Dr Aryeh Berlin

so dr berlin thank you so much for joining us on the show it's a pleasure you know we're talking about the idea of resilience we've been highlighting one of the greatest jews in our history rabbi akiva and what was so powerful about rabbi akiva was he suffered from a cataclysmic event the the death of 24 000 students the loss of the opportunity to reclaim the temple and yet he had this incredible resilience to then continue on and to rebuild now from what i understand and share with us a little bit about your practice and your background you are very familiar with sort of life-changing events i'm a clinical licensed clinical psychologist i uh one of my specialties and focuses on my training has been on car x victims of traumatic car accidents so talking about people just going on with their regular lives going on a bike ride with their children or you know on their way to work and a freak accident happens somebody's driving recklessly or somebody for whatever reason loses control of their car and their lives they get into a traumatic accident and their lives are forever altered something life-changing talking about people that they themselves are the cause of somebody dying or they are in a vehicle where somebody died or they're just out bike riding and somebody hits them and you know they're potentially handicapped for the rest of their lives because of somebody driving recklessly what an incredible moment and and these this is exactly why and i'm so happy to have you on we thank you for taking the time to be on with us this is these moments that that we're highlighting here i'm sure in your practice you've seen different responses people recover differently share with us if you can if we can zero in on the trait of resilience share with us if you can if you you know people or or types of people that have been resilient or ways people be resilient how does that play into the recovery of this sure it's a great question because we really get both types you know not not everybody is going to be successful through psychotherapy psychotherapy and treatment so what is that what is that trait that really distinguishes them i can i just kind of take a little bit step back in the treatment approaches that i that i utilize when we get people that come into the office after one of these accidents you know their lives are typically a complete and total mess you know they're they're functioning human beings who now have become full-time patients needing back surgery or injections in their neck or eye issues and just all different types of pain these are people that you know nobody's interested in doing that they were functioning productive people and this is where they are and a lot of times they're incapable of driving anymore because they're just so scared they develop travel phobia and they're having nightmares and they're just crying all the time i mean we've had people in my office that just come in and just cry you know it takes sessions until they're able to tell me like you know what happened you know what tell me about the accident what happened that's it you know they cry for for 40 minutes and i just sit there just feeling that you know they're pain for them there's there's one of the um the initial focus of treatment is really on symptom reduction you know helping them with their anxiety with their depression with their with their justified anger that they experience at what has occurred to them once once and that we take what we call a cognitive behavioral therapy approach i'm not going to get too into that the second stage of treatment once hopefully we do get past the the symptoms and they're able to drive and they're able to get back into their lives i use something called logotherapy i don't know if you know the history of logotherapy was it was created by a um by a psychiatrist who survived the holocaust his name is viktor frankl um he wrote a fascinating book called man search for meaning he he himself was a was a young psycho neurologist he was the um the head of a neurology team in vienna happily married and then the holocaust broke out and his sister escaped and ran to australia and he and his wife and his parents were shipped off to a concentration camp and he's this person that was at the top of his game everything in life was awesome and here he is suffering getting beaten starving and is wondering why how am i going to survive this and why me and he came to a point in his realization that i i have to shift my focus here i can't keep on being angry about this i can't keep on asking why i have to find some meaning in what i'm experiencing what's going to give me meaning and ultimately help me survive through that meeting and that's what he did and his meaning was was that he wanted to write this book and he wanted to share this experience that people can survive anything you know if they have meaning to it if they if they have some growth through it and he ultimately survived the holocaust uh his wife did not his parents did not and he remarried and rebuilt a life for himself so we we get these trauma victims we have people that were in these terrible horrific accidents and then we get past these symptoms and they're focused on the why me anger at god why me what did i do wrong how could there be a god if i could experience such a thing we probably will never have answers to those questions and it's also not going to help them emotionally it's not going to help them with their productivities so we work on if they're able to shift their focus from the why me to the how am i going to grow from this how is this experience going to give me meaning and if i if i can share a story with you please please this is probably i'm going to share a story with you which was probably one of the highlights of my career it happened about 10 years ago it's been a while since i've had something match this one but i was i was treating a young man i'm going to change some of the facts just for confidentiality but i was i was treating a young man um he was an immigrant from south america really strong work ethic married to an american really really you know everything in his life was great very strong work ethic he's on his way to work just to kind of give you this guy's work ethic he's on his way to work at about 6 a.m as a pedestrian and there's a group of teenagers on the way back from a party a night of drinking and they crashed into him they crashed into him left him on the road to die a hit and run here he is he's lying on the road totally mangled um i saw him my first session with him he was already having some medical treatment had in terrible terrible migraines the way he described it was like a train was just running into his head on a constant basis backing up hitting him in the head a train he actually we had to have the lights off in my office and he wear a hooded hooded sweatshirt because he couldn't tolerate anything he couldn't leave his house except for medical treatment this is a person that was highly productive really strong work ethic married happy really angry really depressed i cannot believe that somebody would leave me out there to die they don't even care about what happened to me it's it's it's a tremendously powerful situation and he's having his medical treatment i i saw him over the course of about 50 sessions he had his medical treatment he had various surgeries uh his headaches thankfully were gone by the end of treatment and he was probably about 90 percent medically 90 back to where he was you know the focus had my treatment as i described after we we kind of worked on the symptoms and him being able to ride a bike again to be out there again and not be worried about getting struck by another vehicle was on how are we growing from this how am i a different person because of this and through many many weeks and a lot of conversation he became much more devoted to his religion he the relationship he had is with his wife became so tremendously more powerful he saw himself as a useless human being you know he's married to this you know american professional and he's not able to be a good husband to her anymore he's not a productive person but she stuck with him she supported him she was with him throughout this whole process and he really he had a he had a daughter from a previous marriage and it really really um strengthened and deepened his relationship with her really a lot of things that he would have never thought about had he not been in this accident a lot of things that would have never occurred if he wasn't in this accident in that moment and through treatment and through therapy and being open to it changed and i have to tell you i have to tell you that this this is a crazy moment and it still gives me chills i'm with him in what we call the uh the termination session the last session i'm having with him and we're going through how he's progressed and what he's been through and how he's grown we're repeating over and reviewing you know how much he's grown through this experience and i asked him i had this crazy question in my head and i just threw it out there i said knowing what you know now even with all the pain you've been through all the treatments you had to do all the anger you experienced and all the all the frustration and the headaches and everything else that was so horrifying and terrible when we look at the growth you've had when we look at how far you've come if you could go back to that day now you're not going to believe this i'm telling you this happened if you could go back to that day and choose to have this happen to you again because of who you've become as a result would you do it would you want to be hit by that car it's it's a ridiculous question and we he looked at me we kind of stared at each other i kind of was like oh you know did i just like asked some crazy questions he's just gonna i'm just gonna undo everything we've done and he said yes i do it again i do it again i do it again you know what it's worth it and just the you know the consolation for him in that moment i mean even while i'm telling you to i'm getting chills in my spine just because i was with him in that pain i know what he went through he realized there's no other way he would have he would have had this depth in his life there's nothing else that would have done it and there was a choice he made it was it was a choice he made to be able to go there you know in these therapy sessions people really have a choice and it's very natural to just want to remain angry want to remain depressed and want to be stuck and justifiably like you know i did nothing wrong we have a reckless driver i'm now handicapped right and it's unfair for you to ask me how i've grown from this some people get frustrated by that and they want they want to stay in their business it's a choice it's a choice i don't judge anybody you know i'm not in their shoes and i'm sure they're experiencing terrible pain but that's a choice that they make amazing and doctor thank you so much for joining us today and bringing us this incredible point not only the idea of the meaning but also what you just ended with which is very powerful which is the story of ruby akiva and the story of resilience which is it's a choice and that's a very um you know aw inspiring but also very responsible responsible feeling of i have to take responsibility for my own life and choose and how i respond to things thank you so much for what you do uh for our people for the community and thank you for shining your light on this world my pleasure it was great speaking with you thank you doctor okay thanks so much for watching for more content like and subscribe and be sure to tune in live every thursday at 8pm eastern at the shabbato.com or right here on youtube [Music] you