much worse Right. because we know much more. So, we have to detach much worse. So, really the path to healing travels through pain. Yeah, the only way out is through. The only way The only way out is through. There's a My my children are five, 19 months, and two months, baruch Hashem. So, there's a lot of kids music being played in my house. And my daughter, my five-year-old has a song that she likes, "We're going on a bear hunt." Right? So, they're going on a bear hunt and they get to the grass and you can't go over it, you can't go under it. Oh, no, we have to go through it. So, they go through all these elements, right? Water, grass, mud, da da da. And that's life. You can't go over it, you can't go under it. You have to go through it. You have to go through it. You have to I mean, you know, you have to here in Monsey, a very good therapist. He once shared with me that somebody came to his office and she told him or he told him that, you know, people tell me "I just have to let go. I got to let go. I just got to let it go of it." And he said, "That's true. You have to let go, but in order to let go of something, you first have to hold it." Sure. It's true. Right. hold it, how do you let go? Hold it and then let go. You know, I I work with a lot of people who tell me that the second year of healing or the second year of sobriety or the second year of the work is harder than the first. Right? Cuz in the first year, okay, there are things are coming to the surface, but in some way they're they feel a sense of invigoration. They want to change. They're motivated. Something has shifted in their life where they say, "Okay, now I have to do it." And the second year, where it's like, "Okay, you're too far back. You're not in the beginning anymore where you can just close the door and say, 'Never mind.'" Right? But you're not you're you're in the middle of the journey and it's and it's messy. And that's usually some sometimes when it gets harder for people cuz it's like oh wait, what's it going to take for me to be healed period end of sentence. I don't think that it works that way. Doesn't work that way. As long as our souls are down here in this world, there are layers to still be peeled. Yeah. That's one of the most beautiful teachings of the Hasidic masters. This world is called the world of klippa. It's a world of husks, of shells, of cover-ups. Yeah. Our souls don't have cover-ups. Our souls come down here to peel away the layers, the fake news, and get to the essence. As long as we're still here, it's me it means there's things to peel away. Yeah. So don't get afraid, and it begins inside. Can I ask you a final question? Sure. What do you think practically people could do to start that avodah? Meaning outside yes, okay, the traditional avenues and therapy and all of those things that we could recommend. If a person hasn't yet looked inward, what can they do to help create that sense of safety for themselves to feel like okay, this is something I can do? It's a great great question. For me, there was a great turning point. I was sitting by a I was sitting in the office of a therapist, and I was having a conversation with him, and he asked a question, and I responded, and I guess he picked up on it. He was a very wise, very he's a wise man and sensitive. He picked up on it and he said, "You know, it's interesting that usually an answer like the one you just gave is a symptom of either complete apathy, indifference, or very deep anger. Which one is it?" Which one is it? Are you angry? And for the first time, I was forced to pause, look into my heart, literally and figuratively, and admit to myself, which was more important than to him, because he is just a thera you know, he's a therapist, to say to myself I was angry. Mhm. I never admitted that to myself. I wasn't allowed to be angry. Me anger? You know, it says if you're angry, it's like you're worshipping idols. I'm not angry. And also moach shalat a lev, I have a brain, my brain controls me, I'm well-behaved, I try to be a gentleman. I I I'm I'm not going to call myself soft-spoken. I often scream in my speeches, but I usually control the way I communicate. I'm not angry, I'm not impulsive. I never admitted to myself that I have a deep deep anger, which of course the anger was born from pain, and the pain was born from loneliness. You know, there's layers and layers. Mhm. But that was a turning point in my own work to be able to admit, "Wow, I'm angry." Mhm. And it wasn't easy, and I needed help from somebody cuz I didn't know I was angry. But then I had to ask myself, "Why are you so angry?" And that proved to me actually that I'm in pain. Mhm. And it also proved to me that something is causing that pain. And it began a very blessed journey. And I think one important step for all of us is to be able not to judge, but to be curious about what is coming up for you Mhm. inside the inner recesses of your heart. Pause and be curious. This is not an opinion, it's not a judgment, it's not your right or wrong or maybe right or maybe wrong, but just open yourself up to the vocabulary, which may be new in your life. Be curious about what just happened inside of you when this person said this to you or didn't say this to you or did this or didn't say this. Mhm. And just look at it with curiosity, without a judgment and without even a pure definition. Cuz if you'll do that, I believe that if you're an honest person, hopefully you're an honest person, and you want to become the best version of yourself, that's the beginning of a journey Mhm. towards better and more authentic and deeper places. Mhm. Mhm. So before you run to the pantry to get the chocolate Danish, or to warm up the frozen pizza, or to run to your class, or to run to shul, or to run ba ba ba ba ba ba all the good things you're doing, or check your email, or check your phone, and watch another clip, even if it's a Rabbi YY clip, which I'm not going to protest, but before you run to watch that clip, pause just for 20 seconds, and say, "And what's the emotion that just came up?" Mhm. Mhm. Profound. A very profound and and sometimes challenging, but necessary avodah. Indeed. Yeah. All right, thank you. Thank you for the opportunity, and thank you for your holy work to bring awareness and healing and love. Thank you. Thanks for watching. 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