Is too much THERAPY hurting you?

hello Hi how are you thank God I'm doing good I have a question yes I'm asking on behalf of my wife who is uh recovering from an eating disorder okay and there's two parts one is she's been going to a lot of therapy and she wants to know when is uh there too much therapy when is therapy too much and the second one is just in general how to connect more to one's body Okay so question of like when is therapy too much or too much of it or uh you know when are you doing it too much it's a really hard question to answer especially not knowing all the details but even if I knew the details I'm not sure I feel qualified to make a judgment call like that but what I can say is this I don't know if it's really a question of quantity like too much too little as much as it is a question of quality getting the right kind so when you have the right kind of therapy that's really supporting you and giving you Clarity then even a little bit of it can be extremely effective and um when you need more of it even even a lot isn't isn't too much but if it's not really the right thing and then you just try to make up for a lack of quality by overdoing the quantity sometimes that becomes a unique type of burnout therapeutic burnout I've seen that many many times where someone who's already emotionally taxed because they're dealing with whatever it is they're dealing with and now they're engaged in a lot of therapy that is not really hitting the spot and that becomes like a secondary source of burnout so my my real response to that would be like I can't say there's too much or too little what I can say is there's the right kind and if she finds something that's really connecting with her and she feels like it makes sense to her she feels like aligned with it where it feels it just feels right I know how to explain other than it feels right meaning you feel that it's nourishing you like if you eat a meal and you you finish eating and you're still hungry so it's like a therapy where you do it it's like the end you still feel emotionally empty yeah so that that would be my answer is just to find the right thing there's so many different modalities and so many different approaches and you know it's really unique to each person right and you just got to keep right trying different things till you find the thing that can part of it is that the therapy that she's been going through hasn't really aligned with her values well that's going to be an issue that's been a if if you're in conflict with the therapy and from a values uh perspective that's going to be like yeah it's I don't want to call it a deal breaker because I don't want to tell somebody to drop therapy until they have an idea of what else they would do but yeah definitely it's yeah essential that it be aligned with with your values yeah yeah yeah yeah okay Mak sense thank you now your other question is about what feeling more present in your body yeah how to connect to the body more yeah how to connect to the body more so what's interesting to me is you know that question I would just guess taking educated guess that that question itself comes from some type of therapeutic experience me that's probably something somebody heard in therapy right right okay so I'm correct about that um this is a really great concept connecting with the body why did I think it came from therap just because that language because the wording used is more like wording that you would hear in therapy but the reality is the concept comes from Torah and more specifically comes from comes from the teachings of The bamv Who taught that in in in in contrast with many of the spiritualists that came before him who were Aesthetics who tried to attain spiritual refinement through negating their bodies the balv taught that we need to accept the body to embrace the body and to uplift it to bring it along in the spiritual journey and the successors of the Bal theic Masters through the generations especially uh I would say the LA the seventh in his teachings regarding mhia and what we call a dwelling place for hem in the in the physical world really really stresses this concept of that Hashem wants us to be present in the physical world and for our souls to be fully aligned with our bodies and that this is the ultimate expression of infinity that the ultimate expression of infinity is specifically in the physical world because it is a finite realm time and space are limited so the ultimate expression of infinity is when the unlimited can be present in the limited and I know that's very philosophical talk but I just wanted to make a point that being present in your body may be something that somebody heard in therapy but the concept is much older than that and it's a it's a holy concept so the biggest way to be present in your body and connected with your body is to use your body the way that it was designed to be used which is something called a Mitzvah Mitzvah directly translates to commandment but we know that it's much more than a commandment it is an action Mitzvah aren't ideas they're not abstractions they are actions and by doing Mitzvah with our bodies we align the soul with the body and we fulfill the purpose for which we came to our bodies so like literally getting up and moving your body to do the will of God is the most grounding thing that you can do for yourself um I I I I was talking some people the other night have this new thing called uh Soul Survivors actually youell could you put maybe in the chat the link for Soul Survivors this this new group I have monthly thing called Soul Survivors s o l survivors uh for like highly sensitive people and stuff and we're talking about one of the things we can do to feel more uh connected to the body I said um that when you give charity that it's good to do it as a repeated action to do it at least on a daily basis and um okay like hold on a second let me just grab this here so I have on my wall you can't see it because it's out of the camera shot but I have on my wall the um this pushka this uh charity box it's actually on my wall to turn the whole room into a charity Box by extension and like literally the physical act of reaching in your pocket pulling out the money and putting it in is is therapeutic it's healing it's somatic healing so um that's why like before we pray we give charity and before we study Torah we give charity and before uh you start to cook you give charity and before you um start a business deal you give charity because using your physical body in that way is so grounding and it's not just that you physically take your hand and take the money and put it in the box but also what the money represents that's money that you earned with physical exertion and then the money itself could have been spent on resources for your body and then you take that and you convert it into a Mitzvah into something holy and it refines the physicality in very powerful way so yeah Mitzvah all types of Mitzvah things that you do with your body but especially charity and especially especially acts of goodness and kindness get up go visit the sick um you know make a meal for a woman who just gave birth and deliver it um unfortunately it happens but you know when it does happen to comfort mourners you know I I lost my father a couple of months ago and I was sitting shiva I was in the seven days of morning and the fact that people physically showed up yeah and but you want to know something it was very comforting how many people showed up they came to the home and it was an amazing thing it's like you know just call just send a text that's how we all do things nowadays and yet people physically showed up and and that's what a Mitzvah is it's physically showing up I had a friend who told me once and and I never forgot it he said you could fake caring but you cannot fake showing up like either you did or you didn't but I think that's the problem go on you know that's that's it there's a there's a lot of demand to do things but it's you can do it and be disassociated from the ACT I think maybe specifically the question is but that's okay okay so so let me let me explain to you why that's okay okay it doesn't have to be so mindful bring your body bring your body and bring your body and bring it again and bring it again eventually the mind and heart will be able to show up for it the most powerful thing is to physically show up see if we do the reverse where we try to get ourselves to be mentally and emotionally congruent with the act before we do the ACT we're often waiting a long time or maybe even waiting forever it never happens but if you can jum must bring the body the body's so powerful it will draw the mind and heart after it so it feels like being a hypocrite you're doing it in a perfunctory way I don't really want to be here I'm forcing myself it's okay but you're doing it you're really doing it and it has such power and it's so healing it is so healing you you want to know something um so I told you I'm in in my I lost my father so I'm in the year of morning so we don't attend festive occasions during this year so I'm a the hook as far as going through Weddings But I want to tell you something um I learned only in the past few years how important it was for me to go to weddings it's a Mitzvah actually is it's uh to uh to celebrate with the bride and groom and I avoided it because I don't like crowds and I don't like leaving the house if I don't have to and I don't like loud noises and there's always music and it's loud I don't like social interactions and you go to a wedding you're going to have to have a hundred different social interactions but I realized that showing up at people's Simas at their happy occasions like it means so much and I had to sort of realize that it's not so important for me to be emotionally and intellectually congruent with this it's important for me to be physically congruent by showing up and by showing up I want to tell you something since I started doing this just really in the past few years it changed me I have come to appreciate it more and I don't think I would have come to appreciate it if hadn't just forced myself to start okay next one what are some ways to get out of the mind and and and getting to the body know just doing doing something for others because that really gets you out of your head showing up for others and it could be your own children but doing something for someone else is the best way like when we get deep into that spiral into that rumination and we need to just break it show up and do something for somebody okay yeah good thank you okay awesome much uh success to you to your wife thanks for calling in hey this is shase tab you were just watching a clip from this class if you want to get the full context the full class that this clip that you just watched was from you watch right here click right here here