The Ability to Tolerate Uncomfortable Situations

We are talking about the trait of Sevel , which is important for good middot/character traits. We have also discussed that it’s important for menuchat hanefesh/serenity . But when we talk about the term Menuchat Hanefesh , it’s not just about the concept of the peace of mind. There’s a term choli hanefesh/ referring to someone whose soul is sick, which is a term for mental illness. And Menuchat Hanefesh is the ultimate mental wellness. So let us discuss the concept of tolerating , as it refers to mental illness, and how this trait of Sevel will help us. One of the most common mental challenges of our time is anxiety. If I call someone close and dear to me on their cell phone three times, and they don’t answer, anxiety creeps in and I start to worry. What happened?? Were they kidnapped? Were they in a car accident? Who knows what happened Has V’Shalom…they didn't answer their phone three times! That's anxiety. But anxiety is a human phenomena that God put into us for a good reason - so that we should be concerned in dangerous situations. Otherwise, we’d just run into the street. So we need anxiety. The problem is when it gets blown out of proportion, when a little pussy cat looks like a tiger. And many people now have anxiety disorders. What exactly is going on? Anxiety comes from the inability to tolerate uncertainty- the uncertainty is there, but can we tolerate it? And we stress the word tolerate . You have that anxious feeling, but can you just hold it? There are two approaches to anxiety in therapy. One, more well known, is called CBT, Cognitive Behavior Therapy. The other, a little bit less known, is called ACT, which means Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. The difference, in one sentence, is that CBT works by helping you identify and change negative or destructive thoughts, whereas ACT holds that pain and discomfort are a fact of life, which means acceptance of the fact that there is a certain feeling of uncertainty involved. I'm not even going talk about it. I'm not going deal with it. I'm just going to say it's okay to have that anxious thought.. It goes even further to the extreme that none of us has ever experienced, but I heard from a psychiatrist that people have what's called psychosis , which means they're suffering from delusions or uncomfortable thoughts. They're aware of these thoughts, but more than the thought itself being a problem is the inability to tolerate the thought. One of the therapy techniques is to tell the person, It’s okay. You're going have this feeling that the floor is shaking under you, or that you're hearing voices, but it's okay to hear voices, just accept it. Baruch Hashem most people don't have to deal with that, so we won’t focus on that. Then there’s depression. Being depressed means having feelings of sadness. And what gets you more than the sad feeling is the inability to tolerate the sad feeling. Another pertinent term, created by psychologist Albert Ellis, is Low Frustration Tolerance or LFT . Someone with LFT is unable to tolerate unpleasant feelings or stressful situations. Ellis’ theory is that this is one of the main aspects of emotional unhealthiness, because we tend to seek instant gratification to avoid pain. But ignoring the fact and evading the situation now will just make it more problematic later. We all want avoid stressful situations. He theorizes that this is the main cause of procrastination. When people put things off, it’s because they want to avoid a difficult situation that gives them discomfort. So we want to push off anything that is not comfortable, because we can't tolerate it. That means we'll push off dealing constructively with the problem. Sometimes it means ending an unpleasant relationship, improving unhealthy lifestyles, moving on from dissatisfying jobs. All these things take going through an uncomfortable situation. People that suffer from ADD, may feel road rage. Or they can't wait on a line. But what's really going on is that for them, it's extremely uncomfortable. Another example is when our kids are bored. What do we try to do? We try to get the kids un-bored, but one of the training approaches says it's okay to be bored. Just hold on, and tolerate boredom. Finally, we have our favorite study, the Marshmallow Test, in which a psychiatrist took 50 children of ages four to five, put them in a room, and told each child that they could either have one marshmallow now, or, if they chose to wait 60 seconds, they could get two marshmallows later. And you watch the kids on video during those 60 seconds… some children popped the marshmallow in their mouth right away. Some kids licked it, or touched it. Other kids sat on their hands to try not to eat it. Some kids walked around the room The children were revisited 15 years later, and the study found that the children who had the self-control to wait for two marshmallows when they were young were found to have scored higher on their SATs, and were accepted into colleges more frequently. The children that couldn't wait and stuffed the first marshmallow in their mouth were in drug rehab or had other types of problems. And what's the basic principle? The children that could wait, were able to tolerate that uncomfortable feeling of wanting to eat a marshmallow and not having it- that’s what self-control is all about; Tolerating the uncomfortable feeling. So this is really Kol HaTorah Kulah on one foot- the ability to tolerate uncomfortable situations.