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The Jewish Home | APRIL 28, 2022
Dr. Deb
What’s Life About? by Deb Hirschhorn, Ph.D.
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OctOber 29, 2015 | the Jewish Home
H
e was a grind. For as long as he could remember. Just a grind. “I work to take care of my family. Of course, I don’t see them because I’m busy working. It’s all I’ve known.” Was he happy? “I don’t know. I disconnected myself.” Right, I thought. He disconnected himself so he wouldn’t feel the pain of a life with nothing in it – a family he doesn’t get to see, and nothing of him anywhere but work. Then there’s me. When nearly every friend in my generation is retired, I’m working. Not only that, but innovating. Overwhelmed with obstacles, I keep figuring out ways around them. So I can keep going and growing. It’s exciting, too. Connected to Life. Thinking of better ways to serve people. Thinking of how I can make the process shorter and sweeter. Hired a new therapy associate and now looking for a frum one as well, to serve my community. Growing. How did this happen to me and not to him? Why am I so blessed to be embracing life and praying for another day to do it all over again? If I knew, I could bottle it and turn it over to you. I didn’t always feel this way. Looking back, I recall dark periods where I was just down and down on myself too, for periods of time that could stretch into weeks. They say people become therapists to heal themselves, and I believe it. In fact, a professor of mine in grad school said the same thing. My husband’s death was a pivotal point. For a year, nothing felt normal. Then I created a new normal – an awareness that never left me of death combined with a rejoicing that I’m alive. As people leave me, one by one, that feeling gets intensified. The gift that life is breathtaking.
But, of course, no one (else besides me) wants to think of that stuff. It’s too weird. Too upsetting. Actually, the opposite is true: What’s upsetting is not thinking about it, being numb like the man whose comments opened this train of thought. To lose the
See the good in yourself, that’s a second step. Acknowledge it even if you don’t feel it. These things set the stage for deeper exploration: Why is a part of you holding you down or back? What is it afraid would happen if it didn’t keep you pinned in this awful place?
To lose the amazingness of life when it’s been given to you is a tragedy.
amazingness of life when it’s been given to you is a tragedy. So what should you do if you are stuck in a gloomy place, a place of feeling down, numb, angry, victimized, hopeless, disconnected or helpless? Start by going through the motions of self-care: You do need a good night’s sleep, healthy and delicious food, and a smile. Give all those to yourself. Even if your heart isn’t in it, that’s a first step.
As much as our logic will tell us we don’t want to stay in the dungeon of our minds, there is a reason that we are still there, so find it. And note that all our reasons make sense. The reason why they don’t look that way is because nobody went deep enough to figure it all out. Here’s an example: Another man, we’ll call Charles, could not sit on a couch and just “be” while his wife scurried around doing chores or straightening up or what-
ever. It seemed to me that just sitting and not having to work would be a pleasure, but not to Charles. It was a trigger for him, and it made him feel angry, guilty, and lousy. A little look inside and Charles recalled being punished for being “bad” by being told to “sit and think about what you did.” That was a lightbulb moment. We all need these to understand the odd parts of us that don’t seem to make sense. They all make sense when you connect the dots. When you understand the origin of the bad feelings, the next step is rescuing your inner child from that nasty scene. Interestingly, your brain registers imaginative experiences as if they were actual. This means that when you imagine rescuing your younger self, it is as if you did just that. In turn, this “rewires” your brain. An imaginative experience that you feel as if you were there will soften the DNA links for that memory and make it able to switch “tracks” so that it is now connected differently. (This is a field known as memory reconsolidation.) Step away from the pain you feel and note that it is only a part of you and not the whole you that is in distress. Just that little step can make a big difference. It’s quite liberating, actually. It could be that these are the steps that I took, myself, when I stepped out of my darkness. It’s one of those things you notice afterward and wonder how you got there. How I got there is not the point today, though. The point is that you can get there. The point is that your life can have meaning and joy and your moments, precious.
Dr. Deb Hirschhorn is a Marriage and Family Therapist. If you want help with your marriage, begin by signing up to watch her Masterclass at https://drdeb.com/myw-masterclass.
