Where I'm At

These days you'll find me at Everyone Needs Therapy. Check that out, find a subject that interests you, and email me or post a comment on the blog.

Happy Chanucha All,

Therapy Doc (Frum Abby)

Falling asleep

I know, friends, I know. I haven't been here in a long time. I've been working on another blog, frankly. You know, the Everyone Needs Therapy blog.

But I'm beginning to think that some of the posts over there might not hurt you kids, and may actually HELP you in life, which is why I have been blogging obsessively over there, rather than hunting for letters over here.

Here's one that you might like. I copied it here for you.

NOW HEAR THIS. I AM NOT TELLING YOU IT'S OKAY TO FALL ASLEEP DURING THE RABBI'S SPEECH IF HE/SHE CAN SEE YOU. OKAY? DON'T SPLEEN ME.

If you're looking for letters, buy YALDAH magazine. I respond to kids' letters in there.

Here you go: ON FALLING ASLEEP IN SHUL
FALLING ASLEEP IN SHUL

What happens to me is probably very common, but I haven’t read about it anywhere. I know it happens to a lot of people. Maybe it happens to you, too.

I can’t explain it, but it happens when I’m in the synagogue. (Shul is Yiddish for synagogue). When the room is warm and a hush falls over the crowd, and the rabbi gets up to speak, pretty soon he has this nice, lilting drone going. Well, when that happens. . .

I fall asleep.

So today we had a scholar in residence. A very nice rabbi, Rabbi K. He wrote a great book which I was supposed to read but stubbornly neglected to read, but will get to, eventually, with no promises. So Rabbi K. was in our shul to be our scholar in residence for this Shabbas, our day of rest.

He had already spoken to a packed crowd on Friday night, and he spoke when I was there this morning when all this happened. He spoke again this afternoon, and he’ll be speaking again tonight. It’s not easy being a scholar in residence. You need several different speeches.

Anyway, when our regular rabbi speaks I might catch a few zzzz’s, I’m not going to lie. But I love him and there are no hard feelings. I’m sure he’d fall asleep listening to me, too, and it’s not like I ALWAYS fall asleep when he speaks. I try to listen. It’s probably a statistically significant bet that I do, however, for the reasons I stated above.

But today Rabbi C. (mine) introduced Rabbi K. (our scholar), who started off quietly, which put me in that space, you know, within perhaps 50 seconds. Last I heard h was saying that he was going to talk about a Get Rich quick Scheme, the best way to become rich which wasn’t going to have anything remotely to do with money. Soon he was off to the races talking about Marital Relationships and I was down for the count.

Suddenly, a tremendous racket outside awoke me, jolted me in a very big way. I jumped up and it seemed that everyone was talking, but no one was really talking, some were simply explaining what the commotion was and others were asking, What’s the commotion?

I asked my friend Amy (yo, Aim) on my left, What’s the commotion?

Apparently there were about a hundred people standing outside the sanctuary in the hallway, and when one of them opened the door the noise of one hundred people whooshed in, rudely waking me and probably others.

Things quickly settled down, but these are moments when one has to make a major decision:

(1) Do I go back to sleep? Or

(2) Do I try to hear the rest of what the scholar has to say? I opted for staying awake, as I usually try to do when I wake up somewhere during anyone’s speech. It’s not like I’m avoiding what the rabbi has to say, it’s just that strange confluence of variables that have the soporific effect, those soothing intellectual words from the pulpit don’t help. This is why, by the way, many clergy people scream, I’m convinced.

When I woke up Rabbi K. was speaking to the men. I could tell because he never looked up to where the women sat in the balcony (for reasons of modesty). He looked directly at the men who were in front of him on the main floor of the sanctuary and was saying things, like, “When you come home from work, you should complement your wives.”

So he was talking to the men, who, face it, need to know these things.

He told the men that the secret to being rich had to do with respecting their wives, listening to them, praising them, appreciating them, complementing them, letting them speak first, always.

I agreed with him a hundred percent, except for the last five words. LET THEM SPEAK FIRST ALWAYS. Always? Clearly he did not read my posts on listening.

In Listen One and probably in Listen Two, I divulge the secrets of shutting up.

Shutting one’s mouth is the essence of communicating well, because it is in that void that one hears what others are trying to say and learns something. That is unless one is thinking of the next thing to say, which is not what one is supposed to do in active listening.

But forget about active listening for a second. We were talking about Who Gets to Speak First at the End of the Day, one of my favorite topics. The rabbi had suggested that if a man lets his wife speak first it would be good for the marriage.

But I disagree. The ikur (meaning, main thing, Hebrish, a mix of Yiddish and Hebrew) is that one need not automatically shut up and listen. That would be stuffing feelings and emotions that really, perhaps need to be uncorked in order to proceed to listen. (this beats uncorking a bottle).

What works emotionally for the couple is when BOTH partners are sensitive to one another, each gauging the other's need to talk.

SHE or HE should be checking HIM or HER out at the end of the day, sensing whether or not the world has trashed the other like a sack of garbage. Some days are like that, okay?

So to put it in You language, if I were the rabbi, and believe me, this is with all due respect because I like his message, for the most part, but I would have said:

You should be checking out Your partner and vice versa.

This is not necessarily a verbal examination. It is not a, “So how was your day?” thing.

At the end of the day BOTH of you should LOOK at each other to see if there are any new gray hairs, any new wrinkles. You have to look for the sadness, the worry, or the gladness (preferably) in the other’s eyes. This is not a passive process.

Then. . . the one with the better looking face, the one who has not got a furrow of brow, a turned down mouth, that tenseness in the body, the shoulders, the one who’s in a better place needs to invite the one who is not, must say, “Tell me about it. Talk to me.”

I know, I know, sometimes, perhaps usually, it’s not an easy call. But you have to make it.

That’s love, friends. It’s not a gender thing at all.

Thanks Rabbi, for reminding me to say that again. If you said it while I was asleep, forgive me.

Copyright 2006, TherapyDoc Linda Freedman

Falling Asleep in Shul

Finding Lost Objects

You guys know we have a special mantra, right? It's a Sephardic thing. Click here:

What to say to find lost stuff
It's a post titled, Control, Jewish Style

T.D.

Holiday posts

So, okay. There's one on Rosh HaShana, one on Yom Kippur.

Have fun. T.D.

AN FYO meeting

Hi friends,

I know, I know. I haven't been hanging around very much anymore. But it's been a busy summer. If you've stumbled on this blog and you're NOT of the Orthodox Jewish persuasion, you might not get it. Check out the secular therapy blogs instead:

When Therapists Blog

and Everyone Needs Therapy: Lessons from a Family Therapist

And if you are frum, stay tuned. I've got a stack of letters demanding my attention.

Best, T.D.

Handling Differences

Hey T.D., it's Me, from FrumSpace.

I was recently having a discussion with someone on a forum and because he did not like my opinion, he kept saying how there are so many know-it-all's in the Frum world who think only they can be right.

I felt like the person was being a hypocrite because he was then saying that only his opinion was valid, and because I was able to refute most of his comments, that I was being a know-it-all.

How do you deal with hypocrites and how do you not come off as a know-it-all, while at the same time still reply to someone using the knowledge that you do have (and basic logic / common sense)?

Sincerely,
Me


Dear Me from FrumSpace,

Thanks for writing and I'm sorry it took so long to respond. Things got busy, but I'll try to post more often.

Anyway, I thought that in the Beis Medresh basically all the rabbis liked to DO is argue the gemorrah. That's the essence of learning, right, to discuss and to find proofs of each side and to respect the other's argument. To me, not doing that is a sign of insecurity. A person should be able to say, "I can see why you would feel such and such a way, based upon your experience/learning."

In matters that are not in the gemorrah (so what's not in the gemorroah?) when individuals have different ideas and ways of looking at a situation, it can get really rocky, obviously.

In therapy, if I see a family of five, I might hear five DIFFERENT descriptions of what happened in the family at a particular time of their lives, or even yesterday.

That's because they really saw, or interpreted something different, based upon their different ways of looking at things.

We develop different ways of looking at things from our own personal life experiences. So, for example, if I had a GOOD experience growing up with people who have different religion, and you had a BAD experience with someone of that religion or heard they were bad people, then you might automatically disagree with me. But you could respect my experience, my own different reality.

All realities are different and they're all correct because they're ours. Who can argue what we see?

You don't have to abandon your philosophy, by listening to someone else's. And if someone is out-talking you and you can't put your philosophy into words, that's okay, too. Many things just can't be put into words. Not easily. That's where you say, "You have your right to your opinion."

We do learn more in life by listening than by talking. Listening to another and validating (saying you see where he's coming from) does not have to threaten your position. You can respect his take on it, and vice versa.

The key to making relationships work is listening to others to the point that you can actually see where they're coming from, not cutting them off.

If a person says he's a tolerant individual, then he shouldn't be lording his opinion over others. Showing interest in other people, getting them to talk about themselves and their opinions, THIS is the most elegant way to learn about people and consequently, learn about life.

So being "right" and driving your "rightness" home, being intolerant, cuts a person off from new knowledge. Too bad, right?

Machloket—-divisiveness—-friends, is the Satan.

Jews who understand that G-d tolerates us with all of our deficits, can certainly accept one another, even love one another, no matter what our philosophical differences. That can be hard sometimes.

Hope that helps,

F.A.

PERSPECTIVE

Dear Frum Abby,

I live in Europe and the family isn't frum. There aren't any programs for Jewish kids here to go to and I'm missing out on the best years of my life and feel like a complete loser.

It makes me angry, but it is fun to read on those frum forum websites, how teens complain about every small little thing, like 'my Rabbi is this', 'my yeshiva is so bad', 'I'm frummer than my MO father', 'my friend ate a 0,5% non-kosherhamburger', 'I don't enjoy learning talmud', all those kind of silly smalldetails.

I'd suggest all of them should pack a suitcase and move to my town and try to live as a Jew right there alone. It almost induces a laugh, when reading about their problems.

Sad

Dear Sad,

Well, this is terrible, as you know. Since you're on-line, I'd suggest you find as much Torah as possible, try to learn something at least. The websites are pretty amazing. Google "Torah". Maybe you can even get some pen-pals in Israel if you hunt around. That would be fun, I think.

You actually have a LOT to offer other kids, frum and otherwise. I always tell kids who feel out of it socially to look around for OTHER kids who think they're weird. There are millions of kids out there who feel they don't fit in—actually, they're good kids, just a little insecure, and like you, struggling socially.

Your experience is interesting and unique (it will give you much to write one day). I also suggest that you write a diary or journal, of sorts, maybe even blog.
I can tell you that these years, these supposedly best years of your life are usually NOT the best years of your life. That's a lot of nonsense. They're soul searching years and full of conflict with family about identity and disappointment with friends and school. So in that respect you are very much like other kids, frum or otherwise.

See if there's some kind of counseling program for you, too. It's great to be one on one with an adult who doesn't judge you and only wants to help, even if he can't be "your friend."

Stay in touch,

F.A.