Fantastic Beasts and How to See Them: Harry Potter and Mental Illness

I was listening to Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix the other day, and I was thinking about ways that Harry Potter could be connected to mental illness. It's common knowledge in the Harry Potter fan community that JK Rowling wrote the dementors as an allegory for depression, they suck the soul out of you, leaving you alive, but without the ability to feel and they make you remember all of your worst memories.

But I think other comparisons between magical creatures and mental illness can be drawn. Thestrals, the winged horses that pull the carriages up to Hogwarts, are analogous to trauma. One can only see them if they have seen someone die, so in the beginning of Order of the Phoenix, Harry can see the thestrals for the first time, and he feels like he is going mad because only Luna Lovegood can see them as well. Trauma often leaves a mental or emotional mark on a person, making signs of said trauma visible very clearly to the person who has suffered, but not to anyone around them. Sometimes, people are able to relate to each other, as Harry and Luna are in this passage, because they have shared similar trauma, and they can both "see" and "understand" it, just as the thestrals seem very real to them.

The second connection that I noticed, and that my therapist has pointed out to me many a time is the idea of the boggart, introduced in Prisoner of Azkaban, as a metaphor for anxiety. The boggart is a shape-shifting creature that transforms itself into whatever the viewer is the most afraid of. For example, Ron's boggart turns into a giant spider because he is afraid of spiders. The instance of the boggart that is most akin to anxiety is Molly's boggart in Order of the Phoenix though. She sees all of her family members dying one by one, becoming more and more distraught as she continues to see the worst case scenarios. The only way that one can get rid of a boggart is by using the Riddikulus spell, a spell that turns the boggart into a humorous version of the thing that you are afraid of, and sometimes, the only way to conquer anxiety is by laughing. It's really hard to continue to be anxious if you are laughing. Trust me, I've tried.  I'm sure that there are connections that I have missed, so I'd love it if you could leave them in comments, and I'm looking forward to doing more posts like this in the future.

Finals Week: I Think We're Doing It Wrong

It's finals week here in college, and the atmosphere of stress is palpable. But here's the thing: people seem to spend much more time talking about how much they have to do and how stressed they are then they do working. And it seems to be a competition of who has more work to do or who got less sleep last night (I don't sleep often anyways, but that's besides the point). And I can't help but feeling like we're doing it wrong. It's almost gotten to the point where I'm afraid to ask people how they are.

First of all, come on people, take care of yourselves. Eat meals, not just popcorn, ramen, and nutella from the jar. Try to get some sleep. Take a shower. Hang out with your friends. Go to the gym. Take a breath and watch some youtube videos.  Do the things that make you feel like a person. Your work will get done much more efficiently if you spend small amounts of time working instead of 5 hour study sessions where you don't actually get that much done.

Second, plan your day. Then you can be less stressed and get things done. I'm not good at explaining this, but this video is, so go watch that if you have a few minutes.

We need to stop jumping on one another. Stress is not a competition. Don't blame people for not having their work done. Don't blame people for being stressed. Don't blame people for getting their work done. Try to remember that learning is the point of all of this. All of us are just doing the best we can.

On a related note, I've been struggling a little bit over the last few weeks (I am open about my struggles with chronic illness, you can read more about that here), and there have been days when I haven't been able to get out of bed. This, as you can imagine, is very frustrating for someone like me who loves to plan because I can never know whether or not I'm going to be able to get work done. And I recognize that this is not my fault, but when you ask me why I'm not more stressed or why I haven't finished some piece of work, I feel guilty for having illnesses that keep me down.

This competitive stressful atmosphere is hurting us all, despite the fact that I am very happy to be at Brandeis where this only happens for one to two weeks a year as opposed to all the time, and we need to work to take care of ourselves, to forgive ourselves for our faults and wasted time and to love one another. Best of luck to all of you if you are taking finals, and have a great week even if you're not!

DBT and Judaism(Part 4): Matzah, Yom Kippur, and Avoiding Black and White Thinking

One of the quintessential ideas of Judaism is that nothing is black and white, everything is complicated. Matzah is both the bread of affliction and the bread of freedom. On Yom Kippur, we both atone for our sins and rejoice over the fact that we will be forgiven. On one of the happiest days, one's wedding day, we smash a glass to remember the destruction of the temple.

As our Rabbi was listing these examples and saying that we need to learn to hold conflicting ideas in our heads at the same time, a connection dawned on me: the first thing that they teach you in DBT(Dialectical Behavioral Therapy) is to avoid black and white thinking in order to keep our emotions in line and avoid obsessive thinking patterns. We are taught to stop labeling something as just sad or just happy. We are taught to avoid the words always and never and to take things just for what they are, complicated. And there is nothing more complicated than Judaism. Judaism forces us to hold both the pain and suffering of our people's past as well as the joy for the present and future in our heads. 

And maybe that's why Judaism helps me. We are reminded so often (and this is not accidental) that there is good and bad, happy and sad in everything. There is no holiday that includes no remembrance or at least twinge of pain. Most of our holidays revolve around the saying, "they tried to kill us, we won, let's eat." Even leading up to Purim, one of the most joyful holidays of the year, on Shabbat Zahor, we read about the Amalakites, a people who we are both instructed to remember and to drive out from the land, a violent precursor to the joy and partying that is involved with Purim. 

Judaism, as well as DBT, teaches us that we must hold happiness and sadness in our hearts simultaneously and be okay with it. We must remember the slavery, but be thankful for the freedom; We must celebrate our Simchas(weddings, birthdays, b'nai mitzvah), but remember that they will not last forever. Our brains are certainly capable of this, even though we don't generally put in the effort needed to do it. We can hold these ideas together in our minds. And we should. It's the healthier thing for everyone.

Yom Kippur: What am I Returning to Anyways?

I've been struggling a lot leading up to Yom Kippur this year. I've been remembering my study sessions in the Youth Lounge at my synagogue and missing my Beth Emet family, and I've been anxiously worried about my lack of control over the future. So through all of this mess of thoughts, I think I have pinpointed just the thing about Yom Kippur that is making me feel this way:

I find that every day for me is Yom Kippur. Every single day I go over my mistakes and thing about what I've done wrong. And every day I am hard on myself, so I've been asking myself this week, as I get more and more anxious leading up to the holiday(which begins tonight), is how can I make Yom Kippur more meaningful for me and also not let it destroy me. Let's take these things one at a time: I think that the liturgy of YK is still meaningful regardless of whether I am fasting or doing anything else, and this is the one day when all Jews are commanded to think seriously, so I have something in common with them which can also make the experience more meaningful.

How do I keep from spiraling down into a bad mental place on YK? This is a question I don't actually have an answer to. Teshuvah can be translated as return, but what am I returning to? Returning to my past self? But I'm not proud of who I used to be. So where am I returning to? I am returning to a more spiritual state, and in a way a state that is exactly the opposite of YK: a state of self acceptance and self care. And I realize that this isn't the original point of the holiday, however, this is what it is for me, and I think that's okay. And it's okay that I'm eating. And it's okay to not be okay, especially on this holiday.

Blog Elul: Hope

Hope is the light at the end of a tunnel.
Hope is the smile in a sea of frowns.
Hope is the music that floats in my window in hour four of my homework.
Hope is the thing with feathers.
Hope is what was left in the bottom of Pandora's box.
Hope never leaves.
We may forget about it. Make ourselves believe that it isn't there.
It there it will stay. Just hanging around, under all of the guilt, discord, and doubt.
Ready to come out and fly away.

Blog Elul: Begin

Rosh Hashanah is the beginning of the year. I've always liked it better than the Gregorian new year because Rosh Hashanah is actually at the beginning of my year. Sure, i've been at school for a bit, but it still feels like the dust hasn't settled so much on the year to come yet. But really any time can be a beginning if you decide to define it as one. The beginning of each day is a new start and one can make a conscious decision to live one's life anyway they please.

Beginnings, while exciting, also contain a lot of uncertainty, and there is very little I dislike more than uncertainty. But I am confident that this next year will bring happiness and sadness and love and trust and a myriad of other things that I cannot even imagine. And I'm looking forward to it.

Blog Elul: End

I really hate endings. I hated leaving camp--I basically cried for the last 48 hours. I hated leaving school in the spring. But the end of this year feels a whole lot more like a beginning that it does an ending. The ending of this year allows me to think back to the beginnings of so many important relationships and to think about how I will strengthen them and myself in the coming year. The ending of this year means that at some point I will be able to stop worrying about High Holiday logistics. The ending of this year means the beginning of the next. And I get to bring in the next year with my best friends. The people who I feel like I can avoid endings with. With whom it will always be see you later instead of good-bye. And that's a blessing. With endings come beginnings. And both require the same blessing.