{"id":55982,"date":"2017-03-02T11:22:35","date_gmt":"2017-03-02T16:22:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ou.org\/life\/?p=55982"},"modified":"2017-03-06T05:38:41","modified_gmt":"2017-03-06T10:38:41","slug":"rabbi-akiva-psychologist-using-traditional-jewish-teachings-conquer-anxiety","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ou.org\/life\/health\/mental-health\/rabbi-akiva-psychologist-using-traditional-jewish-teachings-conquer-anxiety\/","title":{"rendered":"Rabbi Akiva the Psychologist: Using Traditional Jewish Teachings to Conquer Anxiety"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jacob L. Freedman, MD, is a former student of Yeshiva Aish HaTorah and a psychiatrist in Boston, Massachusetts, and Jerusalem, Israel. Dr. Freedman is also a health care and a risk-management consultant as well as a suburban mountain biking enthusiast. For more information regarding Dr. Freedman, please visit his website at drjacoblfreedman.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

The best psychiatrist I know is my dear friend Dr. Seth Sherman who trained together with me at Harvard Medical School a few years back. A master storyteller, Seth loved to tell us of the time he worked at Stanford treating a particularly nervous young man.<\/p>\n

Without any prior history of mental illness, the young man came to the hospital convinced that the FBI was trying to get him. But where patients with a diagnosis of psychotic paranoia often have disorganized speech and bizarre behaviors, this young man was clear as could be. His only problem was that he was terribly anxious and was focused on being \u201ctracked by the \u2018Feds.’\u201d Seth described their interactions on the psychiatric ward as pleasant and couldn\u2019t really put his finger on the young man\u2019s problem. It was a true \u201cdiagnostic dilemma\u201d until following day when everything became crystal clear and three men in black suits with FBI badges came to pick him up\u2026<\/p>\n

Sometimes people have very good reasons to be anxious. Other times, their fears aren\u2019t really based in reality and their anxiety becomes dysfunctional. For people like this, the treatment of choice is called CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy).<\/p>\n

Invented by a Jewish Psychiatrist named Aaron Beck with the goal of treating depression, CBT is a form of psychotherapy that focuses on retraining one\u2019s brain to think rationally and positively. Pathological anxiety is irrational\u2014a person with panic attacks might be concerned that every pain in their chest is related to a heart attack irrespective of their general medical well being. An individual with obsessive-compulsive disorder might be worried that their hands are contaminated and spend five hours each day at the kitchen sink scrubbing. CBT focuses on the need to keep the \u201cbig picture\u201d in mind and to replace these catastrophic \u201cautomatic thoughts\u201d with grounded and rational thinking.<\/p>\n

The idea of remaining rational in times of distress and fear is a very Jewish one indeed. It\u2019s not merely found in Rabbi Nachman of Breslov\u2019s famous quote\u2014\u201cthe whole world is a very narrow bridge and the key is to never fear at all\u201d\u2014rather it\u2019s a fundamental principal of faith as taught by Talmudic sages, Maimonides, and everyone else in between. It\u2019s no surprise that my colleague Dr. Ronald Pies wrote an entire book on The Judaic Foundations of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the single greatest teacher of Rabbinical CBT was Rabbi Akiva. The Talmud (brachot 60B) teaches that Rabbi Akiva was always in the habit of saying \u201d Everything that God does is for the good.\u201d In doing so, he was able to keep proper perspective and to prevent himself from being anxious even in the most frustrating and confusing of times. The story is then told of how Rabbi Akiva was traveling to a village where he was refused lodging and was forced to sleep in the nearby forest. Rather than responding in anger, Rabbi Akiva stated, \u201cEverything that God does is for the good.\u201d At the time, Rabbi Akiva\u2019s only notable possessions were his donkey for traveling, his rooster to serve as a primitive alarm clock for awakening him at dawn for morning prayers, and a candle to provide him with light to study at nighttime. Come nightfall, a wind blew out Rabbi Akiva\u2019s candle. Sitting in the darkness, it was not long before his chicken was eaten by a cat and his donkey by a lion to which the Rabbi immediately responded, \u201cEverything that God does is for the good.\u201d The following morning Rabbi Akiva awoke to find a massive army had taken the local villagers as prisoners and had he not been rudely sent away\u2014and had his light not been extinguished or had his rooster and donkey not been eaten overnight\u2014then mostly certainly he himself would have been captured as well.<\/p>\n

The famous 19th century Iraqi Rabbi, The Ben Ish Chai, asks a brilliant question on this story\u2014isn\u2019t it assured that Rabbi Akiva had a lantern to protect his candle from being extinguished by the wind? He answers by saying that Rabbi Akiva was most certainly prepared and that the fact that his light was put out by the wind even through the protection of the lantern was clearly a miracle. But where a regular person might become angry with his light going out and blame his own bad luck, Rabbi Akiva cried out, \u201cEverything that God does is for the good,\u201d for he saw this unnatural occurrence as the hand of Hashem preparing a miraculous salvation.<\/p>\n

By using these fundamental principles of Judaism and CBT, Rabbi Akiva not only maintained his inner peace, but also merited to see that everything was in fact for the good when witnessing his incredible fortune the following morning.<\/p>\n

With my own patients in psychotherapy practice, I often encourage them to recall the famous line from Psalms, \u201cBehold the protector of Israel neither slumbers or sleeps,\u201d (Psalms 121:4) when they are anxious. This provides them with the necessary perspective to stay cool as a cucumber even in great duress. So whether you have butterflies in your stomach before a big meeting with the boss or your donkey just got eaten by a lion, the key is to keep the big picture in mind and conquer your anxiety! Stay positive, stay Jewish, and remember Everything that God does is for the good.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jacob L. Freedman, MD, is a former student of Yeshiva Aish HaTorah and a psychiatrist in Boston, Massachusetts, and Jerusalem, Israel. Dr. Freedman is also a health care and a risk-management consultant as well as a suburban mountain biking enthusiast. For more information regarding Dr. Freedman, please visit his website at drjacoblfreedman.com. The best psychiatrist<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":133383,"featured_media":55983,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_cloudinary_featured_overwrite":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-55982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mental-health"],"yoast_head":"\nRabbi Akiva the Psychologist: Using Jewish Teachings to Conquer Anxiety<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"How to use traditional Jewish teachings to conquer anxiety. 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