We Do Have Choices

In a talk, Rivka Malka Perlman told about a young man whom her brother (Benzion Klatzko) is trying to be mekarev.

The person is tough and bitter and her brother asked him what's your story?

He said, when I was younger I was okay, but then my mother got sick and passed away. I was very lonely and having a very hard time in school, and I ended up connecting with not the greatest kids.
One day, the boys threw a rock at someone's car and the alarm went off. The owner came out screaming but the other boys ran off and I was blamed for it. The man said I'm calling your father and the police. The police came and took a report. My father came and took me home and was very disappointed with me.

I was punished and I didn't know what to think. I had gone from being an average person to a horrible person. I left school and did horrible things.

***
One day he was at a pizza shop and a nice man came over and spoke to him. He began casually meeting him, and he gradually spent more time with the man and began to trust him. The man recommended a summer camp for him. He was excited to go and the man said he would take care of the money and speak to the boy's father.

He hadn't been in a Jewish environment for so long but this seemed like a chance to start over.
His father gave permission and camp was a fresh start and he was reminded that he's actually a nice guy, and he started to have fun again and to heal from his mother's passing.

He came back from camp a new person.

The guys back home saw that he was different. They invited him to a barbecue and he was nervous about attending because he hadn't had friends back home in a long time. He decided to give it a try. He wanted to be the kid he was in camp, but it was hard to do that at home.

The barbecue was wonderful and he felt so grateful that the good times could last. He went inside to the kitchen for more drinks and saw, to his dismay, that the host was the owner of the car that had been hit by a rock. The man yelled, I remember you, I don't forget kids like you, you think you can come to my house and be part of a barbecue here, what are you doing on my property? Get out of here, you don't belong here!

"That was the end for me. I joined a gang and that's me today."

***
I heard this story and thought, it is so important to teach children about free choice, that Hashem makes things happen to us, but we get to choose how to respond. We are not compelled to react one way or another.

Losing his mother and feeling lonely, made him friendly with fringe kids. Being yelled at, apparently wrongly, made him decide he's bad. Going to camp and having a good experience, made him feel he's good. Being yelled at again, made him feel turned off from everything and everyone. He behaved like a marionette - when his "strings were pulled," he moved in that direction.

One can imagine someone else in similar circumstances responding differently. It's not like this young man had to respond as he did, though he may have felt that there was no other way. It is this that I think we must convey, that we do have choices in our responses, that the way we respond is not a given.

As I read in a book about happiness long ago about a former prisoner of the Soviet gulag who spent 12 yrs. in concentration camps, starved, beaten, humiliated, who lost two fingers to frostbite who said, "Victim! I am not a victim! I survived!"

Many people can’t do this. They carry their hurt forever. They begin to define themselves as their pain.

Life hurts but you can’t allow yourself to get wrapped up in this hurt, constantly reliving it, fearing the future and grieving the past. That’s victimization.

Other people can hurt you but only you can victimize yourself.

Original Source of Snakes for Healing

The picture is the "Star of Life," which is the emblem used on ambulances.  What does the symbol represent? A search online says the staff and the snake comes from one of the Greek gods, a god of healing.

Isn't it more likely that the symbol originates with this week's parsha of Chukas? The Jewish people complained, and snakes came and bit them and they died.  Moshe prayed on behalf of the people and Hashem told him to fashion a snake and put it on a pole and whoever was bitten was supposed to look at the snake on the pole.  Chazal say, "Does a snake cause death or life? However, when Yisrael looked heavenward and subjected their hearts to their Father in heaven, they would be healed, but if not, they would waste away."

Spooky and Sad

Someone told me that her extended family is shocked upon hearing that their cousin is very sick.  She had kept it a secret even from her own parents.

One Shabbos, the mother had a dream that her daughter was sick.  After Shabbos, she called her daughter's house and asked to speak to her.  She was told that her daughter was at the doctor.

This prompted the mother to call Memorial Sloane Kettering and ask to speak with her daughter.  She was given her daughter's room number.  Sadly, her dream was reality.

It's definitely spooky but I assume that the mother had her suspicions before the dream.  The dream reflected what was on her mind, whether consciously or unconsciously.  So I think that rather than the dream being a message from Beyond; it was an expression of her concerns which were based on things she had seen and heard.

Regardless, חיה גיטל בת שרה גולדה needs a refuah shleima.

Statistics Don't Apply to Us

Rabbi Yaakov Yosef (Yaakov Chai ben Margalit), son of the well-known posek, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, is seriously ill.  I read an article about him and his positive attitude about his illness and how he is doing his best to keep up with his daily schedule and fortify his bitachon. 

He says that his doctor explained the slim odds of surviving this disease and how the chances of recovery are between 3 and 5%.  This irreligious doctor then told him a most astonishing thing.  He said, "In the Torah-observant community, the statistics are completely different.  These numbers have no effect on you.  You have your faith and your prayers, and your chances of recovery are different.  We see more miracles in your sector of the population than with any other patients."

May he have a refuah shleima.

Blessings

Back in April I wrote about healing in connection with Rachel Naomi Remen's book "Kitchen Table Wisdom" which I was rereading at the time. 

http://bikores.blogspot.com/2010/04/true-healing.html

Well, now I'm rereading her other book, "My Grandfather's Blessings: Stories of Strength, Refuge, and Belonging" which is as beautiful as her previous book.  Ms. Remen had a frum grandfather who had no frum children but he was there to teach the author until he died when she was seven years old.  He lovingly called her Neshuma-le and her encounters with him and his teachings are so poignant.  She grows up to lovingly transmit the kindness and compassion and wisdom she received, to others.  The theme is - recognizing the blessings in your life.  Sometimes we are blessed and don't know it.  It's something like being given a check and not cashing it.  It's about opening our eyes, seeing what really matters, what is true.

caveat: not every selection is 100% kosher

Psychiatry part 3

In Mishpacha magazine's supplement "Calligraphy" from Pesach (which usually has fiction but this time had non-fiction), there is a very disturbing story about a third grader in Israel who was doing wonderfully in school until he began speaking less and less and was diagnosed by a pediatrician with selective mutism (which does not explain anything, just describes the fact that the child isn't talking).

He began to withdraw socially and then stopped speaking altogether. A psychologist had him draw on a paper, asked the parents whether the child had experienced any trauma, and when they said they no, the psychologist said she thought he was reacting to a severe trauma or was psychotic and to bring him back in a week.

Rather than explore what might be bothering the child who had been 100% normal till then, a week later the same psychologist recommended that they take him to a psychiatrist because she decided that his condition was dire.

Based on this, they actually picked up and moved the family to Yerushalayim! (yes, they asked a shaila and sorry to say, the psychologist's opinion was adhered to like it was the word of G-d).

Unbelievably, this poor child was enrolled in a special needs school. Interestingly, he still sang zemiros at the Shabbos table but otherwise, he was doing worse.

They took him to a pediatric psychiatrist. Their child was 10 and a half and the change had begun three months before. Without interacting with the child at all, this rasha of a doctor declared that the boy was either experiencing clinical depression or psychosis and he wrote out a prescription.

Around the third visit, the child went over and touched the fax machine and this doctor yelled at him, stood up and forcefully waved his hand and said, "Get away from there! You're psychotic, yes you're psychotic!" And he wrote out another prescription.

This is a pediatric psychiatrist!? Why, oh why, did this evil person specialize in working with children when he hates them? And by what did he write out a prescription without thoroughly examining the child?

The story goes on. They administer drug and after drug to the child who gets worse and worse.  He had terrible side effects from the drugs, was diagnosed with schizophrenia, was confined in a psychiatric hospital, was severely beaten and abused by the Arab driver of the van that took him to his institution, and then a particular drug was credited for helping him get back to normal.

The parents did what they thought was best. I feel sad for them and the miserable experience they had, uprooting their family and everything that happened, but it needs to be said: Nobody bothered trying to find out what made a previously normal 10 year old withdraw. These medical doctors are trained to diagnose pathology.  Mental illness is nebulous, usually with no physical evidence of a physiological problem and as in the case with the "Girl in the Green Sweater" and the woman in the "True Healing" post, drugs and mental illness labels were not what was needed.  A person reaching out in kindness with the way to the person's heart is what was needed.

This reminds me of an article I read about a year ago about a man who came to the US to collect tzedaka so he could pay for a wedding.  Once in America he was unable to get himself out of bed.  A friend took him to a psychiatrist and you'll never guess how the MD treated him .... Are you ready? Have you guessed? Yes! He wrote a prescription for an anti-depressant!

Now tell me, if the doctor had written out a hefty check for the person, or if the fundraiser had unexpectedly won the lottery, would he be depressed? Nope.  Would he need drugs? Nope. So why are we, as a society, allowing our fears and sadness to be treated with drugs?

Psychiatry part 2

I recently read another two things (in addition to my "True Healing" post, two posts ago) that have reinforced my strong feelings about psychiatry. 

I am almost finished reading "The Girl in the Green Sweater" by Krystyna Chiger about how she survived the Holocaust at age 7 by hiding in the sewers beneath the city of Lvov for fourteen months.  After many months underground and enduring horrific living conditions (swarming rats, for one thing) the usually cheerful girl became silent, sullen and sad.  She did not feel like eating, talking or doing anything.  It's what a psychiatrist would diagnose as childhood depression.

Her mother was desperate about her, thinking her temperament was changed forever and so she told the Polish man who was their protector about her concern.  The Pole led her through the pipes and said, "Let me show you something."  She crawled through and then climbed a ladder which led to an opening to the street where she could see sunlight through the grate.  It was the first sunshine she had seen in over a year.  She heard children playing outside.

He said to her, "You have to be strong, little one.  In just a few days, you will be up there playing with the other children.  You will smell the same flowers."

And she writes "And in this way I became whole again," thanks to him.

What would a psychiatrist have done for her? Without a doubt, reached for his prescription pad and drugged her.

(more in the next post)

True Healing

Rachel Naomi Remen is a medical doctor who opened a practice where she speaks to seriously ill and suffering people and through her wisdom and caring guides them towards emotional healing.  In "Kitchen Table Wisdom" she describes a woman who was intensely grieving the loss of the love of her life.  Her grief was so acute, way beyond the norm, that a psychiatrist diagnosed her as having "reactive depression" and he treated her with progressively more powerful antidepressants which did not work.

She had several sessions with Dr. Remen in which she opened up about her pain which enabled her to move forward.

That's the chapter in a nutshell.  I won't repeat what the woman's thought process was and how Dr. Remen's suggestions broke through her numbness.  What outraged me about this episode is how the medical community, psychiatrists in particular, seek to label symptoms and drug us rather than heal us.  What the grief-stricken woman needed was not drugs to mask her symptoms (and give her numerous side effects to suffer from) but someone to truly listen to her and show her that she had the choice to move on.

We have numerous statements in Torah sources about the mind-body connection and yet we too, in the frum world, have fallen prey to drugging symptoms in children and adults.  We need wise people amongst us whom we can turn to; people who don't view coping mechanisms as medical illnesses; people who can listen and provide wise guidance within a Torah framework to those who are suffering; people who will talk about emuna and bitachon and simcha rather than diagnose syndromes and disorders.