You Are Not Alone: A Manifesto For Misfit Toys

On the way home for February Break, I found myself listening to soundtrack of Dear Evan Hansen for the first time, and as I listened to two songs in particular, Disappear and You Will Be Found, I finally was able to put into words how I have been feeling for the past couple of weeks.  There are two messages that I took away from these songs--"You are not alone" and "You will be found".

Many people come to me with their problems--I'm not complaining. Helping people is exactly what I do. But so many of those people are afraid that their problems make them seem crazy or that people will run away if they know the truth that is hidden under the mask. But none of us, as unique and scary as our problems are alone. There will always be a friend or someone to remind you that you matter as much as you feel like the darkness is descending upon you.

And so these things I promise to you, and I hope you will promise these thing to one another as well as we bring ourselves together on an island of misfit toys (in no particular order):

1. I promise to not run away if you tell me something. I know you won't believe me the first time I say this, but I will say it over and over for years and years until you begin to get it through your head, that you can't shake me. I will stay no matter how bad it is, even if I don't know how to support you. You can't scare me away.

2. I will answer my phone in the middle of the night because let's be honest, I'm probably not asleep either.

3. I will reassure you that you are not alone as many times that you need and at all hours of the day.

4. I will love you no matter what. We are all broken in different ways. This is not said to minimize your problems because each person's problems are real to them. This is said to remind you that you can't shake me.

5. I will cut you some slack on the bad days. I will tell you that it's okay if you ate two pints of ice cream or skipped class. I will let you use me as a punching bag if it is too much.

6. I will never tell you to calm down or that your feelings are not valid. Those things aren't helpful, and I know how difficult it is to hear them. Sometimes we just think the same things over and over again because our brains aren't rational.

7. I will do my best to make you laugh in the hard moments. After all, laughter is the best way to kill the boggart.

8. I will take care of you if you need me to. In any way. All you have to do is ask, and if I know that you are struggling I will send you a text to check in. I will help to support you or find someone to support you when you cannot stand on your own.

9. I will hold you when you are scared of uncertainty or just to be alive. You can always count on me for a hug even if you don't want to tell me what is going on.

10. I promise that you are safe here. Your vulnerability will not be taken advantage of. I will sit with you through panic attacks or anything else that you are struggling with. I will hold your hand at the doctor's office. I will proofread your emails to your professors.I know the world is a scary place, full of judgement and triggers, but here, on our metaphorical island, you are safe with me and with all of our misfit toys.

DBT and Judaism(Part 3): B'Tzelem Elohim and Radical Acceptance

Radical acceptance is the idea of taking what you have(in your life and in your brain) for what it is and accepting it without judgement. By no means is this easy to do, I counsel people to do it all the time while I myself am very, very guilty of judging my own feelings and judging people in my life.However, when it is possible, it can be an incredibly freeing thing. So now you are thinking, Emily, you said this had to do with Judaism, how in the world does this have to do with Judaism?

B'tzelem Elohim literally means "in the image of God." Humans, according to Genesis, were made in the image of God. This one of my favorite Jewish ideas in general, but I think it can be especially helpful in the use of Radical Acceptance(see, I told you that they would connect). We need to remember that all of us, even the anxious parts and the parts that we like to pretend don't exist, are in the image of God. Accepting ourselves is a lifelong pursuit, but I think remembering that you are made in the image of God can help quite a bit.

Remembering that every other person in the world, even the ones who we think that we hate, are also made in the image of God is also an important takeaway from these two concepts. No person is less than a person, not even the ones who do things that are absolutely terrible. And every person, even the ones who seem like purely terrible people "contain multitudes," and are more complicated than they seem. We need to keep this in mind with our friends, our enemies, our mentors, and anyone who are in danger of seeing from a one-sided perspective regardless of whether or not we believe in God.

DBT and Judaism(Part 2): Mindful Eating and Keeping Kosher

Disclaimer: This blog post is not meant to shame anyone who doesn't keep strict Kosher(go ahead and argue with me about whether there are degrees of Kashrut), rather it is to show how it made my mindful eating process a healthy one.

I never really made an effort to keep Kosher until my senior year of high school. We never ate pork or shellfish, but I would eat non-kosher meat all the time and mix milk and meat. Since coming to Brandeis, I still don't keep strict Kosher, but I certainly think about it more and that intentionality in food choice is what I want to connect to mindfulness (if you haven't read last week's blog post, go read that first).

A few weeks ago, my mother offered me a piece of turkey with my lunch. I was having ravioli. I pointed it out to her that it wasn't Kosher, and I tried to make clear to her that it wasn't a big deal; I just wanted to make her aware that it was present. I am now aware of what is kosher and what isn't, and when I break the rules of Kashrut(usually when the dining hall would not have provided me with a sufficient meal if I did not mix milk and meat), I am keenly aware that I am doing it.

Being mindful about food is something that I did in a very unhealthy way in the past. Another principle that they teach you about in Dialectical Behavioral Therapy is called walking the middle path(essentially, nothing is black and white), and that's how I used to treat food. i used to treat certain foods as "good" and certain ones as "bad," and I would feel guilty and make myself absolutely miserable if I ate those foods, so eating mindfully can be done in a bad way. However now, since it is connected to Judaism, something that I very obviously adore, I can eat mindfully in a healthy way and be a bigger part of my community in general.

DBT and Judaism(Part 1): Blessing Your Food Mindfully

The intersection of Dialectical Behavioral Therapy and Judaism has been on my mind for quite a bit of time. In this particular post, I will examine the relationship of mindfulness  with regards to food in connection to saying a blessing before one eats. The next post will be on mindfulness and Kashrutand the one following it will be about the connection between B'Tzelem Elohim (being made in the image of God) and Radical Acceptance.

Mindfulness, according to wikipedia is the practice of bringing one's attention to the internal and external experiences of the present moment. Take this scenario (which is one that our Jewish chaplain has mentioned many times, so it is not mine): You are running into the house after a long day; you haven't eaten in hours and there's mail on the counter next to a bowl of fruit. What is the difference between grabbing on apple with one hand and the top piece of mail with the other and taking a bite out of it while you read said mail and picking up the apple, saying the appropriate blessing and then taking a bite out of it and grabbing the mail? The end result is basically the same. You have to wait an extra, maybe ten seconds before eating the apple, depending on how fast you can say the blessing. So what does this have to do with mindful eating? In DBT, one of the exercises is a mindful eating exercises. I've seen this done with a grape, a hershey's kiss, even a piece of chicken, but we are going to work with an apple because that will make the comparison easier. Basically, what you do is you eat, in this case the apple very slowly, trying to use all five of your senses to take in the food. While you do this, you think about where the food came from and truly appreciate all of the properties of the food. This serves the same purpose as the blessing does, making them extremely related.

The most important part of this connection, in my opinion, is the idea that you are thinking about what you are doing instead of just operating on your "default setting"(moving through the motions without any focus on the intentions behind your actions). Perhaps if saying the blessing is natural to you because you have done it your whole life, this concept would not apply, but for someone like me who has become more observant more recently, I know that it takes a lot of thought. This involves actually figuring out which blessing is appropriate for the food that you are about to eat or admiring it properties with mindful eating. Regardless, the experience is strengthened by the act that you do before.