Should we SUPPRESS our EMOTIONS?

avert your mind from it stop ruminating stop ruminating you're making yourself crazy especially you know there are different personality types but if you're like me and you're an introspective deep thinker and it's like almost like your default setting is brooding right so uh it can be very dangerous to be encouraged to become super super attentive and aware of your feelings I'm saying it can be it can become a preoccupation which is not healing it is not cathartic it's actually getting you more and more mired in it hey there how you doing uh doing well longtime listener for some caller for taking me we've been on the air long enough I guess now where we get to people get to say that this is our sixth show by the way right so okay anyways what's up okay so yeah so I've um in recent times I've started to go through like my own healing Journey working with therapist trying to heal some Old Wounds and one of the things that I'm learning about is the value of like accepting the full spectrum of human emotion and there's kind of like these Unwritten rules that we all abide by that sadness and anger are undesirable when someone's sad we want to cheer them up when someone's angry you know it's a hand we got to C them down and especially with kids and then what I'm learning is that like when a child is in an environment like this um with patterns and a constant on a constant basis you know this can create trauma where they're like repressing their emotions and now as an adult I'm kind of like relearning a lot of this about how to um how to accept the value of anger and the value of grief um and like listen to what these emotions are telling me and not run away from them and the problem that I'm having is like I'm having trouble reconciling this with Concepts that I've learned in Judaism where it sounds like Judaism has strong opinions on that some emotions are are very undesirable like anger CA is called like serving idols and OB is like really problematic and you know my son comes home and he has a lot of Pride because something sad happens and he didn't cry and I'm like this sounds really bad because like for me you know uh when when a child is sad or he's breathing or angry like I I don't want to change any like I'm not looking to fix it I'm looking to like be there with him and we were like reading the section in in the the wife Edition it's like a Tanya book for kids there's like a little blurb it's called keep it in and I'm quoting it says come and tell us it's best not to speak when you're angry as doing so will make you feel even angrier and I'm just that I haven't had that experience at all in my life every time I've been very emotionally vulnerable especially in my relationship with my wife it's always been positive even if these are very diffult things and like allowing space for us to be angry to be sad um and using that as a tool in a therapeutic sense like heal Old Wounds I have a couple of my own theories about how to reconcile this but I wanted to ask about it um uh from someone like who has who has kind of feed in both worlds but also you know has like expertise and authority and like ala like how do I reconcile these what seems to be a contradiction of like of like emotional repression versus emotional validation especially when I see or sorry emotional expression especially when I see so much positivity for myself yeah okay um I'm going to rephrase your question not because I don't think you expressed yourself eloquently but because it was a little bit I'm not sure everyone listening well I don't know and this this the the the crowd that we attract maybe everyone followed it but I I I'm I'm thinking maybe some people weren't following exactly cuz uh you know it there's some prerequisite knowledge there so let me just dumb it down a few notches and say it in a very simple way you're asking like this you have found personally so you know you're reporting your personal experience which you can't deny that learning how to express your feelings has been an important part of achieving emotional health and yet it seems to you that there are many messages within Torah that encourage what we would call emotional repression stifling your feelings stuffing it and you're trying to he you're trying to reconcile that and B um as a father it sounds like maybe there's a little bit of a question here as far as parenting how to how to teach this uh especially when there's this seemingly irreconcilable contradiction so do you agree with I mean am I adequately rephrasing paraphrasing your your question yeah yeah that's totally fair okay fine so so interesting I I want to just take exception with one thing that you said which is you said to me that I have a foot in both worlds I want to make something clear and I said it before but I'm going to say it again I am not trained in any modality of therapy um not only am I not trained in it I've never even read really I mean I shouldn't say never read my father May rest in peace was a psychologist and as a kid I was exposed to a lot of his ideas and I was exposed at a young age to some some therapeutic approaches certainly not an exhaustive type of not a systemized nor exhaustive uh exposure to therapeutic approaches so I and I I I have not read a psychology book in probably 20 years so I just want to make very very clear I may say I probably will say a lot of ignorant things as far as being up todate on certainly modern modalities of therapy which of which I'm certainly ignorant of because I just haven't kept up with it and not only I'm not an expert now I was never an expert so I just want to make sure that this disclaimer comes across really really really loud and clear um for whatever it's worth I think it's just for for the sake of um honesty that I want to convey that um so I I I guess where I'm coming from is I'm not really trying to reconcile torah's approach with a modern therapeutic approach a because I don't have that problem I'm not it's not like I'm immersed in that world where we're like I feel that tension and I want to make that reconciliation happen but B um I'm not equipped to do so I'm really not equipped and I know people think that I'm like trying to play humble and pretend to be ignorant I'm not pretending to be ignorant I really really really really really am ignorant um so everything I'm saying really is coming from one world it's coming from the world of Torah but specifically and this is my bias and this is my strength it's coming from and even more narrowly okay so my understanding of emotional health and the inner workings of the psyche are pretty consistently and entirely based on teachings I just wanted to clarify that okay so having said all that my disclaimer is probably be longer than my answer itself there's a say for the compiled a book called ha y I didn't have I didn't uh put this on my desk because I was going to quote it I actually it's one of the few spotm that I always have on my desk so there's a entry from ha so it says [Music] here a worry in a man's heart you should quash it that's how I'll translate it and that's actually a verse or part of a verse from mishle from Proverbs King Solomon's Proverbs uh Proverbs 12:25 all right and our sages say this is actually a gamar Yuma 75a and it's a sages of the talmud differ and their exegesis of this word you know that's how the Bible works right Hebrew is written without vowels and there are alternate ways of reading the consonants and the different ways of reading the consonants reveal different truths different truths and they [Music] are these and these are the words of the Living God it's all true it's all true there are different perspectives of Truth the infinite wisdom of God is compressed in a finite text called the Bible one of the ways that we access the infinity within the finite is through rinic exegesis the process of unpacking multiple alternate layers of meaning contained in a single word okay so it's a in the and I think it's Andi I believe is the way that it's phrased okay so two explanations remove it from your mind or what we call means avert your mind from it and the other says speak it out to others that's from the word which means conversation by the way there are different words for speech am is one word debor is another word is another word and they all have different connotations I saw this in the in rautner I said that all my knowledge of the human psyche is from so a little bit I dabbled in other sources the says that A is for conveying information debor is for conveying a command instructions uniquely is conversation it's speaking for the sake of bonding that's uh interesting the the kazal say that an extra degree of was given to women and before you get all offended by the sexist statement this is in line with another statement that our sages make about women having been AA having an extra degree of beina Bina means elaborative thought or extrapolative thought so the ability to take one idea and to follow it through with a various associations and a stream of Consciousness that's a function of Bina which is also a prerequisite for a flowing s conversation at any rate so you have this this phrase and you have two different interpretations one is avert your mind from it stop thinking about it don't think about it the other is the exact opposite speak it out to others have a conversation talk therapy and explained when the says to others it means to others who are nominally others they have another body than your body however they're totally United with you they're not real they're not real others in because they feel your issue they feel your issue in other words okay there's a lot to unpack here so first of all you have two seemingly antithetical approaches and Alo like I said before they're both legitimate Torah approaches so contradiction is part of Torah my ancestor the magala mukai said that mha M Moses an acronym sh sh H the disputes of the schools of shamai and Hill in other words diversion or Divergent opinions I don't like the word opinion by the way Divergent stances within Torah are not a bug they are a feature I'll repeat that diver ENT stances within Torah are not a bug they are a feature so context context context you have to know what you're talking about in order to understand what aspect of the truth is most practically applicable the truth cannot be one-dimensional the truth is EMS Alf me S that's the first letter and the last letter perfectly centered with the middle letter in the middle in other words true truth is all inclusive truth is the whole picture if it's a fragment if it was edited into a manipulative sound bite it's already not the truth it's already edited reality TV and sound bites for the media and the 24hour News cycle if it's EMS it's the whole story from the very beginning to the very end and everything in between so truth is always going to be nuanced truth is always going to be par paradoxical it's always going to include contradiction and that is not a deficiency of truth that is what that is the Hallmark of Truth the question is however when you get Newtonian about it and you can't have two place two things in one place and you can't have one thing in two places meaning to say Hal Hala means how we're going to go how we're going to walk with this thing how we're going to apply it in not Quantum reality but in Newtonian reality we can't light one more light of the manura every night and light one less light every night right that's also and H now shamai is not wrong there's a beautiful truth to the idea of light lighting one less light every single night but we can't do both at the same time I guess you could have two separate Manas but that's you could have S we have to have one manura and you have to pick one way so we pick the way of hillo even though the way of shamai is also true so here's the deal there is a time and a place for the first explanation of avert your mind from it as we are becoming more and more aware a lot of good that the Advent of modern therapeutic approaches brought to the world are also offset by inherent not good and that's the way that Kipas NOA that spir spiritually neutral things are so there is a positive side and there's a negative side the positive side is like what you're talking about getting it off your chest processing it and moving on however there's another side of it which is ruminating and getting immersed in it and getting stuck on it and focusing too much on your problems and for that we need to be told avert your mind from it stop ruminating stop ruminating you're making yourself crazy especially you know there are different personality types but if you're like me and you're an introspective deep thinker and it's like almost like your default setting is brooding right so uh it can be very dangerous to be encouraged to become super super attentive and aware of your feelings I'm saying it can be it can become a a preoccupation which is not healing it is not cathartic it's actually getting you more and more mired in it so there are definitely context where we need that very practical tool of being told stop thinking about your problems please go get busy with something productive you know you're not going to think your way out of this but if you go do something productive ideally for someone else do some service do an AC of service or at the very least take a walk around the block drink some water do something you know what maybe you'll feel better you're not going to talk your way through this but you can start being a productive person and maybe just getting some blood pumping in your body and you'll find your problem has passed okay and that's a very important tool to have on the other hand on the other hand you know about the the guy calls up a sh receptionist answers he says is this the receptionist yes okay I'm looking for one- armed Rabbi she says a what he says I'm looking for a one-armed Rabbi she says why are you looking for a one-armed Rabbi he says cuz the rabbi I have now every time I ask him a question he answers me and then a second later he says but on the other hand so I'm looking for a one-armed Rabbi okay but on the other hand talk it out sometimes you do need to talk it out sometimes you do need to talk it out out and averting your mind from it is not going to help because there's something there and if you don't process it and you don't acknowledge it and you ignore it it's like when you have God forbid the a sar on your body sometimes just keep living and it'll go away but sometimes no if you don't bring it to a doctor it's going to get worse if you have a tooth AE and you don't go to a dentist it's it's going to get worse I have a couple tooth teeth that got pulled because of that where I ignored it until it stopped hurting that's the worst thing if you ignore it till it stops hurting that means now now now they have to do a root canal or they have to yank the whole thing um you got to speak it out with others but the then explains what does it mean to speak it out with others it's very important here this is what he says it's not just about talking it's about being received with full empathy CU technically you could go stand in the corner and say your problem and you've spoken it out you've gotten it out but theed says to others means people who are nominally others they're only others in as much as they don't have the same body as you but emotionally they're completely bonded to you they are not only sympathetic to you they are empathetic they feel like it say sharish in they feel your issue there's a famous story that AB told this story many times that that AB maharash the fourth kabad theed son one time two of his sons were playing theab and Rah so the rebab was his future successor he was the younger of the two brothers and the manarin was the older and they were playing some kids play cops and robbers these were RAB shind they were playing reab and so the older brother of course tells the younger brother you be the I'll be the so the younger brother comes into to a private audience and he says uh RAB I need a tick I need a spiritual rectification okay what did you do wrong he says I ate nuts on chabas pure little kid that was the worst sin you could think of right well you're going thinking what is even eating nuts on shabas well in the AL it says because of the shells that it's like sorting on shabas which is one of the 39 forms of Labor and anyway so he says I ate I ate nuts and shamas so the older brother pretending to be the rebba says okay your tick one is whenever you Davin you should look in a sther you should pray you should When you pray you should look in the words of the prayer book Don't Pray by heart by by memorization so the younger brother say you're not AB so the older brother says what do you say what do you mean I'm not an ABB he says because a reab before he answers has to sigh you didn't sigh so you're not speaking it out to others doesn't just mean speaking it means having the experience of being received fully received with empathy so you have to be very careful who you share with sometimes when we assume that our healing requires speech we end up speaking to the wrong people in the wrong places and we become further victimized we get hurt I mean I started off this whole evening telling you the Buddy hacka joke about the duck about the unilateral vulnerability which is often then a source of Shame and isolation so if you share with the wrong person or in the wrong setting not only is it not healing it can be it can exacerbate the problem sharing is productive in as much as it is the activity that facilitates the experience of being received with empathy I'm going to repeat that verbally sharing your problems with another person is only healing in as much as it is the activity which facilitates the experience of being received with full empathy so it's actually the be being received with full empathy that is healing and now I'm going to make myself sound like a liar because I told you I know nothing about the world of psychology and therapy I'm going to say one thing but please believe me when I'm when I tell you I'm a dilatant and I can quote almost from any discipline but my knowledge is like super super like shallow so just I'm going to I'm going to quote Carl Rogers and you're going to think well this guy must know psychology I I I I I can quote philosophers too it doesn't mean that I studied any of them okay I have one line okay but this this line is very important Carl Rogers who was an American psychologist considered one of the the fathers of modern uh Psychotherapy so he actually made a very astounding observation which is that the modality of therapy is almost irrelevant or perhaps entirely irrelevant what is most important is the patient doctor relationship so and he had a term for this which was unconditional positive regard so he said that when the patient experiences the doctor's unconditional positive regard that is more of a determinant factor of healing than the therapeutic approach that's that's used so this is very much corroborated by or it corroborates I should better say what we know from this hay from s that the healing is the experience of being received empathetically now I will add something to this which is perhaps my own personal uh inter interpretation and that is you said that you've had the experience of talking through your problems and experiencing relief and it doesn't sound like you were talking about sharing it with another person it was more just like processing it yourself I will say this and this is perhaps wrong because it's I don't have a source for this but it's my intuition that tells me this if you've experienced empathy being received empath empathetically by another person such as people who are raised by emotionally intelligent parents I'm going to repeat that three times people who are raised by emotionally intelligent parents people who were raised by emotionally intelligent parents have a basis for knowing what being received empathetically feels like because of that basis they are able to self-administer empathy in other words words you know the previous caller was talking about uh shame and guilt that he feels during his recovery process so some people have an internal parental voice that is shaming and condemning other people have an internal parental voice that is empathetic when you can receive yourself with empathy that can also be very healing and that may be the experience that you're describing when you're saying sometimes just talking it out even without another person person but just even as internal dialogue can be healing if you've had again just my theory I may be wrong if you've had the experience of being received with with full empathy by another person then when needed you can administer that to yourself and it can be extremely healing okay that's my answer to that you with me still yes yes I'm here okay so you said you had your own theories did uh did I uh overlap with any of your own theories uh yeah one of the conclusions I'm walking away with is that um is that when it's when when when it says you know in quotations because I don't have the actual verse but like when it says that we should like avoid anger depression or some of these emotions perhaps the way that I can interpret that is by expressing it and dealing with it you know in the second form of if the second form is able to um mitigate those feelings and that's a valid form that's a valid method of dealing with those negative feelings okay yeah yeah I would agree with that okay and I'm sure there are many other explanations as well but this is just to get us to this chapter of an ongoing uh story so you know it's an ongoing story it's an ongoing journey of healing and disc Discovery but uh okay I think we've got enough to get closure at least for tonight's faan I'm calling it a faan I'm choosing to call it fangan um yeah so that was great that was an awesome question we'd like to extend special thanks to mendal Simon and 9 by9 tech for powering this call-in show and making it possible for us to connect with our amazing audience 9x9 Tech offers a One-Stop service for all your communication needs along with personalized Tech Solutions catered specifically towards your business visit 9x9 tech.com today that's 9x9 Tech going spell the tech te c.com thank you mandal and the team for your incredible support hey this is shase tab you were just watching a clip from this class if you want to get the full context the full class that this clip that you just watched was from you watch right here click right here here