Let's Talk About Our Mental Health (OU Event, 2023)

[Music] good evening ladies and gentlemen thank you for joining in this night which is the beginning or perhaps a continuation of a very important conversation tonight is a night where we start talking about mental mental health awareness in our community specifically during this month of mental health awareness I'd like to thank first of all the organizations that are coming together to make this evening possible to um oil and I'd like to recognize David Mandel's presence over here as as representative of all hell to the Boca Raton Southern Gog and BRS the program Out of the Shadows our shul and of course the OU that facilitated all these different pieces coming together for this special evening you know that I'd like to thank Rabbi Simon Taylor and rifle Carriage who really worked tirelessly to pull this to pull all of us together to start talking about this very important subject I'd like to thank the oil leadership team who are here the professional side Dr Norman Blumenthal we'll hear from in a moment Mrs writer Dr Khali namdar and Mrs Tammy kornfeld and of course Gerard Goldberg the entire bi BRS staff for ensuring that we have the precious few moments of time together this evening and on a rabbanim communal leaders who are joining us those who are here and those who are of course joining us um virtually and will be revisiting the subject um long after this evening has finished um I'd like to first of all recognize um our noted speakers this evening um we have our own Dr Norman Blumenthal and this is very handling because I am and was a student of Dr Norman Blumenthal when I was in Smith is a licensed clinical psychologist who serves as the Director of trauma as services for oils is actor family National trauma center and adjunct professor at REITs and fercraft Graduate School of Psychology both of Yeshiva University in private practice here in Cedarhurst Dr Blumenthal is a Diane is also dying an Arbitrage arbitrator for the best of America founder and the chairman of the board of education alcohol Vice past vice president of nefresh he is often consulted after in the aftermath of catastrophic events I'm unfortunately when any anything really significant in the world happens you are going to find Dr Norman Blumenthal there I'm helping not just those in need but those who are caregiving to those in need it is really truly a a a privilege we have to have Dr Blumenthal living two blocks from our show and being part of our distinguished Community with Tamar and then and we are extremely blessed this evening to have Rabbi Goldberg who's coming up from Boca Raton Synagogue from BRS um does not want me to go through the extensive the extensive resume because it is a resume that just keeps getting better and if we were to talk about it today it just there's that we've forgotten what happened in the space of the law of the last Aid really is but I'll speak on a personal level Rabbi Goldberg is a mentor and a leader for so many personally for myself actually today we just even spent some special time just spending time thinking and learning together it is truly a privilege to have one of the greatest and common sense in Our Generation Um here this evening I'm joining us so Rabbi let us jump straight into our discussion what we're going to do is we're going to be focusing in three tiers folks in this side in this discussion we're going to look at a little bit of a few questions on Mental Health in general we're going to then pivot to anxiety and at the end we'll look at the communal role in that as well and so to make this really an armchair discussion I'm going to get into my armchair here we go okay okay so first up first up what we're going to do is we're going to try to do a little bit of alternating and uh and we are going to start off with a few basic questions on Mental Health Doctor Dr Blumenthal just uh just to start off a little bit um about our evening snake uh our evening tonight we've seen so much progress we've seen so much advances in the realm of mental health mental health awareness over the last over the last decades or the last years um we've seen the the literature demonization of therapy people going there um and not feeling bad about seeking the help they really truly need how much progress have you seen in the last in the last few years how how far have we come how far do we have to go I want to lose a micro microphone got it okay thank you very much you know when I the show I grew up in in Forest Hills the rabbi bar show used to begin his sermon with before I speak I want to say something so before I speak I want to say something I want to first of all tell you that I you know when we talk about anxiety I learning I'm learning right now about a new type of anxiety that I didn't know existed and that is speaking in the presence of my maradasra for whom I have such reverence and respect and for a rabbi from a Goldberg statue who I've looked up to for many years for his Charisma and courage so if you see me sweating a lot and shaking and if tomorrow in the midwest I run up with a Klonopin you'll understand uh why why this is so nerve-wracking it's also I think a tribute I mean and I think Rabbi the answer to your question is in part right here look how many people on a Wednesday night are coming out to hear about Mental Health Services I think if this was when I entered the field you know sometime around the Civil War um we would probably have had him a zuman um so it's I think this speaks for itself there's no doubt that there's been huge progress I I do think back to when I was in graduate school and I felt very besieged because at that time in the from Community since so much of what was consider the mainstream Psychology was really somewhat heretical some of the psychoanalysis Freudian theories so I was looked at a scans because I was going into psychology and within the professional field among my professors and colleagues I was looked upon at some Neanderthal man who's still promoting religious observance that is so much associated with Neurosis so it's really changed remarkably and we are talking about it but we have a long way to go and I think my the thought that comes to my mind with this question was I would almost say like professionally a life-altering experience for me I was mentioned that I teach the yusu students and one of the areas in which I teach is a joint program between REITs which is the while you sneaker program and the protocol graduate school in Psychology where the students take 14 months of courses in counseling and get actually a certificate in Presto accounting that just this year got state certification so these guys are coming during this mifa program coming out with counseling certified counseling degree and I teach the bereavement course and what I do is I alternate I have one week lecture and then I bring in people who have suffered losses so they can talk about their experience the very last class as a couple I bring in who lost the son to suicide and the father said something a number of years ago that then the son shivers down my spine he said if my son had cancer I could have talked about it I could have checked out with other people I could have tried to find out do I have the right doctors do am I getting the right treatment people could have Daven for him they could be saying Misha bears for him but because my son had depression with suicidal ideation I couldn't tell anybody and I'm not sure if I had the right treatment team and nobody was darving for him and I think where we're heading and I think tonight is a tribute to that as is the presence of many people here who have devoted their lives to destigmatizing mental illness we're going to get to the point that if somebody is suffering some mentalness or one of their loved ones is they can go up make a mishaper and if somebody asks them why are you making a Misha Berkeley and say well my wife has depression my father has OCD it should be no different and I think we're heading in that direction but that's where I think we still have to go is actually very hopeful that's a hopeful message which uh hopefully we're going the right in the right direction I just uh you know would recognize in our community just recently we had this enough Shane or Elena course of 14 weeks um rather set up a Stuart or who are here I just um did this just recently and and it I think speaks to that as well let's just put a bit about Goldberg I know that uh speaking for the perspective of Rabbi one of the largest communities in America and in the world without over a thousand families and having just do you know for those who've been following the program that our Goldberg leads out of the shadows and talking about this how in the pews like seeing it on in real time sort of on on the ground in the trenches how have you seen the conversation and perhaps the fear of talking about the subject still that exists first of all thank you so much for this opportunity it's an honor and a privilege to be here and my dear covered by Trump and everything you're accomplishing in this beautiful shoe thank you for hosting us and Dr Billman ball who is on my speed dial and every other Rabbi that I know when we need support and guidance and help and direction and how to help others Dr Blumenthal is always available to us all hours of the day and a big thank you to oh hell and to the OU and everyone for putting this together and it's wonderful to see familiar faces and friends and and to be together for this important subject the fact that this panel is even happening this conversation without any hesitation or defensiveness or apology is evidence itself about the progress that we're making that we need to speak about these issues they're not going away they're very real and I would argue they affect every family I don't think it's you know a negative about my community to say and I think equally true for this community every Community there's not a home aim bias that is not visiting a pharmacy to help and have intervention for a range of issues from learning issues and 80 ADHD to anxiety to OCD to depression to enormous other issues that in the world that we're living it would almost be hard to believe that if among a family there isn't someone who's trying to navigate this crazy world a world in which is coming out of a a unprecedented pandemic and with the proliferation of Technology with all the challenges and complications it's offered and just trying to navigate the craziness of this world we need all kinds of tools and we need all kinds of of help and support and and thank God it's available and really kudos to everyone for being here and to the show and the organizations just for hosting this conversation these challenges are not new we may be talking about them like they're new but they're not new the rambam already wrote about depression he spoke about a spirit that overtakes a person a Darkness a despondency and the rambam was familiar with it because then one of his agaris in one of his letters after his brother died at Sea the rambam describes he went into a depression for a year rabiniona 800 years ago writes about the power of depression how it's debilitating and how like a physical illness it's real and it needs to be confronted and I need support and it needs healing and it needs therapy these are not issues these are not new challenges to our day unfortunately we live in a a world that you can argue that in the interim between then and now we've tried to present some carefully curated profile of who we are like everything's amazing everyone is amazing certainly social media has contributed to that some of the challenges in the world of sudokum I don't know if we're going to get to have contributed to that but people are very very cautious and careful and want to present the reality which not only doesn't exist but likely can't exist some carefully curated profile or presentation as if everything's okay when if you're alive and breathing and you're feeling and you're engaged with others it's going to be very very challenging it is it should be something which gives us courage and and support and comfort to know that there are many great people who themselves struggle the navigated these very issues right the rabba rashab of Lubavitch to Sigmund Freud to seek his counsel and his help in describing the funk and the anxiety the depression that he was in and struggling to get out of the three-day Aisha after running away and escaping was hospitalized for nine months with with depression uh there there's a list of pencil talks about the depression as he navigated the trauma of his life and what he had to overcome and these biographies are now including not only the hagiography the perfect story but the perfect story includes actually also needing to navigate and overcome these uh these challenges as well which I think is very healthy the more we mainstream it in our conversation the more we make it something which is the people that we admire and look up to and respect also had to overcome then the less we live in the shadows and that's where the greatest danger is any Rabbi who's ever had to officiate out of levaya of of an overdose of someone who took their own life of somebody who struggled with these issues and wasn't able to to win the war even as they won many many battles knows that it's in the shadows it's in the stigma it's in the shame where this issue only metastasizes and grows and ferments it's where it's felt the most and it's where they go the deepest and and the darkest place so it's really wonderful that people are willing to now speak and to come out of the shadows and the effort that we can collectively make to remove that stigma the art scroll biography of Robertson kanyevsky included the fact that there were Knights that she took anxiety medicine that the line out her door and the people who shared and unburdened themselves with the troubles they faced left her anxious and unable to sleep and she took anxiety medication that in itself is not extraordinary it's very understandable when you consider how many unburdened themselves and the depth of those burdens what's amazing is that when when the author and arts girl decided to include that in her biography it was with her husband's encouragement and support in the whole family that if they would share that the great rabbits in kaneevsky a woman one of the Pinnacles of of faith in our time a paradigm and a role model of living with emuna and everything's from Hashem and that everything's amazing and that you can aspire to that and live with that in the most real way and still need a little bit help falling asleep at night and using the support that's available and that's out there all of these contribute to much healthier environment so I'm seeing I'm sure you were seeing that we're slowly slowly stepping chipping away at the stigma people are willing to share in casual conversation or at a Shabbos table about their therapist or something they learned in in therapy about the support they're getting and and no less of a stigma than if a person is trying to overcome a physical ailment needs to go to rehab because they had a knee replacement surgery or they tore their Achilles or somebody who's overcoming a particular physical diagnosis similarly should be no Stigma in trying to navigate and overcome and the support we could talk more about where the community comes in and what we can do so there's enormous growth that's happened I think we have more work to do I will just close by saying I do think we have to be careful particularly with young people I'm sure Dr Blumenthal could speak to this much more authoritatively than I can but sometimes among teenagers we can even glorify the pendulum can swing so far in the other direction that everyone's talking and over sharing about their therapist and the therapy and you become a no one and a nothing if you're not in crisis you're not on a medication and you don't have a team of therapists so I think that there's a healthy balance between removing the stigma and normalizing but also not sort of glorifying or celebrating in a way that makes someone who does not have a diagnosis and doesn't need the interventions feel like the outlier and there's something wrong with them and as this pendulum is coming back hopefully we'll end up in the Middle where it belongs well that really is quite eye-opening that really is quite eye-opening well let's let's take it from a touchless perspective so somebody if somebody knows they they or a family member or a dear friend they're looking out for needs needs help but what happens is that so many times um so a person will look for that help and start that process and unfortunately um to get that it becomes a nightmare of navigation to find a therapist who is um who's who's covered by insurance or even those who are covered by insurance and the limits that a person has it becomes exorbitant even to get the help necessary it's not diplomats or just from your perspective for the people out there trying to navigate this territory which becomes exceedingly difficult and depressing just navigating how does how does one how does one manage to to navigate that it sort of reminds me of the parity and hazal that also said um so yeah it's money's uh money is an important issue and it's raised a lot I I I recall I was in Chicago a number of years ago we were talking about these stigmatizing mental illness and I was focusing very much on getting people to go for help when they need the help and the principal of a school the 1500 students came to me afterwards and said I have no problem getting people to go for help they can't afford it what do we do and it's a real issue so I have a few answers to that and I'll try to encapsulate it first of all if you can I'm telling you it's money well spent anyone who's had physical ailments and physical pain and also had emotional pain will tell Will attest to the fact that the emotional pain is much more debilitating and much more in a way painful because it's themselves it's not just their arm or their leg and I've had people tell me that they've made money on therapy because they're functioning better they're doing better in their business they're doing better in their work and at the end of the day it was actually profitable but it's a reality that it's it is expensive and I sometimes say to my patients I could never afford myself um but you know it it is expensive so I think there are a few options first of all the arguments and here in New York I mean thank me Israel arguments that actually specialize in Mental Health Services the only drawback is usually they they offer a circumscribed amount of money you know certain amount of sessions so that poses a problem for the practitioner because after that if they need to continue they're not going to drop the patient in the middle of treatment and then they find themselves sometimes seeing somebody at a very low cost we all I know you all I think many of us do Miser in the field we do mices manam we not only allocated 10 percent of our income but 10 percent of our time and mental health professionals do that as well there is the clinic option and they're in fact ol has the beach ninth clinic right here there's Jewish Family Services all over the country excellent uh practitioners um and yes it's true that usually the therapists in these clinics are relatively inexperienced younger but first of all they are supervised by more senior people I will sometimes be one of the supervisors at the oral clinic and they we they offer training I mean we do in global Clinic as well and um the research shows that young therapists sometimes are as effective as my senior therapists because they they compensate for lack of experience with enthusiasm so the outcomes are pretty similar but that is an option as well and then the other thing I want to tell you is that we're aware of this and what the field is changing a lot I will tell you that at this point I didn't do the numbers but I I would eventually because only a third of my practice comes every week we're doing remember we're starting techniques that are much more prescriptive much more directive where we don't have to see somebody every week we can give people skills and tools and they can come back every second week every third week and again in the attempt to reduce the cost a very good example is a program that's out of coming out of Yale now called space it's developed by Dr Eli Leibowitz and again the oil clinics have all been trained in this technique where children who are diagnosed with anxiety the children are not seen the parents are trained how to be therapists parents are trained to do the therapeutic interventions with the children which does not require weekly visits it requires maybe once monthly visits and the parents once they get the hang of it can continue on their own without the patient having to be seen so I think my message representing the Mental Health Community is we are aware of this and there are many changes in fact I think as we discuss I'll talk about some other changes that I think are taking place in the field that will make Mental Health Services more accessible and more affordable actually just jumping in on that what is the space what is the role of schools in this in in this field like so like you know a lot of times for parent this is becomes the first time when they hearing that their child is acting out and they're not quite sure what to do so how does how does a school interplay with the network you're describing right as as a student a school that caused a lot of mental illness among my teachers I think I can address that um the I I may address it in a broader framework and I'll try to be quick because I really want to hear from all right Goldberg but um there's there's a paradigm shift happening now in mental health and and I think we're starting to see it I think it's going to take place even further and the shift is the model until now was very much like a medical model I the teacher principal I the employer I the rabbi vashul identify members of my synagogue workplace school who are suffering from depression anxiety OCD borderline personality disorder whatever it might be and send them out to the practitioner that's changing now and it's changing from that Paradigm to Paradigm where mental health is coming into the synagogue into the workplace and into the school uh let me give an example in terms of schools again in Ohio we have our map program which stands for Middle Middle School anxiety prevention program which is a program that's now in between New York and the Tri-City area and and South Florida is an already 15 to 20 schools where what we're doing is we're going into the school and we're training the teachers about anxiety and we're teaching the teachers we're deputizing the teachers to be therapists now you might say Well they're supposed to be teachers not therapists but in today's world with technology we don't need teachers to be purveyors of information because anything you want to find out I know this is before chat GPD but anything you want to find out you can click a mouse and find out I don't need the teacher to teach me information in fact I remember just an example when I was teaching at Yu once if I have advar Torah that's you might remember I'm sure you probably just remember the jokes but uh if you haven't vartura that fits with what I'm teaching I'll share with the guys and one time somebody told me very nice Toyota about a certain expression that only appears twice in Tanakh and then the two places it appears it has this and this relevance so I start telling you know this and this expression only appears twice in Tanakh I barely got the words out of my mouth and hands stood up inside you can't get away with anything nowadays when I first started speaking they told me if you want to make up a hazal say it's Irish who's learning your xiaomi in this episode they can't do that nowadays you know so I don't need teachers but we need but teachers are increasingly becoming involved in the social emotional adjustment of children so we're bringing mental health into the school we're piloting now four programs uh resiliency schools we're calling we're only piloting two here in the tri-state area two in Florida where we are not training the teachers we're training the administrators the secretaries the nurses the security staff about trauma and children who may have been through trauma and what we can do them so I think what we're finding happening now is that mental health is going from the private practitioner's office to the community and that's why we're training our rabbis today our Rabbi while you are coming out for the most part is trained Council list somebody may be familiar with darcitara did which is to rent out space in their in their school to a mental health clinic so that the students can just go down the hall and get their services and the mother of six kids doesn't have to start driving him or her to a practitioner on the outside and I'm sure I assure you 10 schools next year will be doing same thing again so that's the shift so when you ask me what schools can do I think that's where it's going I think our teachers now and in the future are going to be very involved in the mental health they're going to be teaching coping skills they're going to be incorporating it into their lessons and they'll be addressing at least moderate levels of anxiety and depression and distance because we can't we can't handle it all I spoke too long so yeah actually so it's a really decentralization of attention which is the answer the answer to this and I just want to for those of you who are not aware of this is when I was in when I was in smyrha which didn't doesn't feel like too long ago but has it's now many generations it feels like um there was Advanced personal psychology so Dr Blumenthal and Dr pilkovitz taught and we had role-playing and actors to to just recognize enough to triage out um with different conditions what what really classify what is classified as OCD Goldberg disorder and article this it's not just a term there's a lot that was in the training and this was already yesteryear now that's before the credits and accredited program that's that's been going on I also just want to make note that there are many organizations that which reached out um specifically in lieu of this evening because of the incredible Services they offer locally and I I can't go into specific specifying one over the other because there are so many incredible programs but I just there are going to be Flyers outside for the many institutions and organizations locally that offer incredible Services yeah in terms of decentralization when you just a shift actually perhaps to to drag only just a turn that you you've been using a lot and that is the term called mental hygiene um and it's sort of like you know hygiene we sort of think of you know whenever we're taking care of ourselves usually physically but mental hygiene maybe perhaps moving away from the mental illness part of it but more mental Wellness as the good how when you use that term what are you referring to what what kind of habits are we talking about when I went to Hawaii Dr Blumenthal was not teaching and not a criticism of Yu at all because we were empowered with Incredible learning and and resources and knowledge but I think pastoral counseling got just a little bit more time than how to choose the proper tie for a funeral and it was a time where people didn't talk and it wasn't as urgent so we are lucky that we're producing robotum today who do have access and I can listen to Dr Blumenthal all day I'm sure they could too the great mix of of the knowledge and the humor which is which is fantastic um I don't belong on this panel tonight and I'm not you know trying to practice false humility and telling you that I'm not a therapist I'm not a mental health professional I don't have an expertise or a training I did major in Psych NYU but that was for other reasons um and and I really don't belong up here the only reason I think I was invited and I'm here is because we've tried to make this part of the conversation seeing what's happening and understanding what people are dealing with in a very real way in their homes and in their lives and when looking in the mirror how can we talk about it and let's let's talk about the very relevant and the very real things and in my journey in trying to learn more about it and try to be better in my community but also expand the conversation for all of us I learned from others that we dedicate a lot of time a lot of energy a lot of resources a lot of organizations to being in reactive mode we talk about mental illness and mental crisis and and we're reacting when a diagnosis has been made or a certain Behavioral or certain acting out or certain tendencies that we're seeing whether in a school or school or whatever other setting it is we are reacting to mental illness but we're not yet putting enough emphasis and resource and curriculum and time and thoughtfulness and strategy into mental health mental health is different than mental illness mental illness is a diagnosis is a behavior mental illness is that there's something wrong and and you see this in the world of medicine at large in general again I'm not in a position to speak about this with any with any Authority but in medicine in general there's reactive medicine where you come because you have an ailment you have a diagnosis you have a pain something's wrong and what do we do to treat it or you can come when nothing's wrong and get complete lab work up in an evaluation of how you're doing that says how do we put you in a better position so that you can live healthy the rest of your life and you won't need the knee replacement and the hip replacement and the heart medication and the other medications you might need diabetes and and the like so I think of course we need to treat and respond to mental illness and and going back to the question about the financing of it the economy of it how would we react as a community if someone came to us and said that someone in their family has been diagnosed but we don't have the money to go to the doctor what do we say good luck watch a YouTube video Google it I'm so sorry can I have your name I'll make Amisha bear off we would say we'll we'll kick in and we'll do whatever we need to to raise the funds to ensure you can get whatever treatment the best treatment that you can and mental illness mental diagnosis should be no different in that way that the community should rally and we have to find Solutions we have to subsidize and we have to do what we can what's necessary as we would I mean that's again this entire conversation this entire night is that mental illness is no different than physical illness from the stigma and also from the approach from the support but if if going forward we're not only in a reactive and responsive mode we're not only putting out fires and taking care of crises but we are promoting and practicing and modeling better not only mental illness mental health mental health so Dr Fox from California taught me that term that expression I'm sure it's used widely of mental hygiene and mental hygiene the same as you alluded to about Trump with physical hygiene or children from a young age might say I don't want to brush my teeth I'm don't feel like brushing my dude I'm going to sleep anyway why do I have to brush my teeth for and I understand I have a lot of girls my son is still young but I understand that adolescent boys in particular might say I don't want to shower I don't need to shower the whole summer long at camp and come home with the I heard this like in Camp they teach the boys like open the soap in the shampoo it the last day before you get home spill a little bit out so but but we don't tolerate that and we teach that if you don't brush your teeth from when you're young what's going to happen your teeth are going to fall out and if you don't shower and bathe what's going to happen there's enough challenges in the sugar world to begin with so we try to promote and teach hygiene the best hygiene practices to live a physically healthy life physical exercise and so on so in the mental space as well there are mental hygiene practices that we can promote teach and again do we shoes have all kinds of incredible Scholars and residents adult education based measures programs learning opportunities they're phenomenal they're fantastic we try to increase them and promote them and recruit to them and they're wonderful but we also need to through the community educate about how to practice mental hygiene what does that look like how do we navigate this world as we talk about about technology the proliferation of Technology The Addictive quality of Technology what is technology doing to compromise and corrupt our ability to communicate our inability to be comfortable in our own skin or need to curate the most perfect image of our life our ability to be by ourself and alone a nightmare for me is a Friday night that I have to walk to a challenge and none of my children agree to walk with me and I have to confront the reality that I'm going to be by myself and I can't put an airpod and there's nothing to listen to I just have to be by myself and and I'm not ashamed to admit that that's still uncomfortable for me that you could have a 10 or 15 or 20 minute walk and the prospect of 20 minutes by yourself and this research studies again Dr Golden Book could talk about people in a room and they'd rather get an electric shock than be by themselves it's more painful to be alone in by yourself than to administer an electric shock to yourself all of the all of the research so how do we teach that hygiene how do we promote from a young age that capacity to be by ourselves that ability to just sit and think which these are not new ideas these aren't ancient in our Timeless Torah his bonanness his bodadus is newfangled ideas these are they go back as as far as Yiddish kite itself the Zion Roan the Seven Shepherds the leadership of Judaism was dependent on people who had the ability to be outside in the field by themselves they weren't scrolling and they weren't watching and they weren't Googling and they weren't listening that prerequisite to their ascending to the leadership of the Seven Shepherds the leaders of the Jewish people was to learn and then to demonstrate the capacity to be alone to be in thought to be able to strategize to be comfortable to be mindful instead of mindless we're such creatures of habit we're on autopilot we're living these mindless lives where momentum is carrying us so what are we doing what are the hygiene practices to introduce in a very real and practical way around our dinner table that should be technology free and without cell phones and what are the practices and exercise about how to communicate and what do we do about learning to be comfortable in our own skin and how do we celebrate people who just think if you walked into a Starbucks and you saw somebody who was sitting sipping a coffee and they weren't meeting someone on the other side of the table there was no laptop in front of them and there was no airpod in their ear they were just sitting and they were thinking you might call Dr Blumenthal the ol crisis hotline am I called Salah you'd say something terribly is wrong here this person is a maniac is psychotic they're just sitting here and they're just they're just being they're just existing they're just thinking they're just breathing and again now is not the time but we know all these sources the word for soul in Hebrew is nishaman the word for breath is nishima because we restore our soul when we breathe it's how we got our soul to begin with and we are losing our soul our breathing is so shallow we're having all these respiratory issues and they express and manifest the major physical crises later in life and and they're saying it's because we're looking down all the time we're scrolling we're texting we're are we ever we were just breathing so hygiene and again I'm I'm not an expert and I don't belong up here I'm just trying to advance the conversation and so grateful for this opportunity to do it but physical exercise and mental exercise and hygiene communication contemplativeness mindfulness um how do we reintroduce these hygiene practices so that our mental teeth aren't going to fall out the older that we get I I don't know enough but I'm grateful that there are experts who can help us develop the vocabulary and the skill set and the exercise set and the curriculum in our schools and in our schools and across the community and then rely on and hope that people will disconnect long enough from technology and everything else the rat race of life to connect and reconnect because I think this also answers the other question and again I'm going on too long it's a theme of tonight but um the admission not that you're actually going on too long but the admission is the theme of the night but I think that part of the way also to deal with the the expense the for some prohibitive expense of these issues is the more mental hygiene we practice and the more our mental health improves the less mental illness we'll need to respond to in crisis mode and therefore the less money we're going to spend a very similar model to Physical Medicine and the hope that costs will come down if people live healthier lives we can create that in the mental space too yeah it kind of reminds me of the sun my dentist used to have on his desk which is you don't need to floss all your teeth just the ones you want to keep and it's sort of cut that ounce of prevention really it says a lot more than that pound of intervention what we're going to do now is we're going to shift a little bit into the focus on specifically anxiety so anxiety is really um something which we just seem to be seeing more of and the question is is that true first of all Dr limothal and number two is if it is what what's triggering it that we have so much now can we can we look at those things and say well what of those causes might be helpful for us to say well hang on let's let's look at that let's examine those those aspects and fix up the hygiene on them perhaps thank you thank you very much and it's a beautiful Concept in fact I was listening to wrote Goldberg I was reminded of the famous film story where they build a bridge but they forgot to put a banister on the bridge so people were falling off so got together and said what to do about that and decided to Spring out boats to catch the people as they fall off the bridge in essence that's what we've been doing and Robert Goldberg you're very eloquently suggesting that we put up banisters that's very important yes there's a dramatic increase in anxiety even before covet although since Coco lamorso and in fact I think the estimates now that one out of three Americans at some point in the Life are going to suffer from anxiety um and the other two thirds are in denial but um the the um in fact probably the most dramatic example I think of some of the research by twang who studied the mmpi mmpi is a very robust psychological test that has been around for a very long time since I think the 20s the 30s so we have data going back to 20s and 30s and this data is pre-covet and they found among children that their higher levels of anxiety today than there were during the Great Depression during World War II during the tumultuous times of the Vietnam War our children are more anxious today and of course it poses the question there are children in many respects some more safe and secure today and why are we seeing so much so much anxiety and I think there are many reasons that I'd like to focus maybe just on one and that's what I'd like to refer to and I think that's important as part of this conversation and before I Robbie Goldberg sort of steered Us in that direction which is what I refer to sometimes as the technology Revolution uh those of us may remember from our history books that we learned about the Industrial Revolution if I recall correctly and again I can't get away with anything nowadays I hope I'm right but in the late 18th early 19th century there was steam energy there were factories Mass producing people were moving from the country to the cities there was international trade and it really changed the world I think someday when the history books are going to be written they're going to talk about the era we're living in now during the technology Revolution it's going to make the Industrial Revolution look like a footnote technology is changing everything every relationship our Educators Physicians medicine everything is really changing and we of course don't have time to go into all of this but I want to focus on one aspect in which Technologies changing our children in particular and I'm going to give you an example a little facetiously we spent the last two pesachs in Virginia Beach we rented a nice sized house so we could have everybody together uh in in Virginia Beach last year we had a crisis we went through I'm gonna have to bear my soul and share this crisis but on the first day of kalamoid brace yourselves ready we ran out of cookie sheets I mean and we had a slew of grandchildren addicted to Tamar's chocolate chip cookies who had already devoured them all the first day and we needed to make more chocolate chip cookies so being the good husband Diane where everybody else went off to the amusement park I went to all the supermarkets I went to Target I went to to Costco I went to Walmart there was not a cookie sheet to be gotten in Virginia Beach so now I'm calculating if I drive seven hours home to Gourmet Glatt I can grab a few cookie sheets and race back I could be back maybe in kind of by two o'clock in the morning we could have cookies and then I'm I'm frantic and I'd suddenly realized that wait a minute I'm Amazon Prime I got on the computer and the next morning 40 cookie sheets were sitting on my front porch now that's I think symbolic of the world we live in today we are used to because of Technology everything coming to us we don't have to exert ourselves everything comes to us so for example there's a school that has shut down and that's called the School of Hard Knocks our children are not learning how to handle Matters by confronting adversity they expect everything to come to them now I'm not a hand Drinker and I don't believe in the good old days I'm actually believe in the Outlook of the great philosopher and theologian Wayne Gretzky no rank recipes rabbi you play soccer right yeah right okay rugby we gotta you know before we even thought in why you maybe okay a Wayne Gretzky said I skate to where the puck is going not to where it's been this is the world we live in today and and this going to speaks to what I said earlier about the shift about bringing mental health into the community and whatever I go to spoke about in terms of mental health hygiene today actually we give our children the coping mechanisms they don't learn them by just confronting it and developing it we have to give it to them and I think the reason why we're seeing so much more anxiety is because not because life is harder but because we don't have the same skills and our children in particular don't have the skills because they're expecting everything to be tailored to them now we can't again turn the clock back and that speaks to and I'm gonna hope maybe you'll have some more time to speak about this later we have to bring men coping and Mental Health Service mental health coping and management into our homes into our schools and terrestrials into the community well well definitely definitely uh a truth that we're all trying to swallow right now I I just uh perhaps on the shul side Rabbi Goldberg um what do you what do you do like when you have a parent a a congregate that comes it comes in and is discussing they're trying to figure out and and it's clear from your Vantage Point that they are over pampering over protecting over bubble wrapping their their their their children which are sort of lending to this this is Dr Wilmington to say how do you how do you make recommendations in that world yeah they used to call it helicopter apparently now it's bulldozed parenting where the parents are bulldozing any obstacle out of the way to clear the path for the children I saw an article a couple years ago about parents going to Ivy League colleges to make play dates for their children who are students in those universities because they didn't know how to initiate a new relationship and and how to integrate there so it's an enormous phenomenon it's a huge challenge my wife loves to say that when we were much younger parent-teacher conference night the children would hide and cry and now parent-teacher conference night the teachers hide and cry because you know the parents used to come home and tell the child I learned about all the improvements need to happen and what's really going on and what you need to do and how they charge him to tell the teacher why they're wrong and why they're unfair to the student and why they need to raise their grade and everything like that so it's an enormous phenomena that's going on and there's no question that it's breathing that that anxiousness I do want to say that on the topic of anxiety I I think I would do want to say and I'm going to say to every answer I'm not a mental health professional I'm not an expert I don't belong up here but I do think one of the things that I can I can mention that's important is we need to be really careful with our terms in the effort to eliminate the stigma we also can't just use terms freely that are insensitive and hurtful to people who have very real diagnoses so when when a kid I'm hypothetically speaking let's say about a neighbor of mine but but if a kid tells the parent who says you need to clean your room and the child the teenager says stop telling me to clean my room you're giving me anxiety say no that's not anxiety that's not an appropriate use of the word anxiety and I could tell you as a rabbi who for years gave my pre-pay stock workshop with all and a routine about this is the Jewish OCD holiday until I heard from a congregant and mitamil oh my sensitivity in this area and everything else are because courageous people have educated me and sensitized me he said Rabbi for people who have real OCD you're just generically referring to the whole Yount of as an OCD holiday is a disservice you're diluting the term you're taking away that diagnosis what it means to them and and cleaning for pesach for a person who doesn't have OCD is not OCD so stop using it and one of the things that we can do even as we eliminate a stigma but is also practice greater sensitivity words matter and using them accurately matters and using them sensitively matters and if a person does not indeed have that diagnosis then then we can or should be careful with them so back to the bubble wrapping of the children and the bulldozed uh the bulldozing the pathway forward for children there this past winter I'm sure in New York too in Florida we had this there was a out of the ordinary level of flu and RSV virus and and colds and really peculiar how many people in Hawaii it's spread and how contagious it was and I read an article that was a theory not all doctors agree to it that gave it a name called immunity debt that basically after two years of wearing masks and standing six feet apart and being super and Uber careful from each other where there was almost no flu in colds and virus being spread we actually unintentionally damaged or depleted our immune system so that when we took off the mask and we were exposed now to a virus or to a bacteria it spread rampantly with a contagion and was all over because we had built up all with the best intention and understandably by trying to avoid Corona stumble even still saying the word like um exactly so so um in that effort unintentionally though we built an immunity debt and when I read that article it made me think are we doing that with our children when it comes to every form of hardship or challenge you remember the book The Blessing of a skim knee every time a child don't catch them when they fall let them experience catch them you don't want to see them get hurt but sometimes it's good it's good to build up a little immunity in this world don't create spaces that are so safe nobody ever hears anything that makes them at all uncomfortable because in that real world of marriage and relationships and having an employer and life in general someone's going to say something that's going to hurt your feelings and either you'll learn to build up an immunity and had coping mechanism coping skills for it or it will devastate you and debilitate you and it'll be over you won't be able to get up so I think there's an enormous need to again shuls Community our place to talk about these topics these issues to address them from the total sources and to see that our Timeless Torah had the wisdom and the recipe and the blueprint and the instruction manual for how to deal with them but one of the core Jewish values is acharyas is taking responsibility he's taking ownership and that's exactly what we're taking away from our children we're really we're we're raising a generation that are impotent that don't have that ability to take Aquarius to show leadership to take ownership to take responsibility to have accountability and to address it's okay to fail fail forward instead of when you're eliminated in the first round of the playoffs even though you had the best record in the league giving a press conference saying that you know it's a big picture and life is fun and sports and some years you're making some you don't and his life that particular player I never got so much feedback in an article as my article on on this particular topic the books were limited from the playoffs I know they don't follow Sports here blank looks Giants yes so um but his life is not a failure this particular player's life in fact is an extraordinary story of success but we're so allergic to ever saying I failed I stumbled I came up short but what can I learn from it how can I fail forward how can I take ownership and responsibility how can I be accountable for my mistake Own It improve on it bounce back and be better ever in it so from no matter the level of affluence or prosperity to actually encourage our children and more than encourage to create a standard that they have to also earn that there's certain things we'll provide that are Necessities as parents but there are luxuries and it's a very complicated definition today of what's a luxury and what's a necessity but if you want a luxury then you're going to have to earn it then you're going to have to work for it then you're gonna have to learn that the hard way I'll tell you a story without his permission but I actually give him enormous credit for who I am today from it but when when I decided I was old enough to start dating I wanted to get married and I chose who I would go out with next I didn't delegate that to my mommy to review a whole list of resumes and tell me where to show up what to wear what to do on the day what to say knowing she wouldn't be there the morning after the wedding to continue to do that I think all of these things are contributing so negatively right and then here's the credit card pay for your first couple years of marriage and then here's the and all of these things are raising people and who could feel like a man these are the basic building blocks of feeling like a man that you earn that you own that you take responsibility that you fix that you solve anyway so I started dating and second or third date I was coming right around the corner here my wife grew up around the corner here corner of wild acre and Lawrence Avenue and I was at Yu and I went to start the car which was a hand-me-down from my grandfather a clunker and the car wouldn't start there were no cell phones then and I went back and I called my father grew up in Teaneck New Jersey right over the bridge I said Dad it's an emergency second or third date I I'm running late I gotta get there I need you could you drive across the bridge and get me the car come with Mom bring me one of the cars and my father who loves me very much and is an extraordinary father he said to me Ephraim if you're old enough to date you're old enough to get married you're old enough to figure this out and you hung up the phone now that sounds that that was the that was the that was it right today that's reportable today you'd be Amanda mandator in fact some of you right now are going to walk out and still call statue of limitation hasn't passed you can get get my father still that was an act of abuse today a child would grow up and write a book or appear in a talk show and talk about the abuse of the father who hung up the phone and didn't Rescue by driving over with with the car but I look back at my life and I say that was one of the greatest gifts my father my parents ever gave me I didn't feel it in that moment I could promise you in fact in anger I think I smacked the steering wheel and the car started and I drove out here is what happened but when I looked back and it was moments like that or the fact that I had to work for my spending money for my two years in Yeshiva in Israel because my parents got me there and were proud and happy to but if I wanted to enjoy a bottle of expensive mineral water on the street then I was going to have to pay for that myself if I wanted a drink that wasn't tap water if I picked up a shawarma I had to pay for that myself and I don't feel like I had a abusive childhood I feel like I had a childhood that prepared me for life and how do we bring that back how do we make the parent who's teaching their child to take ownership and responsibility in Aquarius boys and girls how to earn and save and have budgets and understand the difference between a necessity and a luxury how do we bring that language back and make that parent not the outlier in a kids class where every other parent loves them how come when you can't love me how do we make that the norm again to be able to raise future generations of leader who take ownership and responsibility and accountability and understand that life is not going to be handed to you in a silver platter you're going to fall and skim your knee you're going to start the car and it's not going to start every space is not safe people are going to say things that are insensitive and hurtful and how can we rebuild that Collective immunity to overcome that debt and in fact fill the bank account so that we're stronger for whatever the future holds wow that's quite something it actually reminds me that in your eyes saxon's last book he wrote in Morality about the the death of one of the oldest people in the world who died at the age of 109 I believe just recently last two years and you'd say well you know that kind of person must have lived in you know an ivory Tower you know with you know pillows around the room so that they didn't trip anywhere and turns out this fella was actually a holocaust Survivor who had a makeup through all the way to Israel make their life lost their business rebuilt their business and still putting on filling into their into into the later 110s which is a remarkable thing which speaks to the fact that it isn't necessarily the life well protected but the world life well lived which is um precise at that point which is I guess gets a little bit more difficult issues if a push into this one is that if people use the word like Goldberg you're saying a moment ago the word anxiety love is anxiety provoking in general right life the life comes with an incredible amount of stress and if you're feeling stressed that's a good sign that you're alive um if not um and so you want us to wonder how do you differentiate between between the anxieties that life just brings and anxieties which are perhaps one should be raving I'm waving that red flag knowing the difference and managing the two knowing what's healthy and what's not necessarily healthy it needs to be intervened well if I can use like a metaphor from a different area which is addictions uh there are two types of addictions uh addiction treatments if you will there's certain types of addictions that you have to eliminate uh cigarette smoking uh substance abuse sometimes alcohol you can live a very good life without alcohol without opiates you know so and so therefore these as these are addictions you have to get rid of there's some addictions that you can't get rid of you have to sort of achieve moderation and eating addiction a fruit addiction a sex addiction uh shopping addiction these are actual addictions and you can't eliminate them you have to learn how to get them within moderation and this same thing is true with anxiety there's no such thing as living without anxiety the research for example on test anxiety demonstrates that the ideal place to achieve to do well in a test is to have a modicum of anxiety because if a child let's say has too much anxiety and then they're too stressed to do well on the test if they have too little anxiety they're not motivated I think where we saw this very dramatically um and in the work that I do for all hell was when we first schools first started having unfortunately the unfortunate side of the times started having an intruder drills drills in the event level Lane of a shooter coming into the schools and they asked us as the trauma team of oh hell to come along not to teach what uh you know the children should do in terms of safety that the security company did but to make sure that we're teaching the children and not traumatizing them and we were able to identify three sort of subsets of children and their response to this very scary training the majority of the children took it in understood how to you know we're it was scary but had a moderate level of fright and and internalized it and did like we do with fire drills parked in the back of their brain if something if the signal comes out if they have to practice this they know what to do but then there were two other groups that we identified that were more problematic there were the anxious kids and by the way it's not very often the uh intellectually gifted children who are more prone to anxiety who would overthink it oh what if he does that and what if we're not fast enough they were trying to think of every eventuality in the event of a school shooter and they were having they were panicking and they had we had to calm them down but then there was another group there was a group of kids who were not scared enough usually the more dysregulated children the children with ADHD and if those of you don't know what ADHD is it's what's afflicting most of you now while I'm talking it's an ability to focus it's a but also comes within what sometimes comes with impulsivity and they don't like to be made anxious so they were making a joke out of it they were making believe that they're Shooters and they were like laughing about it and those were kids we have to make more anxious because they weren't paying attention if those skills were needed they weren't equipped to handle it so again as we try to impart or try to help our children or ourselves with heightened levels of anxiety we have to let anxiety has to be part of life and the goal is to have anxiety about about real things not imagined and to have Mastery over it so and to man have manageable levels of anxiety so that we can act upon whatever's making us as anxious and respond uh and respond in an effective way if we have an IRS audit or if we have a job interview we're going to be anxious we're going to use that anxiety to prepare ourselves so that we can let's say in terms of the job interview put our best foot forward so I should just think about another point that about Goldberg pointed out just beforehand is that the whether it's environmental or genetic or whatever the causes some children to be more anxious than than others but what about the parents management of anxiety so our government was talking about parents management of children but Management in themselves and how's that how's that related to that outcome so it's an important point is that anxiety is meant to be contagious now what do I mean we our ability to impart anxiety to somebody else is sometimes essential to our survival so let me give you two examples say in the good old days when we lived in Fortress cities if the centuries soar Marauders coming to invade the city his capacity to create anxiety in the residence of the city so they could quickly mobilize and defend the city was essential to survival bringing let's say to more modern times any of us who have raised children remember being children the first time that toddler walks into a busy street or tries to walk into a busy street we gave that kid a lot of anxiety we scared The Living Daylights out of that child Hashem because that ensured his safety so we have an inherent capacity to impart anxiety so again if a parent is anxious then certainly and you're not going to fool your children by the way children have radar they read right through us no matter how good an actor you are they know when we're anxious and they're gonna they're gonna pick up on it so obviously like they say in the airplane put the oxygen mask on yourself before you do your child but I'd like to share with you just Anthology for a minute a fascinating study that I think has huge implications and for that you have to say in Yiddish held the cup a little bit but you know you have to pay attention they studied first-time skydivers now you know the old line that if your motto is at first you don't succeed don't go skydiving you know it's a it's a scary and dangerous endeavor and they divided them they did tested them right before they went off onto the skydiving adventure and they were able to divide the group into three groups one group was the group that had realistic fear it's a scary thing the other group was petrified they were like had exaggerated people will anxiety about this and the third group were couldn't have cared less they were the Daredevils no anxiety whatsoever and they they studied their brains they took an MRI of the I don't know exactly what they did or but they were able to observe their brain activity of these three groups now you remember listen to what they found they found let's call them the Petrified group The Realistic group and the uh and the Daredevils they found that the Daredevils and the Petrified group had more similar brain activity than the ones who had realistic fear now that was very counter-intuitive we wouldn't have expected that and what their explanation is and this has huge implications for our if you will combating anxiety their theory is that the problem with those people who have too much anxiety into little anxiety is their capacity to read accurately read levels of danger that they couldn't realistically assess how dangerous it was so they either ignored the danger or they exaggerated danger whereas the ones in the middle were able to read the potential danger the best now this has I think tremendous implications from us as providers but also for parents part of our job is we're going to help our children is to help them learn how to assess what's really dangerous and what's not dangerous you know the boogie monster that comes into Nightmare is not really dangerous but the potential albeit rare thank God of an intruder in the school is dangerous and to help them have a realistic sense of what's dangerous and what's not dangerous thank you for sharing um I guess then for for this this one of the others this comes up again and again you talked about this beforehand is uh is Pace are coming it's OCD season and so on how does the the religious part of uh of Agriculture interplay relate to negate this whole this whole topic altogether I went skydiving twice first time I went with my wife my kids were stayed on the bottom and we had a pact we wouldn't tell my mother I knew she couldn't handle finding out even after the fact when we were all safe she still wouldn't be able to I don't remember you you can I don't remember how scared I was or not scared or scared enough uh there definitely is a huge interplay and there's there's a challenge there's a negative a downside to the interplay between religion and these issues and there's an upside it's part of I think the the ingredients and the tools that we have to find to find the strength with it um you know the downside is is something called scrupulocity which is OCD expressed in religion and again we have professionals who can elaborate much more on this I would encourage you and I'm not promoting myself because I'm the least on it but the podcast that we started called out of the shadows and there are heroes in this room who appeared on it we're grateful they shared their story every episode had an expert Dr blumentho has been on it and we tackle the topic where there are one or two people who live with it and are sharing the real experience and the goal is to eliminate the stigma both to listen and say I relate to that identify with that they're giving me a voice they're giving me expression or now maybe I better understand someone in my life better and what and what they live with and we've done an episode on trauma anxiety OCD and introductory episode as well so those did the episode we also talked about this issue of of scrupulosity and scrupulosity is really a danger I think back to my Yeshiva days and I can identify the people who I'm not in a position to diagnose them but I'm absolutely positive had it so and and the challenge of scrupulosity which is when you express OCD in a religious context not only is nobody concerned not only do you not have the support not only do you not go for a diagnosis you're actually celebrated and you're honored for the expression of that of that OCD in that form meaning the person who shmoda esri is three times as long as anyone else in the room gets a pat on the back and what kavana and how righteous and how incredible but really they keep just convincing themselves they're not getting the words right they keep repeating it and they're saying it over and over and over again the person who is incredibly Vigilant and scrupulous in areas of of kashras or Tara samashbacha might be celebrated for their righteousness and virtue and nobility when the truth is it's a it's a real mental health diagnosis expressing itself in that way I'm sure you can share as well but I I know in our community there are people and what's fascinating about it is it doesn't happen across the board so there are there's one person who has OCD and and it expresses itself in the area of kashras and she'll ask conscious questions over and over and over again and with her therapist I actually worked out a strategy where she'll write it to me on an email so I can answer an email she can print it and whenever she feels that urge that compulsive thought she can read the response the email to try to resolve the compulsive thought that's coming there's others who entire other areas and it doesn't necessarily Express itself in every area of halacha if one is OCD it can be specific to one to one area I do think and this came out from that episode and the person that we had on Dr Jonathan schwarzen by Jonathan Schwartz who talked about yeshivas and schools and seminaries there's much more training going on right now among the Educators to identify if there's someone there who is not just growing religiously but actually expressing itself there was a groundbreaking shiver of Usher Weiss shlita in his mind about OCD and how does somebody who is navigating OCD how do they deal with that compulsive thought in the area of daviding are there leniencies what are the things that we could do with in halacha to support such a person so that is a challenge and a danger of religious expression of this on the other hand religion also gives us opportunities in language and vocabulary and tools to be able to find support and comfort and and strength so um you know talks before just to be alive is is to be anxious I think part of the challenge of anxiety is and it goes back to bubble wrapping our children and trying to live that carefully curated life herself is trying to create an expectation that we should have no anxiety life should be so smooth life should be so seamless it should be so easy so pleasant so prosperous that nothing should challenge us and then when it does that which shouldn't Spike or anxiety level does because again we have a wrong expectation of it and I forgot who first said this where I heard or saw it but you know the presence of anxiety or anxiousness let's let's use a different term anxiety maybe the clinical diagnosis but anxiousness which everyone feels to to think that you could live a life without anxiousness this little spikes of of anxiousness you know if an EKG comes back and it's flat what does it mean the person's dead you want to see the spikes the fluctuation because that that means that a person's alive and if a person has that anxiousness it's evidence that they're alive and we should have the expectation that it's going to come I wouldn't have said this on my own but on the on the episode that we did on anxiety um the expert on that episode shared with us um the role of amuna the role of talking about faith of the presence of Hashem in our life of his not just being in the sitter and in the shoe but talking to him outside the sitter outside the school talking to him from when we wake up till we fall asleep and interpreting everything going on in our life understanding that he's in charge and that there is a plan to surrender to submit to live with faith to live in conversation with him as I said when we begin rabbits in kanyevsky was a paradigm of emuna and yet she still had times where she needed to to have medical intervention and help to help her overcome anxious feelings that she had so it's not the only solution and a person shouldn't abandon their prescription or stop going to therapy because we'll just start listening to living with the Moon And subscribe to every Moon and newsletter and join everyone in WhatsApp group and if only I say Hashem please God thank God 10 more times a day then everything will be okay it is not the only solution but it's part of the solution it's part of the solution and coming back to an overarching theme of tonight the things that we can be doing doing for ourselves for our children part of the hygiene that we can practice is to bring Hashem God back into the vocabulary to not live some highfalutin Yiddish kite in Judaism that's so intellectual and academic that we don't talk the basics about Hashem is here Hashem is there hashems everywhere that we can surrender to him that we can feel his presence that he is supporting us that we can not only thank him and ask him but we can also object and protest to him when things are not going the way that we want that he's at our dinner table when we talk about did you feel or see Hashem in your life today that we can keep a family practice WhatsApp journal or text message journal or share stories with one another where we feel his presence now as things are unfolding in our life we don't have to panic but we're able to realize that things are by Design they're for a reason and they're okay and we don't have to get we don't have to get anxious as a result I was tested recently because my lease was up and I got a new car one of my children or children alone were driving it a few weeks after I got it and and somebody hit them on the highway this is the story at least he's going with you hit him on the highway and it was a hit and run and drove away and it looks like someone took a bite out of the back of this of this new car and apparently there was a significant panic in having to call me to tell me about it and that was my moment of being tested and I'm proud to tell you that only because I teach this year on the moon every week I was able to take that deep breath that nishima to restore the nashama and to remember it's just a thing it's just a car it's fixable it's replaceable it wasn't on purpose and even according to the police report it wasn't his fault whatsoever and I was able to therefore have that reaction that just said yeah you're okay you're healthy you're fine are you sure then yeah it's no big deal we'll figure it out because if Hashem is next to you and you're in conversation with him you you can navigate you can find the strength to overcome almost everything that doesn't take the place of of therapy and medicine and supports that are needed but it does complement it and it's part of the hygiene that we could practice in advance if you don't build up your immuno muscle and you allow it to atrophy that it'll be too weak when it's needed when you need to lift something that's very heavy you need to Bear a blow of something that hits you in the gut we need to work out that amuna muscle and we need to grow that immunom muscle and we need to grow amuna muscle memory so that when we get that phone call or something else that disappoints us or something even more significant and consequential that our amuna muscle kicks in that we realize I'm a little anxious right now but you know what I have the tools and I have the place to go to know that it's going to be okay there's a plan and that there is a reason so again my understanding is that there is literature and research about this also but the role of faith in giving us I read a book several years ago called the survivors Club I highly recommend it I'm blanking on the name of the author it's a fascinating book the survivors Club Ben Sherwood word I think is the author and in each chapter is a different story of survival and his analysis with Statistics and data and trying to understand what enabled some to survive and others not from plane crashes and car accidents and Terror events and War and a chapter on the Holocaust and every scenario in which they were casualties why did some survive and some didn't and the introduction to his book he writes that he was in at least an agnostic maybe even an atheist when he set out on this journey and this research to write the book and the PostScript of the book he writes that he has to rethink his philosophy of life because a common denominator that emerged from all the chapters and all the people is that one of the skill sets to survive the resiliency to survive is Faith is Faith when you believe there is someone in something there's something much bigger than me and therefore it restored or restored at least his willingness to entertain the role of Faith so one of the hygiene practices is to not be ashamed or embarrassed or think it makes us look to this way or to that way or it's not me to talk about Hashem it's every one of us it's what our religion is all about to be in conversation all day not only in the sitter part of the challenge why we struggle to Daven and that's an enormous Challenge and worthy of a whole other night and panel the challenge of davening is if you never talk to God outside the sitter you're going to struggle to talk to them in the center if you don't talk touch them outside school it's going to be awfully hard to talk to them when you're in school but you can be in conversation all day long from you don't have carpool here you have bussing but carpool everything goes smoothly let me get to my destination thank you for that thank you the technology worked out well for the panel and everything was smooth to be in conversation the entire day to be talking about Hashem is one of the tools that mental health professionals I understand also encourage and we can be doing it not only in response or later as a coping mechanism but we can be teaching it and practicing it modeling it in advance as a form of proper hygiene we can't escape this topic this Topic's worthy of another conversation and of itself but just just yesterday I was speaking to study at a wedding young man who's married to a young lady in our show and he's he's working as a lawyer and I said to him how's your learning going and he said I learned I learned a few hours in the morning before I start asking how do you how do you manage a few hours of learning in the morning so I said well actually what I did was I I switched out my smartphone for only business use and my for my regular life I have my my flip phone I was like Wow and what differences I make and he said he said I can't imagine living with my smartphone anymore I said I don't understand how I lived with that pressure on me the whole time a young man that young man in his in his late 20s I was like wow that's that's right that's really impressive so just like perhaps speaking to the the role of technology in this you know we're talking about middle school kids who have fomo on WhatsApp chats with their friends we're talking about the games they're not on and everybody has and this what this has added to doctor we talked about this a little bit before the house is adding what kind of boundaries do we do we need to have because it's so easy just to give digital parenting and then and then turn a blind eye wow this is brewing in in the absence of any guard dance yeah so I just want to comment on what Rory Goldberg said that someone once told me that they don't have OCD they have CDO which is OCD in alphabetical order um so so yeah um so actually um you know we could ask you know we talk about helicopter parents bulldozer parents why are they why do we have them today I mean our parents and yesteryear didn't care about us and and part of that again is because of the technology we have the wherewithal to monitor people 24 7 we have a GPS we can know where they are we can we have Nanny grams we can see what's going on in in the home I mean when I was a kid my parents sent me to sleepwalk Camp um they used to save the one or two letters I wrote because they can't believe that I could read them and when they came home they were grateful I came home with all my limbs but now people they send faxes and they say emails so we have the technology to be hovering over our children and and that's why we're we're capable of doing this I I take slight difference to what I think with something Robert Goldberg said and in the spirit I don't know maybe it's a little interesting um but although I don't consider myself you're right I prefer to you so whatever no I don't know angry news eloquent or or or insightful but you know I want to talk about we have to go back and people have to be challenged more and they have to stop bubble wrapping to some extent again I'm going to go back to Wayne Gretzky that's the world we live in Hashem did not create a stagnant world he created a world that evolves and the world in many respects is getting easier and easier and that has every generation I have no doubt that our great great great grandfather who invented the wheel when he brought it to his father his father said why do you need this on this newfangled thing for carry it on your back it'll get stronger you know it it's so this is the world we live in and I'm not sure if we can turn back the clock and I think that the the way of I think to some extent is true we do have to expose that children we do have to give them challenges more than than maybe they they are they have on their own but the challenges will not be the challenges that we had because the world has gotten easier and what this means in terms of parents is I'm going to go back to my prior theme just we're bringing mental health well it's Robert Goldberg's theme too just so if you're bringing mental health into the school we're bringing mental health into school we as parents have to bring now coping mechanisms and mental health into the home again the School of Hard Knocks has closed down they're not going to learn it I mean just imagine for those because many of look sort of are people here my contemporary is like younger imagine when you were in school if a classmate insulted you and you go to your rebbe or teacher and say you know my she called me a so-and-so what would your teacher say deal with it you know like what's in my business it's not true today teachers are expected to work out those differences teachers are expected to help the kids figure out how to get along we we're living the age of Technology things are coming to us we have to bring mental health into our home I want to make a suggestion I'm not sure it's even exactly answering your question but my Ritalin is wearing off so I probably didn't pay attention but um the the you know we we have the Shabbos table which is a precious time to impart values and lessons to our children and we impart those lessons we talk to them about the importance of learning and Allah to Torah we talked about how important Earth is Thrill is and how much how cherished that is to all of us we talk about diving talk about speaking to Hashem and making Hashem part of our Lives there's another message or lesson we have started giving our children which is this is how you cope the very stuff that we learned in the schoolyard and in kindergarten we have to give in fact like you mentioned earlier play dates I used to tell my kids what a play date was when I was a kid you went to the playground and you played until the Italian kids came and beat you up that was the end of your play date your limp Tom if you had a big brother you came back I only had sisters so I had nothing I could do and you came back the next day for more that was a play date today we have plate and and principals have told me that you know you mentioned that parents call them make sure my child doesn't play dating Shoppers um so we're we're doing much well we have to introduce into our regular parliaments with our children how do we cup some of you may be familiar with some of the work that was highlighted in the 1840 podcast and I think we do have to mention again the OU there was so much a part it really put this together and that podcast the David bishopkin was a guest here just recently and he brought in some of this the researchers from Emory University who are studying ancestry and resilience that the more people know about their ancestry children over the ancestry the more resilient they are so we have that part of the story has to be about our grandparents parents so we're survivors and how they survived about how the Jewish people survived to give them over coping skills I'm just going to pick an example from this week okay we're laning pasius NASA and we're going to talk about departure at the Friday night table and again there's so much to talk about but maybe we will cite the famous Rashi about why does Nazir follow Sota and I hope I'm quoting correctly South Dakota yazir minagayan right that anyone Witnesses the Sota process the humiliation of the woman accused of infidelity if he sees this if he Witnesses this he has to refrain from wine he has become a Nazir what a wonderful opportunity to teach our children how do we respond when we witness something that is frightening when we witness violence in a movie when we witness indiscretion on on a poster in the street how do we cope do we go to wine is that how we do it do we go to alcohol or do we do not necessarily becoming Nazir but do we try to strengthen and further entrench our faith so we have to as parents and this is the key message the mental health coping skills are not going to be acquired by experience for our children in today's stage of a day and age of a technology and we're not turning the clock back so we give it to them just like my cookie sheets we put it on their front porch and because this has to be part part of our parenting um I just want to comment also again I'm no position you say you shouldn't be here we talk about Hashem and religion I shouldn't be here but um that just leaves me alone on the stage you know right okay we're gonna go out and have a drink you know but um I often think about we talk about and and again there is a a lot of data how the belief in the deity and the belief and as someone's running this world no matter how much how many difficulties how many setbacks we Face there's someone there's a pilot there's someone in the driver's seat and how much that reduces anxiety I'm reminded of the famous conversation of salivation shared in Allah when he had a conversation with a psychiatrist and the psychiatrist came to him and said if I could change anything in our liturgy it would be which is because why do we need Moringa where we asking for anxiety is an up anxiety Road why are we asking Hashem for anxiety and the rubber goes on to say I'm not a psychiatrist but I don't think he gets it the the shot is give us that one fear give us that yere shamayam and that will obviate all the other fears data will be the amelioration for all the other fears so we're asking for that one fear which will help us with all the other fears I just want to clarify the record so I'm not memorialized as the bitter old man who wants to turn back the clock on I just want to make sure that's not the takeaway I won't be right lawyers that the guy's reformist I don't think that we disagree I think that we both understand is a beautiful world that we have to embrace it and we're living in a time with unprecedented at least the pace of the bracha in our life the conveniences and the Comforts and I'm a person who personally tries to engage technology and use it in in the best ways I just think that we need to do it judiciously and carefully and with regulations and it's happening in the World At Large at such a pace that it's absolutely being destructive right now ai the way it's utterly unregulated and what people are predicting what AI in this unregulated way can do not only for jobs but what it can do to humanity AI will become the world's greatest influencer and they talk about you can Google this and look it up AI gods that can consolidate all the information in the world and respond to billions of people simultaneously influence the world where program is something that's out of control and the very early investors of AI and the programmers of it are right now waving the banner as vociferously as anyone about how unregulated and how dangerous it is and the same is true in the world of technology when you look into Steve Jobs or Bill Gates or any of the Michael Dell and you talk about the practices in their own home and technology and the boundaries that they practice in their own home they they look haredi in their in their practice and rejection of Technology because as the designers and programmers they understand it's dangerous so I I engage it I employ it I try to use life for its best and I will continue to do so but isn't our entire religion a platform for how to stay rooted in Tradition and our Timeless Torah truths while engaging modernity and using it in its best and and the best example we had a rabbinic meeting earlier today and we were talking about we're hearing something from teenagers we've never heard before teenagers who are afraid to go to sleep away camp not because of the boogeyman you spoke about who sleeps under the bed they're afraid to go to sleep away camp you know why because sleepy way Camp's at least still for now this summer hasn't happened yet require children to leave their phone they can't bring their phone and there are children who cannot go to sleep at night they have anxiety over trying to go to sleep without their phone and a child would rather not go to sleep away camp than go three weeks or a month and give up and give up the phone and now parents have to pay ten thousand dollars for that anxiety and misery of Sleepaway Camp without without the phone so we're blessed we're one of the last vestiges on Earth who for 25 hours a week live technology free with Shabbos and sociologists are going to study us and it's not going to be long because where else can you point maybe some tribe somewhere in Africa who are a people who can on their own choose to turn it off for 25 hours and we're not giving up on that because technology is here so what are the other areas that we can also regulate and be judicious and thoughtful and not just allow the momentum and the World At Large to carry us so true it's in everything we've seen that we we jump forward because just because and then we regulate back out to the distractions happen Industrial Revolution all advances and this is absolutely where at that moment still we've not yet started dialing back yet just the algrows later so what we're going to do is we're going to just close with two questions one each um one is going to be on the topic of and then the topic of community so just a doctor on the topic of this is a sensitive topic but just when a person is dating a business and it says somebody in the family he was dating and they become aware of a mental health issue with their partner their reaction what what is the appropriate reaction in this case so very often I get asked this question I say that I didn't take enough Psychopathology to understand you know it's a by the way also I have an antidote to artificial intelligence I want to have genuine stupidity but they say it's been around for a while so it's not a new discovery but anyway um Let me let me tell you how I portrayed it on times and I've spoken about this um and I'm going to sort of pose it as a question I'm going to ask the parents here who have children who are dating let's say a son who's dating who do you want raising your grandchildren do you want someone who had this absolutely picture-perfect life grew up with a ton of money had all the clothing she needs any luxury went to the best camps got into the best seminaries BJJ mmy IDT you know all the top top top seminaries came home married the second guy she dated and at the wedding between her in-laws and her parents got the down payment for a beautiful new house in the five towns or someone who had some difficulties someone who had some challenges maybe had a period of depression maybe Eating Disorders maybe CDL some had some sort of challenge heroically faced it and triumphed over it who's better equipped to raise your grandchildren do we know what life is going to dish out all right I think it speaks again to the bubble wrap um and I think that if I'm going to go so far as to say that if you're looking for a up and you hear that this is a a woman a young woman or a family that dealt with hardships or the whatever the hardships may be in there may be mental health hardships and didn't hide didn't sleep under the carpet dealt with it in an effective way that's who you want raising your grandchildren Goldberg pivoting to you in a different different realm this is uh completely in the community realm is is younette you've been involved with this as a rabbi you've been involved with this now in this podcast and this show talking about uh out of the out of the Shadows what can communities what should communities like Iris be doing more what what what can we do what's the next steps that you would Envision in this world called spreading a mental hygiene spreading of support for those in need I think summarizing many of the points that we made tonight that we discussed tonight I think we should be censored with our language be careful how we use our terms and not use them inappropriately I think that we should be working to eliminate the stigma and and not push people to hide in Shadows but rather invite them to be able to uh to live freely and to share and not in a way that again that we celebrate or destigmatize in such a danger that that it becomes we popularize or celebrate um and and we also alluded to and I think it's important to share and their organization is wonderful in this community and elsewhere that talk about communities rally when there's physical illness or physical crisis right so you hear of a diagnosis in the family they're going through a hard time and and I know my wife as a rabbit and we'll get inundated with people who say put me on the list put me on the WhatsApp group I want to make meals I want to drive carpool I want to come by I want to drop off food I want to get involved and if you hear about somebody who's having a mental health crisis which could include being hospitalized or it could just include being so debilitated they can't function with their routine you don't see that same rallying let me drive carpool let me drop off dinner how are they going to make yontiff we can step in we can get involved what can we do here are some Community funds to make sure that the support and the therapy and the treatment is available to them and I think that part of removing this stigma is actually coming together to create a parallel networking system that said committee leaps into action as quickly and as effectively on these areas as it does for every other and that the word is out there that people know that they know it's available not only the person who may be in crisis themselves but the people closest to them who we didn't touch on tonight but is a really important topic which is those who not struggling with mental illness themselves but spouses children siblings parents the family how they cope and how they navigate and what's out there for them and how much falls on their shoulders and for them to know that the community has an address and is prepared to LEAP into action to help is something that not only we can we must coordinate this is something that should have been done a long time ago and we can and we must do better I I think the next step for this and and we're thinking about it in our community and I think we can think about it collaboratively across communities as we do so many other things is how do we ensure that this topic isn't just one night and and it's been a healthy conversation a long time you didn't ask me about because you want to end the night I understand and I respect that I respect that so I'm not even going to go there but um how do we make sure you know we go home from tonight I learned an enormous amount from from Dr Blumenthal Rabbi about amuna and Dr but but how do we go and it's not just one night with some things to think about and by tomorrow maybe we're still remembering talking but certainly by Shabbos there was a program I went to I forgot exactly what they talked about there were things that I wanted to implement but I don't remember what they were we were great outstand one you know one program a podcast that while we were cooking or shopping or on the Peloton or driving carpool was playing in the background and that's better than nothing in terms of being out of the shadows and removing the stigma but it's not necessarily putting it into practice and like any other change that we want to make in in life if a person wants to take their health more seriously they might hire a nutritionist who's going to track them what gets what gets measured gets managed Peter Drucker a great management Guru said what gets measured gets managed and are we measuring our Improvement or our curricula or our ambition or our goals in the space of mental hygiene and mental health as communities what can we do so we don't just have one-off programs which are great and important and thank you again to everyone for coordinating and for hosting and for moderating but instead of just one-off program how do we create a curriculum for the year sign up and put skin in the game pay for it and and whether it's weekly or monthly and here are the home exercises and so you know how we'll share here's how we manage shoes how we're going to track so in the physical space you'd hire a nutritionist you might get a trainer and you don't need the trainer for Life maybe you do if you're not going to show up without them but often the trainer can teach you what you need to do until you're able to do it yourself and the same is true here so how can we create and we can do it collaboratively and maybe it's out there and I don't know we can scale it up across the Jewish Community but how can we create a real curriculum real exercises real practices real experts that it's not going to be 100 of the community sign up it's not going to be 50 it may not be 20 but whoever signs up will be able to a year later look back and see in themselves and their family in their home better mental hygiene better mental health less money that we need to spend that we don't have to inter in to help them and and so on so I don't I I'm personally still trying to look and work and to see has anyone done this and who can we assemble to guide this in it and how can we we fund it and what would it look like and how would we measure success in it but I think that that's where the conversation needs to go because this was the first step I think the stigma is these kinds of conversations and podcasts and articles and normalizing but the next step for Real Change measurable change meaningful change and Lasting change is a real plan a real curriculum real goals and things that we can measure afterwards and I know that just like so many other challenges that we as a a community have succeeded I know that if we take this seriously and we make it a priority and we put our resources and our experts on it we'll be able to see some real progress in it really incredible you know folks I don't know about speaking for for reading the room but I walk out of this actually feeling rather than depressed I feel actually full of hope I feel full of hope that every one of these topics which I'm sure people resonated with some of the micro topics more than others there's a lot to think about and those thoughts there is a path for there's a path upwards I want to take a moment to think of the incredible organizations that put this together deductible to Goldberg thank you for an incredible evening and thank you ladies and gentlemen for being