My previous post touched on the integration of poetry and artistic expression into our work as healers, teachers, and professionals of every stripe. Of course it is absolute hubris to think that art needs some sort of ‘scientific validation’ or in the lexicon of contemporary Orthodox Judaism, a ‘teudat kashrut’; humanity has soared out of its most horrible depths on the wings of poetry and art well before a bunch of psychological hotshots started poking around with brain scans and computers.

As a yeshiva bochur however poetry has a unique place beyond other artistic forms. In spite of the often maligning characterizations of the yeshiva bochur, what outsiders often don’t appreciate about us is our love of precision. Whether we’re arguing over who bears responsibility for a wayward ox or the correct amount of cayenne pepper in a cholent, we will go to the mat to get to the truth. We want our ideas, to be clean, concise, and free of dross.

So it shouldn’t surprise anyone that poetry’s exacting demands of beat, rhythm, meter, rhyme and structure should mean so much to this yeshiva bochur. The ethereal ideas of great poetry brings me into communion with what really truly is; nothing less and nothing more. In the poem lies the essential truth, a truth so miniaturized, rarified, and refined that it can take me by the hand and schlep me with my big American ego into its beauty.

With that in mind, I share one of my favorite poems about how we can heal each other. It’s written by Hafez, a Persian mystic, who appeared to have appreciated the terrible loneliness that still challenges us to this day. 

With That Moon Language

Admit something: 

Everyone you see, you say to them,

“Love me.”

Of course you do not do this out loud;

Otherwise,

Someone would call the cops.

Still though, think about this,

This great pull in us

To connect.

Why not become the one

Who lives with a full moon in each eye

That is always saying,

 With that sweet moon language,

What every other eye in this world

Is dying to

Hear.

With Shavuot upon us, two ideas have been rolling around my head, ideas that I think are super important in our work as healers and teachers.

The first  idea is about trying new things, making mistakes, and then picking up the pieces to make an even more beautiful masterpiece. The Torah is shockingly candid about mistakes. While the purveyors of super-hero fiction (and many so-called Gedolim biographies) would like us to believe that heroes are flawless, the Torah gives us permission to embrace the reality of our imperfect-perfect existence and to dance with it. Even Hashem, with all of His abilities, could not stop us from messing up just 40 days after the greatest moment in human history. We made a Golden Calf, an epic mess which we’re still cleaning up to this day.

Oops.

Yet Hashem didn’t throw in the towel. He gave us and Him another chance to make it work. And it did. Just look at how far we’ve come.

The second idea is a bit more ‘cognitivy’. In my spare time I’ve been reading a lot about non-symbolic cognition. Think of how a dog might view the meat counter in a supermarket. He sees (or smells) the meat but little else. Unless there’s a predator present, everything but the meat is invisible to him because it has no symbolic value. At least to a dog. Among our species, non-symbolic cognition is a hallmark of clinical depression; the severely depressed individual looks at a world of grey, flatness, and lacking any symbolic contours. While we see energy, beauty, and opportunity he sees blankness.

What’s this got to do with Shavuot? Well we’re told that Hashem forced the Torah on us through brute coercion. The Midrash uses the phrase, ‘He held a the mountain like a barrel over them’.

This first iteration didn’t work out as planned; we relapsed into our idolatrous roots. The reason that I think we failed is that we were unable to see what we were being given; it was invisible to us. The glory of the Mitzvot had no symbolic gravitas to us.

Yet.

We were still thinking in ‘Egyptian’, with its pyramidical distributions of power, and soul crushing ideology of meaningless dispensable cogs in someone else’s dreams. Hashem’s idea of unbounded spirit, unchained from the gravity of materialism seemed ridiculously invisible. To paraphrase the words of Eric Fromm, we tried to escape from our own freedom.

The take away is that not only did the Jewish people need to be deprogrammed so that they could fully embrace the Mitzvot, our clients do as well. While we don’t have any mountains to hold over their heads, we can use our creativity, example, and our skillfulness to evoke the dormant human spirit. 

Chag Samayach everyone!

 In my previous post, I spoke of a client who falling soundly asleep, is awoken by the thoughts making a racket in her mind. She’s unable to fall asleep again because of her stressed out mind and the activating signals which it broadcasts to the body.

In the following session, I suggested that she keep a journal handy. Should this episode occur again, she could use the time to ‘unload’ or ‘download’ her troubles into the journal. What was recorded could then be used for further reflection during the waking hours of the day. Or she could use the awake time to organize her thoughts so that they wouldn’t be running around her head causing all sorts of havoc. Predicting that some of the thoughts would be anxious and distorted in nature, I reviewed the procedures for doing a dysfunctional thought record with her.

Along with prescribing of a journal and a dysfunctional thought record, the client and I discussed ways to prepare her body to return to sleep. In this particular case, chamomile tea and some relaxing music turned the trick. Other clients have found relief in listening to guided imagery, taking a bath with a few drops of lavender oil added, offering a prayer, doing some light housework (I find doing the dishes to be incredibly relaxing at 3am in the morning), or through diaphragmatic breathing. 

In this specific client’s case however there were other comorbid psychological barriers which made the return to regular sleep more difficult. In other words, things were not that simple. The triggering event of the insomnia evoked many of the insecurities which had plagued her previously. Yet, these easy interventions helped restore the balm of sleep, something that helped the client deal with the crushing circumstances of her life. These interventions allowed us to keep the emotional work in the treatment room without spilling into the bedroom. 

In every area of clinical practice of cognitive therapy, psychoeducation is critical. Useful, relevant, and accurate information changes lives. This is especially so in the treatment of insomnia and all sleep difficulties. Seeking relief have most likely become so frustrated with themselves that they’ve overlooked many of the basic rules of sleep.

So we start from the beginning. 

We speak about the importance of sleep. We speak about the benefits of sleep. We speak about the conditions that make sleep possible. We speak about ways to create a sleep conducive environment. We speak about sleep supporting life style changes. 

As a matter of practice, I generally give my clients some simple literature about sleep hygiene.  Sleep Hygiene Tips is a form which I came across sum time ago. It’s clearly and engaging. Most of my clients however suffer from comorbid depression or anxiety or bipolar disorder or post traumatic stress disorder (or all of the above). For them I prepared the Zzzzz Sleep Help sheet. 

While psychoeducation alone won’t relieve your clients’ insomnia, it will get them started on redesigning their lives for their own benefit. Furthermore, psychoeducation also acts as a catalyst to get at the deeper issues that might otherwise not be found.