Happiness and Connection; Dr. Akiva Perlman PhD and Dr. Tamar Perlman PSY.D

hi everybody welcome to tonight's amazing program tonight is sheer number 62 with the let's get real program with coach menachem bernfeld we welcome you all back tonight's going to be a really exciting program and i'm looking forward again i want to first start off always thanking all the people that come on every week for helping the platform really grow and explode all the people that posted on their statuses on their whatsapp and they email it around and they let people know about it we really appreciate it and as i always say try to come on every week if you can to let people know about it it's every sunday night 10 o'clock this this zoom id for those who are watching to replay this on youtube please click on the subscribe button to coach monaco's channel and hit the like button like i always say every week so me managum can make millions of dollars on the program we really appreciate it i'd like to thank all our advertising sponsors for promoting us the liquid scoop over here on lakewood special thank you to robbie anderson always is behind the program always helps us get amazing speakers really thank you robbie we love you a special thank you to kyla california summer from jcn for always promoting us on all the jewish platforms we really appreciate it again for anybody who's the first time here tonight um it's every sunday night at 10 o'clock on the zuma d we have different different therapists different topics and it's amazing next week 7-eleven we're going to have again for round two absolutely he's going to be discussing as usually does in today's crazy times um and you know it's right before tishbo so he's going to tell us exactly what michelle comes what to do so we have to be the next week so we should really have the exact uh mahalo down path it should be an amazing program please come um he had a whole year to prepare for it so it's going to be an amazing show tonight we have this host of having two of the most prominent therapists i would say pretty much in the community in claudia's role and not only are they amazing but they're also related to each other my husband and wife dr tamar proman and dr keefer proman to join us both here together they're doing this is this is a first for them you know there's only you should use me and my wife presenting but this week we're going to give it to this couple to present to give it over so we're looking forward and actually dr kevin was on a year ago and it was an amazing program a tremendous feedback so i said dr kieva came and he was good but now please bring your better half so we can have even a better program and bring it up a notch and uh again thank you for coming on tonight tonight's really an open topic we have a lot to discuss it's really a lot of things but let's start off first with our coach coach monaco bernfield open it up for the island thank you very much usher for the introduction welcome everyone to let's get rid of coach menachem park shame we're up to a number 62 and hashem should help us continue to help claudius throw last time we sat with dr akiva on the show it was pretty vulnerable it was a vulnerable experience and it was the the impact was tremendous there's there's something to it when somebody can open up and be vulnerable people feel they can relate they they there's something that they can listen to and then it's it's easier for them to apply it versus when you hear it from uh rasha shiva from a weber from from somebody up there when you're listening to the concepts but you feel like they're up there or even a therapist but when they when there's something vulnerable there's something that that you can relate to and i remember the emails that we got people walked away feeling like this is real you know you're talking to a real person real struggles which we all have and how to navigate how to go through all of these things so bark hashem we had many topics the past few weeks a lot of discussions on the show uh between sean baez divorce we have a lot of trauma child trauma and people trying to figure out does everybody need therapy or not and there's something that comes up afterwards people trying to figure out who they should go to where they should start many have been it didn't work out so i think it was a good idea that we can actually sit into the therapy room with the therapists on both both perspectives for the men and for the women so we can get a little bit of a picture of a glimpse of what goes on in the room from the therapist point of view and what he sees from uh the effects that it has on the clients so we're looking forward tonight thank you so much for being with us thank you coach vernacle it was a beautiful opening okay let's get an overview of tonight's share tonight sheriff's was sponsored by recovery at the crossroads recovery at the crossroads is the only kosher inpatient treatment center in the tri-state area they're a licensed co-occurring treatment facility which means they are licensed to not only treat substance abuse but also all the other underlying mental conditions such as anxiety depression and trauma they've been working for 15 plus years in the firm community and helped many families put tremendous effort in working together with the families if you or anyone you know is struggling with addiction feel free to reach out to them at 888-466-5950 tonight we're going to be talking a little bit about from all the years of experience that dr keith and dr tamar have for being therapists phd societies they have all the degrees and how many clients they sat with and how many community issues they deal with so we're gonna get some perspectives and it's really an open conversation discussing happiness connection marriage it's really open it's really open platform tonight so we're not really focusing on one thing but feel free you know to text questions to usher partners over here on the screen and of course live questions go first we're going to open up first with active keeper we'll open up followed by his wife dr tamara so i'll read dr kieler's very short bio because we don't have enough time to read the whole thing daktech keva proven phd is an international speaker on topics of abuse addiction trauma he has educated more than 250 firm social workers from community and currently serving as professor at whatever westbrook school of social work i know if he's still there anymore dr perlman is a clinical director of oda's wellness institute a clinic which serves the city's community in williamsburg he maintains a small practice of fresh meadows where he resides with his wife tamar and children so much guys for this opportunity it's uh i can't tell you what it was like last time uh it was a very vulnerable experience for me and i certainly walked away with a vulnerable hangover as bernay brown kind of calls it you walk away with this sense of um am i am i still myself you know did i lose part of my being in that experience um and then it takes a few minutes to sort of recollect yourself but then getting the feedback from people um and hearing that somehow you know the objective of trying to reach people worked at least for some um i still believe that my favorite comment it's always interesting that when you you do something and it has some form of meaning and there's that one comment um that you notice more so than anything else was i was being very vulnerable i was talking about myself as opposed to speaking about other people and maybe tonight as well just a little bit um and there was one person like in the comments saying he this guy really needs to go to therapy and i completely agreed with her um and i only know as a female because it was because of her name i was sort of identified um but it was it was one of those moments like you sort of you take it with you and i think that this this forum of all places where i've had the opportunity and privilege to be a part of it like this forum to me most resembles like the classroom like a place that is which is a place i feel a lot more comfortable than in many other places in the world a place where there's honesty and openness and dialogue and and yearning and seeking of that truth and and i'm looking at the screen before me and i i see some of the wonderful people i've i've been privileged and honored to journey with the people who have contributed to my life in in measurable ways um but the truth is to have an opportunity um my wife and i have dedicated really our lives to the pursuit of trying to bring some degree of comfort and healing into the world uh into our community i think it's the thing that we've noticed about each other very early on in our relationship but for the last uh 18 years we've done it in a parallel type of way where my wife is doing her work and i'm doing mine and they very rarely cross paths um so when my wife is you know the the key speaker at a shabbaton i'm the guy who could sort of disappear into the background and it happens the other way as well so to have an opportunity to speak beside her is of the greatest honors in my life um to speak with someone who i i value so deeply um and who you'll have an opportunity to hear from and you'll get a sense as to why um i value her so deeply um but again to be here to be in this space with the rest of you uh is just a great great honor um your work is holy it's invaluable uh before everyone else got on uh usher and coach monaco were speaking about you know the amount of people that have through this program through this forum ultimately made their way into therapy or forget about therapy itself they've made their way into some form of healing journey as a result of the sheer openness that exists in this space and so a tremendous ashikawa to everyone involved in this program um it is just beautiful what you do uh we were listening to the series that you have on divorce um and and we enjoy it thoroughly uh just just listening to to the wisdom that's being passed down so tonight um we're thinking about what what can we speak about i think it is going to cover like many topics to be quite honest it's not so defined where it's only about marriage or only about trauma it's going to be a collection of of everything and maybe it's about the festivities of the evening just a few minutes ago right outside my window with all these fireworks going off so it's it's a lighter evening um uh so we're gonna try to keep it that way so just to jump on in one of the most common questions um that i get as a therapist not only from from clients people and friends colleagues but but really from everyone it had managed to sit and listen to suffering and pain all day like how do you survive that how is that something that you choose to literally willingly and and these people are not the only people who ask this question some of the greatest therapists ever have asked that question uh james bougainthol asked that question arallo may ask that question ralph may even took time out of the profession saying i'm not sure why i'm here to begin with and it might be too overwhelming i want to i want to take a pause and potentially come back when it's when it feels like a choice um and and it's a very profound question and and it makes sense because it's speaking about the reality which is when you're when you're sitting in the room with other people who have lived a life that's been filled with a lot of pain obviously it means a lot to you and the truth is if it doesn't mean a lot to you and if it isn't heavy and you aren't taking it home with you then you're probably not doing your work very well so you have to willingly choose to say let me take this with me because if i'm not taking it with me then the person who is sharing their lives with me in such a meaningful way may not matter so much to me and i want it to matter i want the suffering of the people that i'm i'm privileged to spend time with i want it to to affect me and to change me um so we talk about that that question of where how do you manage to do it i want to share a story some of you may be familiar with ravager wade ravager wade was a a convert um and he he was studying to be a priest he was actually in the uh um i forget the name of the place but he was studying in one of the top you know environments to study to become a priest i'm not overwhelmingly familiar with their institutions um and he was studying the the the christians the catholic church's response to the holocaust and where were they and how did they permit this to happen underneath their nose and and like they're talking about a religion that's filled with love and care and respect and and here you are you have six million jews who are being slaughtered under your nose and they didn't really say boo and obviously we've received an apology since then but to him he sort of turned away from from that religion and joined yiddish guide because he started studying it and saw the beauty in it the beauty that we all see and i went i was narcissistic for four years and it was the one thing that i just avoided i was terrified of going to yad vashem i was terrified of going to the holocaust museum which was the museum that he would give tours with so i remember calling my mother right before i was going to go back to america and i was talking about my resistance to going i don't want to go i feel like i have to go it's my mandate it's my responsibility but every time i go there just it brings me down and i start asking all these questions that i'd rather not have to live with um and and the conclusion of that conversation was you still need to go yes it will introduce a crisis and yes it will be hard for you to internalize but you need to go anyway because these this is your people and you need to if they're suffering you need to suffer alongside them and i fully agree so i did my research i went to the to the museum and i sought out the best person to give the torah which was revusherweight and and i asked him at the end of this tour which was painful and brutal and and honest and real but i asked him at the end the same question that people asked me on a regular basis and asked my wife as well and all the therapists in the room um how do you i said how do you manage to do this because as he was completing this tour he was starting a new one how do you manage to go you know three four times a day through these very very dark holes and he turned to me and he said with like a very wise smile and he said if you've noticed as we were making our way through the museum everyone that i was taking on this tour was looking back at the past they were looking at the exhibits they were observing what happened in the past and i i was facing you i was facing the group that i was journey that was journeying through this uh this very dark corridor and to me my experience every single time i do this is look at our survival look at the fact that we're still here look at the fact that we as a nation have survived and we're making our way through yes we're limping and yes we're struggling but we've survived as a people and to me that's always like the idea that resonates the most when you think about therapy that people look at it the wrong way they're asking the wrong question they're asking the question i asked usher wade without any really clear perspective they're asking the question of how is it possible that you're not taken down by the pain as opposed to asking how is it possible that you're not completely transformed by the courage of the people that you have an opportunity to sit with which is the ultimate truth there was a wonderful story uh this is a yalum story for those who know from my class i love yolum's work speaking about some of his tales and how they've affected us as a people and so irving allen was a existential humanistic analyst if that's a fair way of describing him and he once was studying he had a fellowship at the tavistock clinic the tavistock clinic for those aren't familiar was like the world's most famous clinic it's out in london and you had literally you know harry stack sullivan you had all the great analysts that came from that part of the world all practice in this one place and to be asked to join there for a year a fellowship is a great honor it's of one of the greatest honors therapists could have and so he's there visiting for the year and he's witnessing a particular group that's been around for 15 years it's an analyst group a group of adults who are in a trauma group together and they were talking about they were finally uh breaking up after 15 years of being together because the analysts the therapist was retiring and uh they're all sitting there in this last meeting and yalum was observing he was the fellow observing this final meeting and they're all going around the room talking about how much everyone changed and they say you you know you know sarah you changed so much and you john you changed so much and it became apparent at a certain point that the only person who didn't change in that room was this analyst was this therapist and everyone came to that conclusion pretty unanimously where they all kind of said to one another the one stable individual in this room the one who's remained stagnant for the last 15 years the one who's remained predictable and the same has been this analyst and the analysts kind of smiled and turned to yalum who was this fellow this newer therapist and he said to him with pride with a smile on his face and that my son is how you do therapy and what he was conveying to him is that when you do therapy you're supposed to remain somewhat impartial and yalum sort of talks about his experience of that moment and he says like the great sadness that he felt that here he was surrounded by all these people that managed to grow for 15 years together as a group they grew they managed to become bigger better people and here was this analyst witnessing all of that for 15 years witnessing growth and aspiration and and transformation yet he wasn't affected by it he didn't become a bigger better person as a result of it he remained the same and the alam speaks about the great sadness of that the tragedy of that moment how is it possible to be so close to individuals who are braver than you who are taking greater steps than you could ever imagine in your life and not be affected by that and that's my experience my experience of sitting with pain all day is that these are people who have the courage number one to even show up to show up to an office and say you know what things aren't working so well for me and i i'd like to work through it i'd like to become a better version of myself potentially the best version of myself and to not be affected by that you'd have to be distant and cold and there has to be something not quite right so um i want to speak a little bit about what we talk about you know a little bit about trauma and and how it affects us and how it ultimately makes its way into relationships and then i'm going to turn it over to my wife but i think we're all quite familiar i've followed this program and and the people who speak about trauma have a really beautiful deep understanding of it so i imagine most of the listeners as well like are walking around with a lot of complexity and understanding of what it actually looks like i just want to speak about few a few small ideas and share some of the stories that have made its way into my space that i you know i'm willing obviously all the information has been changed so we can't identify these people but the essence the core of of the story remains true and remains alive but there are a few effects that i want to speak about with trauma that there there are many that were affected by but there are few that seemingly exist uh consistently pervasively through many people and they to me represent the essence of what we're trying to overcome when we make our wake and we make our way into some form of healing work um when one is treated without love one is not seen for for the person that they are the individual that they are they're not treated with a sense of care you know you don't have to look very far to to find the literature to describe what this means the difference between looking at a child and seeing that child as a gift that's been given to you so you can nurture them so that they could become the best version of themselves that's our job as parents it's not to look at them the other way which is basically a reflection of ourselves we look at them and we see in their eyes our own reflection and hope that they act in a way they become someone that we would ultimately make us proud as a result of them becoming someone and leaning into to the person that they could be that would make them feel whole we all understand the difference between those two different pathways but when a person is is treated in a way where they're not seen as a self they're not seen as an individual they're not seen and treated with the care that they deserve they're ultimately left with a sense which is the point number one i want to speak about is that i am not good enough which means nothing to do with actions it has nothing to do with the way they actually behave it has to do with the essence of their being the very fabric the nature of who they are is people that these are people who walk around with a sense that me as an individual is simply not good enough there's a beautiful man that i've been honored to to spend several years with in therapy where he we journey together which is the way therapy should really be um you know there's no it would be very easy i was just saying before i had on top of the bookcase i had a few extra sheets and uh and i took it off before we started this little uh this get-together because it looked a little messy and i was telling uh coach monach i'm an usher i said those are all my diplomas from over over the years and many therapists hang them in their office and have no judgment towards that they've worked really hard to get these degrees but to me sitting in an office in a space with another human being i don't want to present as i'm resolved and you're the one with the problems so follow my lead and you're going to be okay i rather want to create a space where we're both fellow travelers because i i possess the same degree of struggle as as the other people in the world that's just the nature of of being alive um and and yes you'd like to to learn about the wisdom the offer the world has to offer about healing and comfort but at the core at the essence human beings we're fragile where we're limited we struggle and all we could do is try to find people that we could share that struggle with that we could be alive with them so we're no longer alone in our own you know little world so there was this one this one client that comes to mind um who comes from a prominent rabbinic family and was very much raised by the needs i don't think they were very fully resolved his parents um that he they really needed their children to be very put together and i think there is a demand um i could share many stories that we have had where you kind of walk into a certain environment and you're the professionals so there's an added demand that you place upon your children for them to act really resolved and everything is okay which is unfair it's unfair of us that that's the demand that we place on them when we work on it we we try our best to permit them to simply be as as human beings as children as kids um but these parents because they were in this role of like rabbinic authority they they placed this demand consciously unconsciously on their children to really be perfect that was the reality to in every situation that they were placed to be flexible and malleable and and and be comfortable and communicate with anybody anyone in their school they could get along with all of all of the above which is something that when we think about it we take a step back to place such a demand on a child is not quite right uh because it doesn't permit them to actually live their childhood it places them in a position where they now need to be an adult well before they're even capable of becoming an adult and that was what he ultimately lived with um and he needed to forsake his basic needs his basic child desires in order to satisfy the demands that his parents placed upon him and ultimately what he lives with today as an adult is someone who does not accept and lean into himself he's someone who implicitly the same way he was rejected by others especially the primary people in his life he was never really given a chance to be seen as an individual then he in turn does the same to himself but i think even more tragically he does the same for his spouse that need for for him for his own desire to to kind of present as being resolved and perfect has now been transmitted to her as well and i think we could all imagine what that looks like in a marriage when you're the request the demand that you place on the person that you're married with is that they are perfect all the time and they do it right all the time and that if a guest comes over then everything goes perfectly well um as opposed to things being human um and that's and that to me comes from the very essential react like the result of of not being treated with care and respect where a person is sort of left with a sense of in my in my deepest place i'm not a good enough for even myself i'm simply not good enough so the their role the response to that is let me act good enough let me pretend like i'm good enough let me falsify my existence because at least then people are going to like me at least then people are going to respond to me positively and that will for the moment make me feel whole for the moment it'll make me feel alive and that is of the most painful experiences we have because it's a sheer rejection of humanity i don't take too much time there's another idea there's just three that i wanted to focus on that number two i will never be loved if i were truly known now hold on to that think about it for a second you know to live with to live with a feeling an overall sense that if the other person that any person i'm in a relationship with especially close to relationships if this person truly knew who i was as a human being they would outright reject me which is a feeling that almost every individual i've worked with who really suffers with any form of trauma or rejection they actually live with that sense that i cannot be really known to this individual because i will ultimately be rejected there was a a case recently that we were working with at the clinic the oda the wellness center the wellness institute where there was a man a very tender gentle soul in his early 40s and he has a family he's working he's got a wonderful job that he has and he's a is a great member of our society very connected to hashem he's a beautiful person and in his childhood he had uh several instances several events of sexual abuse that he experienced by an older buffer in his yeshiva and he carried that secret he carried the weight of that aside from the pain of it for years and as he made his way into therapy it was recommended at a certain point that why not share this experience with your spouse let her know about your life let her know about who you are and what your experiences um and his initial reaction to that was are you crazy you know and that's actually when they called me into the session he actually requested he said we can we speak to you to akiva promon and let's let's let's let's see what he says about it i walk into the room and i'm like absolutely the greatest gift you could give yourself forget about your wife forget about the rest of your life the greatest gift you you could give to yourself is the gift of freedom where you no longer need to live a falsified existence one that is filled with silence and shame but rather you can now be free see what it's like and i remember a few weeks later they were scheduled his wife was scheduled to come into session with him and he he called me early in the morning he said i couldn't wait to get you know to have my wife come into the session so we could do this with the therapist and i did it myself and he was a 40 year old man who suffered virtually every day of his life and if i could describe to you the smile on his face he was like a little child who discovered sugar for the first time and to me the way i understood it was he opened up a door of hope he opened up a door of potential that he was no longer facing a future where forever i needed to live with a sense of i will never be ever loved if i was really known for who i am and now he he began to challenge that idea now the world of connection the world of of of the absence of loneliness started to open up for him and finally that i will secure love by my actions not by my actual being and i think as you can see all of these are kind of interrelated that for a person who's been sort of deprived of this sense of being and self that to them they internalize a message of i'm only going to be loved when i do things well when my actions the things that emanate from me are positive and seen as good that's when i'm going to be loved but the essence of who i am is something that's going to be rejected i think it's i hope it's okay if i say this and it's a little bit vulnerable to say especially in this forum but i guess that's why we're here you know i find it one of my missions is to share the stories of the people that have gifted me with their story and any opportunity i have to share their experience i see it as a positive one because there's nothing worse than than living in in with hurt and pain and then on on top of that you're living with loneliness so if there's a way that i could express their story i'd like to but this is not their story i guess it's our story it's a collective story there's a story of me that when you're talking about being believing that you're only going to be loved by your actions and not who you are as the person is a real result of this deprivation and really one of the greatest gifts i believe that probably the greatest gift aside from our children and aside from virtually everything else was i don't believe and this is an honest statement when i when i got married i did not believe that i would really be allowed to fully be myself i was still sort of held by this belief system that i carried which was so long as i do well so long as i behave well so long as i act well then i'm going to to be able to secure respect and and love from my wife um which is a belief i think that many of us live with and i think one of the greatest gifts that that my wife gave to me was a sense over time that that's not the case that's not my reality that that who i am and they're interested i can only give one story um that i remember like this is the shauna rashona story you have oh no i didn't review this by the way with my wife in advance this little piece but i probably should have but i remember that first year where um you know we talked about that first year and all the interesting things that emerged during that time but my wife uh she didn't catch me but i was sitting there reading um like a really thick book on the pathology of serial killers which is not something we discussed when we were dating that i have this strange facet with serial killers and why they choose to do things like that and i remember the feeling of like oh no what's going to happen now now my wife knows that i like exploring the world of serial killers like this is not going to go over very well and i remember she didn't like it no i don't think anyone would like the fact that you know someone's into serial killers but the fact was that she accepted it understood it appreciated it on some level even valued it valued it from the fact that like she's married to a curious person and he likes to understand different things and from that point of view um we're over time i could live with the sense that who i am as a person could be appreciated and valued and it's not only related to the idea that it has to be good um and i think all of this kind of boils down to the difference between bad behavior and bad person where most most of us people who've been raised with a sense of comfort and and and clarity they could walk around with a sense of i feel like a decent person i do bad things but i feel like a decent person as opposed to others they generally walk around with a sense that who i am is bad and they need to grapple with that and the difference between action and essence is very different and imagine a world and and this is where i want to get to the other part of this you know we talk about this element which is really dark and it's filled with a lot of suffering but i don't see it that way um some of the greatest people i know period are people who have gone through a lot in their lives some of the i i would imagine when we if we were all open enough to say let me talk about our own stories some of our personal greatness doesn't come from you know the things that we were born with that were strengths but rather the things that were fractured and a little bit broken and it a sense of mission emerged out of that darkness and gave us the ability to connect with others in that place there's a very common idea called the wounded healer when it comes to therapists basically suggesting that therapists become therapists not not out of absolute strength but because of a transformation of that pain into freedom where they're emerging as people who are looking for for freedom um but i i just i want to leave with this story that the um i spent the shabbos a few weeks ago with a group of people that experience immeasurable suffering it's hard to imagine what each one of the stories sounded like it was a a shabbaton for for parents who have children who are struggling with yiddish guide who are struggling with at-risk behavior and if you imagine a situ a scene like this several hundred parents coming together you'd almost imagine it to be one that is filled with despair and like just people who have been broken by life and just beat down by life and if i were to explain to you that the the sense of hope the sense of inspiration um i was sitting at a meal with a group of people and and expressing to them like the questions that they had the thoughts that they had their sense of mission in the world to to bring a little bit of healing and bring a little light into this world all as a result of their suffering and i said i met i said i asked the group i said do you think that any one of you would be engaging in life the way you are would be as passionate about life the way you are if you haven't gone through what you're going through and unanimously one after the next they all responded the same way that it is as a result of this suffering as a result of our pain that we are now in a place where we feel enlightened and we feel like a great sense of connection to ourselves and to others every last one of them also reported that yes our marriage was completely challenged during this time but we found each other and we found each other in a much more profound and a deeper and a more loving meaningful way and that is their description of the of how their suffering has been transformed into something that is profoundly positive and when we look at people who have made a significant difference in the world that have brought healing into the world almost always those individuals are people who arrived at that place not because they simply woke up one day and said i want to share my goodness with everybody else but rather they came from a much different background and they're saying i will i understand this and i have something to share and i'd like to give it over to everybody else and healing in essence comes from suffering so when we talk about connection and coming closer to one another uh the fact that we've been through things in our lives often provides a great vehicle to to express ourselves in a much more connected way so now i want to turn it over to the to my wife i'm gonna i'm i'm gonna read her bio if that's first key but that was a beautiful opening thank you keeping it under 10 minutes i really appreciate it and it was great and i just want to say italian is here from kashinashi which is an organization which we were there together for travis um i know as much as you try to like really give that over it's really hard to give up on words what what the feeling is with those people it's a different different level and um if anybody is experiencing going through anything please reach out the question we love him he's there and um let's read back to tomorrow prominent society's bio yeah dr tamar prominent is a licensed clinical psychologist who's been working primarily with women in couples framed within the torah text and ashwagandha dr broman also lectures on various topics including attachment and child raising marriage and emotional regulation and self-actual actualization she also runs topic-focused series such as enhanced marriage mindful dating and emotional regulation these groups provided women with support and perspective on issues related to relationships and dealing with internal external structure discretions dr permanent also teaches kalos as an opportunity to connect and give over spiritual and psychological viewpoint on marriage spirituality intellectually curious but not observant woman as well i just want to say one thing before she starts dr tamara does not usually speak to men but she gracefully after being asked multiple times besides she will open the form so that's why the floor is yours thank you very much it's such an opportunity to give over like my husband said from the from the stories and from the experiences that we've had and to be able to to share it in such a beautiful form for sure whatever happens here in this forum would not have happened without it so something new is happening here and that is it's powerful to be part and humbling to be part of that and i think the all the people behind the scenes and on the scenes too to um have created this possibility and it is like you had said um a real honor to present alongside my husband and i just want to tell you that sometimes when my husband starts to say us like something about a at a shabbos table and and one of the kids will ask who who is that who is who is that and then another kid will say oh it's another beautiful man so what my husband says he really means he actually really loves the people he works with and i understand it because so do i i really do love the people i get to work with i was actually thinking about when you were saying that um the opportunity of being able to share yourself and be known to the other in a marriage and i was wondering if people may have thought in the room well you have to get lucky for that you know you have to get lucky and marry the right person for that right and it happens to be that this was what i did my dissertation on when i was in grad school um the question was what contributes to marital satisfaction you know it had all these little details x amount of years after marriage with this many kids only because you have that's what you have to do with research it has to be directive in order for it to um to be practical and real and that was one of my questions is those that had a higher level of happiness is it because they felt that they were lucky with who they married or is it because they feel that they had something to do with what's happening in their relationship and the answer which almost is counterintuitive but if you really think about it is actually what makes sense is that those that had a higher level of marital satisfaction were those that believed that they had something to do with it that they actually are the ones that have an impact on that marriage not that they just got lucky with who they married that is basically the main point of what the main angle you know the main angle of what i wanted to bring bring in today i work only with women and couples and what i find is when a woman comes into the office and she sits in front of me sometimes there is a pain that she wants healing from some relief that she's seeking but most of the time the the basic language is how do i do what i'm already doing better i feel stuck women are hard-working creatures and i know so are men this is not about that but women work hard on their relationships they are relational very much so so are men but women have a very relational language i i almost never have a first session with a woman that doesn't talk about her husband her child her mother her sister her friend all within the same 50 minutes but what brings a woman into the office a lot of the times is a sense of all of these relationships really matter to me and intellectually i know how to what the right thing is i go to the lectures i listen i read the books i i know i could tell you i could tell you and i believe them they do they do know but i feel stuck i don't feel like i'm moving i don't feel like you know it depends on where they're at in their development they'll either either say i don't know how to make my husband different or i don't know how to be a better wife that's a little bit of a further along you save 20 sessions right there if you could say i don't know how to be a better wife you've saved yourself a lot of time and money um than to say i don't know how to make my husband better or i don't i feel disempowered with my kids you know again either it's my kids i don't know why my kids are so crazy my kids are extra crazy my kids are extra hard or i feel disempowered as a mother i don't know how to be how to be the mother i want to be i feel terrible about my mother 90 of the time and also with emotions i i could tell you that if i were to ask every woman in her first session like do you want to just get rid of all your emotions i feel like most of them would say yes uh my emotions get me into trouble i have a hard time i make mistakes because of them i am to this i'm too sensitive i'm too it's i'm too something i i don't have a handle on it so you know one of the things that you know as you're speaking about seeing the the power and the other person i know that if i'm sitting in front of somebody and i don't like them and i don't trust that they could be they could be in a better place then i'll give it another session sometime sometimes i'm close so consult to see what's going on there but i won't be able thankfully this doesn't happen a lot at all because people are powerful and people are beautiful and it's most of the time pretty easy to see that but if you trust that they have a self that's there that is what they're seeking then i won't be able to help them get there so a huge part is in trusting and believing and in the individual connecting to that higher self that's already inside her but there's a huge piece here sometimes they will say oh i know i'm i could be better but that i know i can be better sometimes haunts them it's like what screams at them as they are screaming at their kid oh you know you could be better it's what screams at them as they say that line to their husband that they regret 20 seconds later that's that higher self doesn't help them often but haunts them and shames them and doesn't end up they don't end up working well together you know one of my favorites for him to learn is ramosa weinberger's um safari manchuva um where he talks about rav cook's approach to chuva and i um i'm sure there are many people in this room they're beyond more learned than i am but if i may quote uh if i may just reference a piece that part of what i understand is rav cook's approach to chuba is recognizing every tiny movement that you make as a person recognizing and stopping there is a pause that he talks about and internalizing that change and then moving on to the next step women have a very hard time with this they just have this part and then the part that could they could be later on but anything in between is very hard to internalize so a lot of what happens in therapy is the women in front of me becoming more empowered and aware of themselves of who they are of having a self that already has impact they don't realize the impact they already have and number two that they can make changes and they can have a movement and that they recognize that movement often i feel like i'm like just the witness to their movements i pause and i say just last week you were talking about that you can't sit in front of your son and have a five minute conversation you took him out to dinner and you sat together with him for an hour and it's like oh but that's nothing again that's that voice that's like oh you could do better than that you could you should do this every week with him but it's like i end up being that witness of like that is something let's pause let's internalize so it's almost this emergence of the self where they stop talking about everybody else and how they're victim to their adolescent child and their victim to their not listening husband and they become a self and i myself that is a growing self a self that has impact already i remember in one of like it's sometimes those last three seconds of a session you know uh when one of my clients was just saying can you just quickly give me a referral for my son you know this and this like as she's walking out i know you already got buzzed in by not by your next client and and then i you know a lot of times in those moments it's hard to decide what to do but i said why don't you talk to him this week until we think about a referral and she said what do you mean i said you know in the five minutes that you can give him as a mother are a lot more powerful many times you know there are exceptions then the 20 hours that he can get from any therapist and i remember she just paused and she was just crying on her way out and she says like oh i have impact i am a mother what i do has an impact so i would say that a lot of the a lot of the movements towards happiness with the women and the couples that i work with is in women developing a relationship with themselves and having more of a self in the room and the more of a and of course you need support to do this you need support because having a self and changing that self hurts because change hurts even change robertson heller gottlieb who is my teacher um she always says even good change hurts because shedding parts of us that belong to us that even we don't want anymore it hurts to shed them so of course you need support and you need love you need affirmation but um you need a self and it's this emergence of growing into a self and learning how to be alone and learning how to be a person that helps the women eventually be better in relationships and have better connections the more you know how to be alone the less lonely you will be the more you know and you're not afraid of being with yourself the better you'll be for the other if you can't ever be with your own self how are you ever going to be there for your spouse if you you know as a mother beginning of mothering is complete attachment you are completely enough for the baby you have to do nothing other than your baby just needs you as a mother basically you are enough but as your child grows you become less and less enough and you feel less and less enough and the separation becomes you know moves from physical to emotional to spiritual there's more and more team tsum that the person has to do to create room for the other to grow that hurts if you don't have a self that can soothe the self that can stand on your own feet you will use your child to soothe the hurt of your separation and you will limit the way that your child can grow so it is this it is this um connection to self and emergence of self that crea that makes you able to create connections and have happiness and one piece i just want to end with um is that like you were saying this is something that you know people say time heals and i think obviously to some degree time does heal there's the shiva process and the mourning process that there is in in um in the torah and but time doesn't it's not only time that heals you know it's sometimes if you're angry and you know they say take five minutes but you can come back after those five minutes if you don't use them correctly and be angrier if you indulge in your angry thoughts and i can't believe he did this and his mother and this then you will come back angrier it's you need to seek this healing you need to seek this these connections this growth this shedding of parts that are in the way of you and your children you and your spouse your unhappiness and it could be very daunting you could say like i really don't feel like i can get there i remember when i started trauma work i was extremely afraid to do it and rightfully so i understood the fragility of that i understood how you know i'm entering spaces that are that are really sacred and if i messed up it's like a real first of all loss of opportunity and i could create more hurt it's i'm just the person i i was very afraid very afraid and i remember we were sitting outside on these two folding chairs with robertson heller at the time robertson gotley right now and i told this to rabbits and heller i said i was in hell i feel very small i feel very small to do this trauma work and the conscious part of me um even i was able to be somewhat honest with myself and for sure there were layers of the unconscious part of me wanted to hear her say but i know you for many years tomorrow i know you for 20 years you're great you're going to do great you're going to be a great trauma therapist you are not small except she said the exact opposite she said you are very small you're just the size you need to be in order to do this work the minute you start to think that this is about you is the time that you take a step back and that has been the lens that has taught me how to has grounded me in how to do work i can tell you that it doesn't make sense a lot of times why the healing happens someone can come in and they are a victim they are real victims to attachment trauma parental trauma to sexual trauma to uh to marital trauma to all kinds of traumas they're real victims but i can tell you that someone can be a victim and be victimized but no happy person remains a victim a happy person is one that moves outside towards moving outside of victimhome into empowerment but how does it happen and i can tell you that i have learned this throughout the years and like you were saying that the people are brave the healing is within them and just like a surgeon probably can't explain why you put a knife to something and something is removed and then the person then lives for another 20 years you could explain it but it doesn't you can explain it in terms of medicine but it doesn't actually it doesn't actually express how life continues psychology doesn't cause healing psychology explains healing hashem causes the healing we can explain healing with the language of psychology but psychology is not what accounts for the healing the healing is the space between the therapist and the person and within that person and hashem does the healing and i know i work with many women of different spectrums of their relationship with hashem but i can tell you that i've never never met one that doesn't have a relationship with hashem on some level no matter what her external expression of that is so that's just something i want to give over to you is that as impossible as it seems to our even psychological minds it will remain impossible to us that's not our job to make it possible our job is to move towards we need to move towards that healing we need to seek the connections we need to seek them because it's comfortable to remain the same and not change but that the healing ultimately is not from within us it's from it comes towards us um thank you so much for this for this opportunity and we're open to questions okay um uh thank you very much it was very powerful just slipped off he'll be back in a few minutes and when he comes back we will take a poll that we prepared to see the audience some perspective so do i have the questions when it comes back but for now accura doctor and doctor if you're ready for a question um let me read to you the first question that we got so i've been doing soul searching for a while and read many books i know the concepts but i still seem to have difficulty feeling happy with myself all my relationships are pretty much superficial not really deep connections i don't have deep connections what can i do where can i start so you already started beautiful you're ready started i uh i just want to pick up on one thing that the questioner was just mentioning you know healing and and process is not about the mind it's not about the intellect it's very possible freud speaks about the intellect being of the most profound defense mechanisms that we have access to all together most of the time we get lost in our intellect our intellect is profoundly removed from our soul from our spirit from our emotion and when you start attempting to approach healing from an intellectual perspective which is through knowledge and let me if i only figure this out if i only somehow discover the thing you know there was a wonderful uh an analyst in new york her name was lillian rubin short a wonderful book uh called the man with a beautiful voice she wrote several books but this one book i really appreciated of hers and and she was speaking about the the experience of healing and he said that that that people spend lots and lots of time trying to access these aha moments in therapy and i know for myself i'll show you in my class the other day like remembering the first time that a client cried in my office and how like i was in i was in the moment and i was with this individual and i cried alongside this individual but there was another part of me that was far removed from the room which was super super excited by the fact that someone was crying in my office i was like i can't believe this is happening like you kind of you see this you know this is what they talk about that there's this powerful emotional moment that's taking place in this space uh but when we talk about like the emotions of therapy healing doesn't come from the mind healing comes from connection with others by attempting to resolve some of the disconnect that we've that have that's emerged as a result of the pain that we've experienced um so books are wonderful and i'd keep reading them but the follow-up statement of i know what's going on but all my relationships are superficial the healing will come from elevating those relationships from a superficial level to a meaningful level and that requires vulnerability that requires honesty that requires risk and we can never forget the fact that the definition of vulnerability it it includes risk it's not vulnerable if it's safe it's not vulnerable if you can't get hurt and what it sounds like in this question is here's an individual who is looking for healing and connection all the while remaining very safe and the only way to do this work is to abandon our safety and to take a leap of faith into the unknown with the hope and again i wouldn't recommend doing this if you don't really trust the individual that you're doing it with but with the hope that the other will hold us and contain us and the presence of hashem and the grace of hashem will make its way into that space so we could begin to heal but it doesn't come from the mind it comes from a different part of our being and that requires a great great deal of risk just to make it more practical you're saying the person should close the box enough information now now what should he do like baby steps where should he start well if you could imagine for a moment um a superficial relationship what does that really mean it means that i'm present in the room and i'm talking to another person and they're responding to me but i'm not speaking to them from a meaningful part of myself i'm speaking to them from what i believe to be the part that they would like to hear that they would like to receive about me and we're sort of playing all these games with what does this person really want and if we like them we want to satisfy them so instead of doing that take a moment uh jordan peterson when he is he was discussing this idea he's a bit of a controversial psychologist says some wonderful things some other things a little off the beaten path but he was speaking about this notion called congruence which means like his sense of alignment with oneself and he was saying that that the to take a moment if we were to all do this exercise with ourselves that to take a pause before we actually open our mouths and respond to something and really ask ourselves how do i actually feel in this moment not how do i really believe i'm supposed to say what other people would like me to say in this moment but how do i actually feel about myself and that's an authentic space each one of us have that space within us if this person were to start communicating from that place to the other they stand a chance at actual actually experiencing connection as opposed to this very superficial sense of being so share yourself your genuine self not the the fraudulent self that you've created over time in order to feel more comfortable with your being and it could be a piece of it it doesn't have to be your full self you know vulnerability can be in steps you know it needs to be some movement beyond that superficial but it doesn't have to be completely you know you could just take a step towards the vulnerability just a bit more like pick up the phone and call your daughter and ask her about like a real question like oh who is your favorite who's your what's your favorite class or share a story about something that happened to you in the past um you know it's you know like it has to come from that place of ruach you know the the shama the nephesh and the ruach is where the change is where that's where the emotions are change can only occur if we go through a space of ruach and it could be a step right yes it doesn't have to be fully yeah and it does come with some caution like we need to be cautious i had a client he said to me he said the worst recommendation you ever gave to me was to be vulnerable with my spouse yeah and this guy was right he was right and i was wrong i was wrong because he was not yet in a place within his relationship where he knew how to be vulnerable and he knew how to receive what the reaction might be if it wasn't perfect in his own mind so he dove into something that he was not yet ready to do and i didn't prevent him from doing that i didn't give him that that very wise degree of warning which is if you're gonna attempt to connect with people when you've been disconnected for so many years take it slow don't just jump in you're gonna get hurt okay i'm back everybody hears me knocking we're good yep okay let's take the poll and then we have a bunch of questions let me just tell you a lot of questions came in a lot about marriage and dating and a lot of questions and trauma and stuff so deal with that we have a lot of blog questions pending let's launch a poll just to get everyone's up and give the promos two minutes to take a drink watch it okay everybody can't you see it on your screen can answer these two questions just to get appealing what do you feel is the most important character trait the most important character trait in a spouse a vulnerability be honest c compassionate or d flexible she was one of those don't worry we're not going to show it to anybody i'm just going to email your therapist right away and option two question two do you think most people suffer from some form of trauma yes no almost all people have some form of trauma so yes the difference between yes and some almost all people is 100 versus 98 that's the really difference okay so please uh select one of those options and then we'll share it with everybody to pronounce the good false it's so cool to watch like in life and like as it's happening you you could actually they okay five four three two one okay let's share it can i read the answers out loud share results okay what do you feel is the most important character trait in a spouse fourteen percent of people felt its vulnerability thirty five percent of people this is the winner feels honest to be honest with your spouse 33 is compassionate runner-up and only felt to be flexible is the most important important character trait second question do you think most people suffer from some form of trauma the winning answer dr prom obviously it's you know people here sunday night right 45 of people say yes so everybody feels most people here feel that most people suffer from some form of trauma 15 say no and 40 say almost all people so basically it's 40 plus 45 85 percent of people feel that we all have trauma so that's why we're here tonight okay so let's do the live question first let's do live first okay we're gonna do first a live question okay [Music] hi kaiser yeah i just have to warn you i got fireworks all over the place yeah yeah you're gonna hear a lot of boom you know whatever you know i've been listening i'm just gaining a lot from the pearl what they've been saying um you know it took me a while to really develop a sense of self after my own very pretty much horrible childhood and i'm still working on certain issues however i i sometimes feel like i'm i'm not i'm not from birth i come into you know i came in later and i i don't always think this way these same way these people do i maybe haven't grown up with a lot of more sinister more cynical environments so sometimes i feel i can't always put on a smiley face i am trying to work on positivity but i don't always see the positive in something um you know i could give a case to point that today interestingly i had to pay a ship a call and there was a lively discussion going on apparently the person uh was mourning her son who was severely autistic so a bunch of the women there apparently were sharing stories their own kids with special needs one of them looked like she was on the verge of a breakdown she had a son who was violent and she's trying to find a place for a a placement for him and i you know i started talking to her we really related maybe i i am felt yeah maybe i was empathetic but but i felt that this was the one person that wasn't i don't see sand when about life experiences i admire people for their resiliency and their you know their their outlook but you know i i i know there are people who have it worse in life than i but i sometimes feel i i just can't put on a happy face or you know some people that their community that's sort of judgmental that if you're you know if you're not sweet innocent or come across that way then you know then you know there's there's something spiritually wrong with you and so i i don't i i don't know if there are people who do think the same way as i about you know i am you know sarah if yeah it sounds to me you're very brave for trying to simply be yourself um you're very brave for saying this is really how i experience the world and this is how i see the world and sometimes it's not always so beautiful and so bright and so filled with with joy just hardship and and pain and it sounds like you have the courage to not run from that and to embrace that and be with it and permit yourself to do that obviously for for your own sake not for other people's sake but for your own sake it's always good to try to find the goodness in whatever the world has to offer the moments of peace the moments of comfort the moments of connection the moments of joy but it sounds to me and i want you to know you're not alone you're really not alone there are days where i walk around feeling feeling dark and feeling alone and that's a part of being alive and that's a part of being a part of this this universe and you're entitled to that but it's hard to hear that you're hurting in that type of way and i hope that you continue to pursue comfort and not only choose to stay in a space and i think there is you know there are elements of choice that exist in this space i just want to recommend a book based on what you're saying it's certainly one of my wife's favorite books a book called the choice by uh doc eager e-g-a-r-e-g-a-r-e-d-e-r e-g-e-r dr edith eager um called the choice which i think is something based on your question i think you'd enjoy that book and uh we would love to hear from you after you finish reading it and i want to tell you that in a way because you didn't have a superficial happy face on you were able to connect to another person who didn't have a superficial happy face on and in in a way in that place of of lack of superficiality in that place of sadness you found connection and another person found connection so in a sense that's where the light is in that dark story of yours there is connection even in what you shared with us today beautiful let's go to the next live question you're on uh hi dr perlman i really want to thank you for introduction it's kind of 75 already answered my question basically i i think even most people in the world have gone through situations either i was taken advantage of it's say abused um you know people did things and got away with it and obviously these feelings keep on haunting me sometimes especially when i'm in my very happy moments and it stirs up my happiness and i want to release it but her voice inside me tells me how can you let this person get away i mean how could this person get scot-free from what the bad doings that he did and obviously i can't take any revenge both holocally and you know circumstances don't allow and just inside my head wants something negative to happen to those people so i could just feel calm down but i know that that's not a healthy approach and i want to emotionally release myself from these negative feelings so i could just focus on my happy part of myself and you know i don't know how to do it because this voice stops me from doing it how are you with the situation um it's very brave of you and to speak about and i want you to know i did not hear a single word of what you said or even syllable that sounded remotely unhealthy to me you know i spend my day listening to people that are seeing the world through very unhealthy means and what you just shared with all of us did not at all sound unhealthy it sounded like you're still hurting by the fact that there's a person out there that their justice was not served the possibility that maybe they're hurting somebody else and it shows up in these moments where you're in a sense of joy and a sense of relief that this part is still there with you it's still a part of who you are as a person um and i and i know i'm going to say something that's going to be hard to digest that the one thing i would ask is that you sit with it for a little bit and then and then feel free to reach out to talk about it further but this experience that you had defines who you are as a person and what you're talking about is attempting to shed something that is a defining characteristic of who you are as a human being your sensitivities your sensibilities your sense of compassion your sense of justice which are all beautiful qualities and traits have emerged from of the darkest places in the world and the notion or the desire to shed that part of your being you'd also be losing out on many other parts um so this is instead of trying to run away possibly lean in and say teach me something tell me something about myself tell me about how i could take my experience and bring it into the world and possibly provide some healing and comfort to another who's lost or or think about the own elements in your own life that have been through some very dark ways um enhanced by this experience even though it's a hard thing to sit with this reality but i'm hoping because i didn't hear anything and i'm i'm listening as carefully as i can i didn't hear anything that you said that sounded unhealthy that's something that you needed to shed you're talking about grieving and loss and mourning and that's the process but these are experiences that we don't simply move away from we don't simply forget we attempt integrate we attempt to have them find some what we meaning making in our lives so then it has a place for it to be expressed that if you could take what you've been through the suffering in your world and potentially develop a greater sense of self and live in a in a more alive form of way then it's already accomplished something that's positive from the darkest places this light has emerged and i'd love for you just to spend a moment with that thought and see where it takes you but obviously the pain is still very very present but the fact that you want this person to suffer the fact that you want justice to play out um i fully join you in that and if you uh point me the right direction i'll join you in this fight um whatever we can justice into the world okay let's go to the next question i'm gonna focus that back on tomorrow since uh shoulder biases are a big thing if there are so many people struggling in the marriages today there must be like a running theme we are missing that we could be working on more years than tomorrow what would what would that be that's that's a good question and i've been taught a lot about marriage uh by being in a marriage thank god and also by working with a lot of women and couples that are in marriages you know one of my favorite images that come to mind when it comes to a marriage is something i learned in a in a safer by um mrs gallant uh stages of spiritual growth if if if you like what this sounds like get your hands on that book it's a great it's a great safer she quotes her of hutler's stages of um growth with hassan and emmett and gura and she talks about a navi um um in yeskel where it talks about um you know i don't understand this so well again but it's it i understand it enough a lot of times when i learn something in torah when i have access to it in whatever way i can all the things that the clients have taught me and life has taught me kind of comes together in this in this kind of perfect way that no no other forum can do and and i read tons of psychology and i'm going to continue to and i read tons of and i go to trainings and i'm going to continue to but this was one of these things that captured it for me it was talking about it talks about the divine chariots and there is this language of ratsavashav that these chariots where would run towards hashem and now in the divine worlds they would run towards hashem and desire to connect to hashem right so they are running not just walking running wanting that connection and then the shove and then they lean back they they kind of go backwards a little bit and that to me isn't just a parallel to our relationship with hashem but also parallel to what happens a lot in marriage a marriage in a way is tension between wanting action we run towards this connection most of the time people get married because they chose to be married to the people they married they run towards it it doesn't happen at them it's not thrown at them they don't fall into it they actively walk run towards it towards the very person that they bring into the room to me either actively or not actively right and then something happens where they retreat back there is this fear what's the fear the fear with the chariots is that we can get close to hashem but if we get too close you get consumed all you have is closeness and you lose your individuality and that's the that's the tension in a marriage it's the tension between closeness and a retaining of self if i let go of this and i connect to my spouse you know he wants he wants uh this is what he wants for me this is what it requires for me to be there he wants me to serve dinner this way to run a shabbos home this way to be at this kind of a mother to say this to him to be okay with this about his family you hold on to something we're not trying to be stubborn for no reason we're holding on to some part that feels essential to us and if we lose that part we lose ourselves in fact they're relationships like that that's why there's a word called the measurement it's a misunderstood word but it exists nevertheless there is a difference between a measurement and connection a connection is a connection between two separate selves a measurement is a loss of the self in the connection so what would i say is the running theme i would say there are two running themes the two running themes are some lack of balance within this tension between self and closeness in for example um you know unfortunately at all times i have a couple of most of the time when when a woman walks into my office or a couple walks into my office my objective is you know help them stay together and you know help this work a lot of times i reach out to rabbanum about this to help me clarify that this tension of the self being preserved and connection happening should work well ideally right ideally you you hashem has have has us get married i think partly so that we can become better selves we actually shed parts of us if if you were shamed as a child in the way that you were raised and then you end up having a shaming language in the way that you talk to people and that really bothers your spouse then you shedding that part of you is good for you you become a better self but you would never do this if you weren't married because you wouldn't have to do this uncomfortable work of doing things differently you shed the shaming part so that you connect better and the reason that you shed it because you want to connect better because you love the other and you want connection but a lot of times what ends up happening is the number one one mistake this is the most prevalent mistake is that i think people come into a relationship thinking that they don't need to change they think they come in and they're already we don't get married at 120 then we'd have like one day to be married we come in very very on unprocessed on whole and we need the marriage to make us more whole and i think a lot of the a lot of resistance is the fear to change and the resistance to the idea that we need to change so i think that you know you said the word choice when you were speaking to that to that beautiful woman and about about choosing to seek the happiness the connection in a marriage especially isn't necessarily natural it's the only relationship in a way that has an active choice in it you can unchoose your specs you can't un-choose your child even if in some ways you you do that in other ways you can literally unchoose your spouse so choice is a central part of a powerful marriage and the choice is to say i will choose connection at the expense of the loss of parts of me i am choosing connection now the second mistake and i have to say this part because it's too unsafe to not say it what if the only way you can connect you have to shed parts of you that will cause you harm or will you pain that will essentially will kind of take away the essence of who you are remember every time i call a rob and i ask a question he doesn't just you know this happens to me with david cohen for example i called him and i asked him a question where he's given me a hectare about a specific issue with a lot of the collars that i work with so i thought here he's going to give me another heter it was a husband that was demanding and a wife that didn't want to didn't want to shed that part of her spiritual self it was about a spiritual demand and had to do with her emotional and spiritual self and i asked the rav can the torah be flexible to make this couple have more shalom bias than rav david khon he says to me dr prominent quote unquote right he said do you want me to turn the torah upside down so this husband can continue to abuse his wife this is what he said to me he said you help her get out because the way that she is he's asking for connection she has to not shed parts of her that are in the way of her better self but to shed her to shed her essence to shed who he is who she is so i would say that's the second less common but also a second theme is when a person doesn't have like i was talking earlier a sense of what's essential to her or him and what's not essential and doesn't know what parts to hold on to and what parts to let go of and ends up doing that the wrong way and ends up being in a relationship that's rigid and controlling and unfortunately abusive so i would say those two themes is not choosing connection and therefore not being willing to shed parts of us that we shouldn't have that are in the way of our love and our giving and are being better spouses and two not having a sense of what your essence is and enough of a self-love to hold on to it wow okay let's go to another live question all right thank you so much i wanted to ask two questions number one does a person who went through complex trauma as opposed to single event trauma do they need therapy in order to heal or can they heal on the basis of self-awareness muscle casitas the things that you've been speaking out speaking about that's question one and question two both of you in your presentation use the word pause and the necessity to pause how can we train ourselves to pause and reflect as opposed to being reactive thank you so much by the way thank you very much you know uh our our our listeners are very learned because we had a whole session on complex drama i'm like i'm waiting for this i'm nervous no simple questions um i uh okay i just first of all i want to pause for a second um only because we should and and let's do that together for a moment and i think it's uncomfortable even my suggestion of saying let's pause for a moment but i think that if we could do it collectively then maybe we could demonstrate but also provide provide freedom to say it's okay to do such a thing so i'm gonna i'm gonna pause for a moment and just hold on to that thought and that question because this is what i would do if we were sitting in my office we would take that question and just be quiet for the next 10 minutes and say okay let let something natural simply emerge but we don't have that time i'm not gonna i'm gonna get in trouble for the 10 minutes but uh but just for i i hope you're hearing what i'm saying about the pause there's nothing we could do but simply practice pausing um and permit a voice to to naturally emerge and i think when we find that when trained to respond so quickly and intuitively we're we're basically sending a message to ourselves that we're not inherently trustworthy people that we could lean in on who we are we're primarily focused on responding and being reactive to others um so learning to pause is learning to also respect ourselves um and and and it's a muscle that we need to develop and just to go back to your first question i'd love to hear also my wife has to say about this um when you're talking about ways to heal like i see i love therapy i never actually intended on becoming a therapist that wasn't my plan when i was in school they asked like what would you like to be doing and my response was i'd like to sit in office with bean bags and smoke hookah with kids who were going off the daira that was my actual response and i actually drew a picture of what my my office would ultimately look like and then part of the learning process is you start doing therapy in a clinic and i started therapy and fell in love with it and and it has never really ended since then but to me therapy is a tool to help others heal and that's all it is it's a tool the objective feeling and i think that if and i've done this many times and several many times fine comes in and i i could take the tihillam that i have in my office which is i have i have more of it to him than i have of of my other secular books and start reading about the experience of david and what his life was like and what his story was and david malek went through virtually every emotion we could ever imagine he went through rage and doubt and joy and healing and fear and a sense of abandonment it's all there and so i i do believe wholeheartedly that if we read to hillary with an open heart and an open mind then we could heal simply by doing that the same way we can by learning muslim about casinos and engaging in these other ways of enlightening ourselves there are obviously it's a wonderful tool and many of us could tap into it but to presume that therapy is the only way that we could heal i think is a very limited perspective um and not only that but even if you're in therapy we should still be utilizing these tools that we have because they give us a very broad perspective on what healing ultimately looks like so therapy is a great tool but that doesn't mean it's for everyone it doesn't mean it's for everyone at all times it means if you're willing classic example you have a person who everyone else in that person's life says that this individual should go to therapy and the only person who does not want to go to therapy is the individual himself or herself they just don't want to go sending that person to therapy is gonna you know produce very very limited results because they're simply not interested so therapy is a great tool if you're ready if it's the right person if you're in the right state of mind if you're really truly willing to work if you're surrounded by the right type of people to support you in that journey there's so many variables that make for a successful therapy altogether but but therapy is a beautiful thing but to presume that it's the only way to heal i think is a gross misrepresentation of what healing looks like all together find a mountain take a guitar and sing to us that's healing in its own right okay dr perlman and i would you know i was thinking i was thinking that yeah i was thinking that um exactly what you were saying like that there's so many ways to heal but a lot of times i find if the people around us that are close to us like our spouse our children are telling us that there are some some way that we're hurting them and there's then sometimes needs to be asked why would i not do something you know sometimes the people around us shouldn't be why would i not do something that can maybe be maybe bring more healing listen if anyone in our lives is recommending that we go to therapy we should probably listen to them they're probably on to something um it probably means that we're hurting them too and they don't know how to say that instead they say you look like you're hurting so you should get some help instead of saying please stop hurting me um so someone recommends as an adult and they seem grounded enough please go to therapy and take them up on it it's a nice thing therapy at the end of the day guys is two human beings sitting in a room having a conversation there's nothing profoundly mysterious about it it's honest it's real it's meaningful it's vulnerable but that's all it is okay let's go to the next live question you're on hi hi my name is bonnie um hi everybody thank you so much for this zoom meeting and i just want to ask a question about trauma from uh past answer ancestry um is there anything different that you do for trauma in our living like in our life as opposed to passed down trauma from ancestors meaning like we we have so many um you know ancestors that were in the holocaust i've been doing a lot of research on my uh ancestors and i had a great grandmother who was beaten to death in poland and i never knew about that but i just found out about it so yeah i'm just throwing out that question because i believe that we carry some of that trauma with us in our lives today you know something that as you're speaking um reminds me of a quote i read in moshe shapiro's book on the parsha where he he said we are leavers of egypt we are we are a people that were in egypt but we are leavers of egypt at all times you know we are people that are defined by yeti atmos rhyme so you know you have it closer to you even because you know particularly about your your great grandmother that um and and the horrific way that her life was taken and in a way we all our ancestry has trauma we you know are we are defined by having come you know yet it's trying and me trying i mean it's rhyme isn't is an ultimate trauma in many ways right our families were disrupted our sense of power and and um sense of we were slaves we didn't have our own power and in in you know like like my husband was saying that that is not something to run away from that's something to lean into that we are leavers of egypt right uh that we are we're leavers of trauma um and you know i would kind of go along with what you had said about what about that can mean something to you not in a way of of course through the pain and that's something that i always think about that we first talked about avadhi mainu and only then we talk about you know we would talk about our slavery and only then we talk about freedom we have to be in the pain of it first but what does that mean to you um and who can you what does that mean to you like that you're you know in a way your great-grandmother died for the sake of for the sake of hashem because she was a jew um and that she endured that kind of pain like what what in your life can you can you take in from that and continue to live perpetuating her life and you you survived here you are what's that what are the chances of that so that's the way that i would approach that what do you think yeah i think uh you know there's a few ways just in a little bit of a different direction there are a few ways to really look at um the lesser direction by the way you know you heard the right answer i'm gonna i'm gonna give a lesser answer but the when you think about trauma there are few ways they have you have what we call intergenerational studies on trauma and where it ultimately comes from uh but but one you could say it's genetic that's trauma is somehow passed down in our genetic pool and makes its way into the next generation or we could look at it from another vein which is more elemental which is that when a person is raised by an individual who themselves have been traumatized by something that they are experiencing the residual effects of that they're directly affected by it and it's something that we need to know that trauma will live on forever unless a brave soul stands up and says enough die it's got to end it's got to stop that's what happens with trauma because the traumatized parent traumatizes their child who then in turn does the same to the next generation so it becomes now your journey of saying there's been suffering in my genetic pool my family has suffered and what am i doing in this moment to create an end to that so this way that for for the future of who i am as a person who has a family that there's going to be a greater chance at making way through this world with a little bit less it doesn't have to be a profound you know shut the whole thing down but with a little less suffering um and and i hope that and i could tell even just by your expression that that's something that you're striving for and something that means a lot to you and uh that not only gives me hope but i imagine it gives everyone else hope as they're observing you're just taking in your role in the world which is to create a safer space wow beautiful i just want to say dr proman i think like there was like 700 people so far i mean at one point like 350 they're more prominent i see all the problems over here got real sounded like a whole the homeless model i'm sitting here i can't tell you what this is like just just for me for us i have my my brothers here i have my uh my son he seemed to have run but to even even present in front of uh you know my child uh it's just this this environment just ask my question i don't let him i'm just letting it off let's go next live question you're on anybody i love you guys hi i have a question about you know both of you mentioned about being vulnerable um with spouses and with um other um you know just to bring happiness and connection to others i'm wondering what you have to say about um you know when it comes to narcissistic or abusive spouses and how the vulnerability can sometimes be turned against you um how do you work with that um well you were speaking about this before yeah you know as um as you said that like i have a pain of pain right first i just want to say that that that hurts um having someone that vulnerability is unsafe with is painful um you know i don't feel like my shoulders are broad enough right now to give an answer overall what do you do in a in a situation like that right it's going to be one of those annoying it depends on situation um responses but one of the things that you know i like hearing and sometimes i like saying is that your life is the only one you can live and you you can make a choice as a wife as to who you are and what what you are willing and wanting to work with um you know even when i'm working with somebody that i sometimes feel like i want to save them like this feeling like i just want to grab her and like move her out of her marriage like if even if i could do it like just just like that like without any process just want to so badly just do that because she's hurting and she's being mistreated all the time and it's and it's like i just wanna scream like get out just get out like you don't have to do this to yourself i know that you know i i have different process with that sometimes i allow myself to say that at some point if i have a relationship enough with the person but i know that ultimately she needs to feel empowered in whatever decision she makes because even me quote unquote saving her is even me doing something good for her so to speak right maybe it's still she is not the one that's in charge of that she already feels not in charge in her relationship ultimately what what my goal is and what i dive in for is that she gets to a place where she can make a choice that she has enough of herself to really make a choice that's not my choice to make but it's my my my my mission my what i try to do is to help her have a have a choice and then to make one you know i remember somebody that came in from unfortunately a relationship that you know i have just as much as much as of a negative reaction to an abusive relationship as i have to using the language abusive in a non-abusive relationship so i i don't jump to this word easily and in fact when i'm working with a couple and then one of them says some thing like and he abuses i pause and i said i really take that word very seriously let's let's see what's happening here in the same way i would pause if something that was happening that was hurt hurtful and wrong wronging somebody in a you know significant way um so the the i remember asking like what brought you in here like you know you've been in this marriage for 10 years and here you are in the office now and she said you know i heard you in a lecture i said okay so but what about the lecture like what what was it and she said you spoke about that there is such a thing as having a self outside of the marriage and then i realized wait a second do i have one do i exist outside of this marriage so a lot of times my goal in a relationship like that is to help the woman find that self outside of the marriage first and that for that self to make a decision from that place of power whether or not she wants to be in such a relationship that's what i would say yeah but there are people who are abusive and it's something we need to know and i don't think there's anything more painful than trying as hard as you can while in an abusive relationship to make it work yes because you've totally like erased yourself as a human being to try to make something work with right intentions with a sense of a failure and that's got a profound amount of pain because it erases self and it also erases the hope that maybe i could do this again yes and my only hope is that we we would take a fresh look at it and say this was a really terrible situation and and listen to the lectures that people were giving on on divorce and trying to recreate something where that's not doesn't have to remain the narrative for the rest of one's life it happened people end up in very abusive relationships and thankfully many of them later end up in relationships that are anything but that yes um but being vulnerable with someone who's abusive is a profound amount of pain go to the next live question okay you're on is that me yeah that's you okay fine hi so i'm actually in in children for a while now and um so i was miraculous to recently have a rebbe that also like put me in the place and i myself worked a bit on like sort of like setting myself back and understanding what's going within myself sort of like what you were talking about being quiet and like allowing my emotions to just exist and like understand my emotions and so i have two questions the first one is that there is from doing that there's a lot of things that came up that i realized that i can can work on so my question is is there ever a point of when like i can stop sort of like working on those things and getting back to i would consider like my regular day-to-day life or like do i just go on chronicle forever or how long do i go on to work for and work on the these so many things that come up like very small detailed things that i can can work on that's on the first question meaning if if i do go on then how long do i go on for and the second question is that there is something that i did realize that might have came from a trauma when i was was younger and in the logical sense i don't see how a girl that i would be dating especially my age and stage would like let alone appreciate it maybe even like wrap their head around it and like go for it but it's something that i feel is important and that i want and that i appreciate and only because i think i came to the stage that i realized that it might have come with some trauma or something hard that proves that that i really want it the fact that i'm still like going for it even even though i went through all of this traumas associated with that so how do i put these two things together the fact that i want it i don't think that somebody else will sort of appreciate it like how do i work those three things out right well i i i'm actually pretty passionate about your first question and and number one i think it's awesome that you're just working on yourself it's very clear that you're just in a space where i want to work this out i want to gain some clarity about my life and and it's an inspiration to all of us um there's this notion that's sort of become popular in the past 10 years or so within our profession that you need to like shut down your life resolve your trauma and then continue with your life at a certain point and i i just want to express that i don't believe that's how it works like we're a work in progress at all times i sometimes envision a life where i don't feel like i'm in progress anymore or process and it's pretty boring when you think about it like you have those moments of like what would this look like if everything sort of gets resolved yes sorry i'm sorry to do this but i think this would tie in very well trauma ever be cured you weren't cured to me represents something that it no longer exists that's a cure when you cure cancer no longer exists within the person as if it you know not to say it didn't happen trauma shapes us trauma becomes us it integrates into who we are now we either integrate it in a way that is functional and deepens our life or we sort of somehow survive it and try to push it behind us as if it never really existed so if if we're looking at the term cure through the lens of like it's no longer a part of my life to me i find that's dramatic and tragic when your trauma is something that no longer is of your life trauma shapes us it's a part of us it's who we are the good the bad the ugly and for whatever reason it was something that's supposed to that that was supposed to happen to us so when we talk about curing as if it's no longer a part of our existence to me i find that to be quite tragic it is the ones the the inspiring people that i encounter are those who are willing to understand that they went through life like many other people and they found a way to grow from it and they found a way to utilize it in a positive way and just uh i hope that answers that question i'd love to hear what you have to say on that but i did want to just get back to that first question that this is a journey you're you're in like there's not a sprint there's no such thing as like and i hear this a lot now because it's become a part of like our general jargon our pop psychology jargon of like you know i'm gonna go away for a month i'm gonna go do an intensive rehab program and then it's going to be gone i'm just going to continue on with my life and that is the farthest thing from the truth from anyone who's sat with people and spent time with people who are journeying in this type of way it's something that will forever be remembered and forever be a part of one's life period and you have two choices you either choose to accept that or you choose to reject it and rejecting it just means you now need to develop a whole sense of defenses against the pain that emerges and accepting it is this is a part of my humanity this is something i'm going to have to learn to live with and be okay with and obviously we want to get rid of the charge we want to get rid of the destructive nature that comes along with it but the fact that we've suffered in our lives is just entry into the club of humanity like we saw with the pole you know we're all in that club and we need to find a way on some level to celebrate it without it destroying us um that's my thought on that first question i just it's something that comes up all the time this whole idea of let me just shed trauma um and i keep like wanting to say yes celebrate the parts of it that have enhanced your life and find a way to manage the parts that have really been harmful to you as opposed to shedding yeah i don't think i could add anything to that it just reminds me of this one client when she once said to me she said i keep on working on myself i'm trying to be more loving but my eyes my eyes they keep on giving me away and she said i'm sitting across from my child and my child says you know you're trying to listen to me you know she's sitting with her um with her 16 year old daughter you're trying to listen to me and and you you know that you're saying all the words you're not judging me but in your eyes i just see such such um disdain and anger and she comes to me and she says dr proman like help me get rid of my eyes i hate them i hate my eyes i hate the way that i've been seen i hate the way that i grew up the way that i was viewed the way that i wasn't seen and the way i was seen just get rid of them like she's like just she was in so much pain she hated her eyes she's like i don't want my daughter to be seen the way that i was seen but i can't i can't get rid of my eyes she's like i hate them and she had tears coming out of these eyes she hated and and then i remember as her tears were coming out i said like what are these tears what are these tears coming from these hateful eyes you know from these horrible heightful eyes and she's like these are the tears of pain of seeing my daughter there who is in pain and then in that place of pain of her hateful eyes her tears are the ones that see her daughter in pain because her eyes have been so hurt they are tuned in to see her daughter's pain so the same eyes that haven't been seen can now see even better and she comes in the next session and she says she says my eyes my eyes can love more than they can hate and in fact her eyes can love even more because they used to hate so i think that's part of what you're saying is if we're looking for a cure we're missing the power i want to jump on this question since we just doubled these topics i'm currently in shidduchim and looking for so many things and i was wondering what you feel from all your years of experience most would be some of the most important character traits we should look for in the other person to make sure they are healthy you know i remember when i was in seminary you know just a few years ago right i remember asking this question to ravnoch or the wick um i remember thinking like there is a goddess in front of me i don't know if i'll have access to him when i'm actually you know more actively in shidduchim and i just wanted to pick his brain and take from it and i asked i remember asking something similar to this you know um when you're in seminary like all roads leads to eventually asking about shidduchim right that's like what what happens and i remember he said a word that really struck me i knew then that i didn't fully understand it but that was godless in it and it was later than parallel and everything that i had studied um when i was in grad school um i will tell you what the word is very soon dr goldclink who was somebody i studied with she said that pathology is the narrowing of options and health is the widening of options when you can only do something one way or there's a lot of rigidity somewhere that usually means there's a lack of health there and when you create more more options that means you're widening that space um you know you can think about it spiritually as growing in your hero however you want to frame it for yourself the widening of options is usually a sign of health so out the word that of all the weak used is flexibility that and flexibility is a sign of characteristic health now this does not mean half care or that she or he doesn't have values or she doesn't care about anything flexibility is a it's it's a character logical quality it's a media it's it it means that i have the space to do things in more than one way i have space for you it doesn't have to be a certain way it doesn't have to be at this hour in this exact kind of way because when it's like that then how much space do i have for the other it's a very particular box and you have to warp yourself to fit into that box and that and that what that could not be right for you so i would say if i had to pick one character trait it would be flexibility what do you think all right one part i would focus on again i my wife is really the one who speaks about married couples and and how that works um i just feel uh lucky to be in a relationship with her um but i when you think about the experience of being cared for i to me it's just an essential quality that i think that when when we present ourselves to the world we're often presenting ourselves as look at me and look at what i've done and look at what i've accomplished and how you the other is supposed to see me and acknowledge me and and honor and respect me but when you're in a relationship with a person who you feel cared for that your ideas matter that your thoughts matter that your heart matters to me that is of the most essential qualities where it's no doesn't introduce any form of competition it introduces the sense of partnership that we're in life together and we care about one another and and what we're going through and especially that a spouse cares about the lived experience of their spouse and it's not just about what it means to them but rather how could i fully be present with what it means for the other um that to me is always like of the great symbols of what it means to be in a loving caring relationship okay let's go one more live question and then we have one more and then we'll go to closing sorry to give you guys so long but it's it's you know what it is it's so powerful we can do it we can do this all night okay you're on yes hi um thank you so much um this great opportunity this great gift that you're giving us um i i'm working with a couple now um and i use the eft model mainly um and i'm struggling with this couple my hardest couple right now that the wife basically says the way she protects herself is saying that she doesn't really want connection um um she's just okay being by herself she wants her space um she's also not looking for happiness she's like the type that just wants to be like brutally real and not happy necessarily and and that's how she's showing up she's coming to therapy with her husband for her husband's sake basically and she's coming for a long time with her husband every single week um but we keep going back to this um on her end and i i appreciate what you said dr tamara explaining the female perspective which i i found already i heard a lot of insight from what you said before which helps me understand that the idea that from the female perspective um you said that they see themselves as not being able to change or losing their identity by changing and that's a big fear so that definitely speaks to this i just wanted to know if there's anything more that you could add to this because i'm really struggling with this couple [Music] i just say before my wife answers it's so great to see how you feel and i love your question um we had the opportunity to journey together a bunch of years ago and it's just wonderful to hear that that these this couple is blessed to be in your presence period they're in good hands yes sorry that's probably all you need to hear um you know a couple couple work is really hard because you're working with three clients the husband the wife and the couple and sometimes these three clients are in big clash with each other and then you in the room right it's it's really complicated work and one of the big pieces there that's a hard one is choice you know if if one of them if both of them are in and want this marriage to work that's 90 of the work already done if one of them is in and the other one is out that's you know that's where it gets really complicated and that's where for the most part a lot about work ends up being it sounds like to some degree she's ambivalent whether or not she's in and and she is kind of playing with that you know playing with that am i am i in this am i not you know you said this line she's there for the sake of the husband that means that there is a part of her that wants something for her husband so without knowing more about what's happening i would try to lean into what that is what does that mean that she's there for her husband where you know where is where is the hope there where is the positivity there you know and dr um in the in the labs with the work in gottman's work dr gottman's work you know where they would watch couples you know for 12 hours from 9am to 9pm and at this point you know within like seven minutes he can identify whether or not a couple will stay married or divorced and he and he coined this word you know he he coined it to if he sees contempt between the couple that you know 93 percent or some number like that they will not stay married and i when i thought about this a bit further i thought that what's in contempt it's a lack of hope it's a hopelessness it's a giving up it's there is no way i can both be happy and stay married at the same time i find that if there as a therapist if you can somehow find a place where there is even an ounce of hope then you can start building from them and if you feel hope and they don't that could also be a place that you can start building with okay i know it's late but i i think before closing i just want to throw out this question i struggle emotionally and tend to have similar struggles with the relationship with hashem why is that and what can i do to help it i i so deeply respect this question there was a study that was done by dr pelkowitz and team dr rose maron as well a few years ago when he was looking at a group of very fractured individuals and how that impacted their relationship with hashem these were individuals who grew up uh within the from community they were they were our brothers and sisters living in the in the same type of way that most people in this group are living and they had earlier experiences in their life of some form of abuse most of the participants in the study if not all had a history of sexual abuse and the results of this study were definitive and clear that basically made the statement that for people who've been violated early on in their life really seemingly struggle with religiosity later on in their lives and the question always becomes why why and how i just want to share an idea that has resonated with me and and is with me when i sit with clients who are struggling with religiosity and also trauma in their past there was a the middle arabah who was the i believe the second laboratory um he shared a beautiful concept which i think really it just resonates um where he said when you look at the asera sadibros you have the the the first part the first tablet is man's relationship with hashem benadekum the second one is for one caveat there's one there's one exception to that which is at the bottom of the first tablet it says that man is supposed to honor his father mother which when you look at it at first glance it's man's relationship with men parents are people they're not our relationship with hashem when you talk about parents so what is the relevance between our relationship with our parents and our relationship with hashem there seems to be that connection and he gives a profound answer where he says that understanding hashem in this world being that we're mortal and we're confined by time and we're bound by many limitations it it's nearly impossible for us as human beings that's why we call it faith it's nearly impossible for us to fully jump into the relationship with hashem without some type of construct to understand what it means to be and all loving all knowing all accepting all embracing being in the world and what the middle areba says is that the the closest thing that we have as a metaphor for our for man's relationship with hashem is man's relationship with his parents that is the closest thing that we have that if our parents love us unconditionally accept us respect us see us as individuals it is much easier for us to look at hashem to conceptualize hashem as being such a character in our lives and it works the other way as well unfortunately that if we're living with fractured attachment if we're living with this sense of disconnect from this force this powerful force between our parents and ourselves then conceptualizing hashem in a very loving way becomes something that's extremely challenging and virtually every patient i've ever sat with who has struggled with relationships with their parents they likewise suffer with a relationship with hashtag because the two are seemingly interconnected so when you talk about the relationship between suffering which fortunately which unfortunately are unfortunate ever you want to look at it suffering almost always includes our parents whether or not we like it suffering almost always includes our parents when you listen to people's stories about pain one of the harsh realities of sexual abuse is that victims of sexual abuse almost always blame their parents more than the actual perpetrator and parents respond to that they're so comp like perplexed by that how's that possible i didn't do anything and then when you hear from the the children who've gone through that they say you know what my perpetrator wasn't tasked with protecting me and you were that was your job as parents you were supposed to be the ones to make sure that i was safe and i was okay and for whatever reason either you didn't know or whatever it might be that i was hurt in that particular type of way so the pain towards one parent's suffering almost always includes parents in the story line and if that's the case it almost always also includes hashem so we need to think and it's one of the things you notice i work in williamsburg part of my week and yeah williamsburg is primarily made up of did i say something wrong oh we're good i wasn't sure i'm like the middle of rebbe we're not i'm not sure the crowd but uh we'll have to see but it's um the i forget what i was saying we want to talk we got talking about in williamsburg right in williamsburg it's an interesting thing to notice that the primary school that people use in williamsburg is sovereign that's where most people are sovereign the second most popular school in williamsburg is the complete opposite of sopmer it's breslif and when we look at that it's like such an interesting phenomenon how exactly does that happen and my understanding of it is that people are hurting people who are sort of lost and emotionally it inevitably makes its way into religion they start struggling religion they start asking questions we need to ask ourselves questions like why in a group of 30 kids in any given class why are certain kids questioning and doubting while other kids are not and i don't like to see the world through very intellectual lenses even though we need to consider the mind but to me the fact that certain kids are asking questions emerges from another place as well it emerges from a deeper more meaningful place and to me my understanding of even in williamsburg as a little case study is that the people who struggle with the hashem that they grew up with the parents they grow up with they need to find a prana so to speak not a different god at all but they need to find a new pathway a new relationship to hashem that is different from the one that they grew up with that to them was not necessarily relatable it was not necessarily loving and kind the way they would like to see hashem so they switch and you see this a lot with people have trauma and suffering almost always when they deviate when they come back it's in a different form it's not in the same form that they grew up with it's in a form that they can now start seeing hashem through a different set of lenses and it's more acceptable because hashem they grew up with was one that to them they need to ask questions had a patient the other day he was saying how is it possible that hashem loves me and hashem cares about me yet permitted all these things to happen to me how's that possible and i'm pretty certain as this young man begins his journey continues his journey because he's seeking hashem that the hashem he finds is going to be slightly different than the hashem he grew up with the construct of that hashem he's seeking he's looking for hashem but it's probably going to be in a different type of shul than the one that he was familiar with in his childhood because he needs to transform that experience all together so suffering and relationships with parents and suffering and relationship with hashem in my mind are completely interchangeable ideas um and in a part of our healing part of returning to ourselves is also discovering a way that you could begin to feel from hashem this unconditional sense of he ultimately loves me unconditionally and that often comes in a different you know a different package than the way it was packaged in the way you grew up which i know is is an interesting concept a challenging concept but it's one that i've seen play out over and over and over again where someone simply needs to return to a world that feels a little bit safer to him than the one he originally he knew all his life okay are we ready to go to closing you ready that guy came up we're ready i mean it's 12 10 my friend um this is a great honor we have huh he's getting warmed up hi i'm a former student of dr akiva pearlman and i colleague of doctor aquila prominent just want to share the other side of the curtain um i feel gifted and honored to work beside him i must say in his cloning at oda every person feels the same and equal the clients the therapists the reception is the secretary everyone has the same quality everyone is beautiful as his wife quoted before it's an honor to be here and it's an honor to say everyone um to be gifted and listening to my colleague and boss that the problem thank you it's well you're too kind the one thing you forgot to say is that you're also my teacher we're colleagues you're a student but you're also my teacher your humanity he teaches me every day so thank you for that but thank you free words you mean a lot to me probably i have another like 300 guys that want to say the same thing but um okay let's go to closing since since uh dr kiev opened first so i think dr kiva um tomorrow will go first if that's okay or if you want to switch around okay so first i want to give a big big big thank you thank you for that tomorrow promo for coming on tonight doing so much physical khazic i feel like we like touch so many areas like we we have to like redo this more defined on the area just to really you know and we had to tremendous amount of questions to cover anybody who couldn't answer that couldn't get to that question we're sorry to email us as i always say every share we will email dr perlman's personal cell phone number and give you his address you can go straight to this house he wants to hear you all night but we can definitely send you out the coach we're not for gmail we'll forward emails to them and um hopefully they'll have time to answer some of them again every sunday night we have a sheer here at 10 o'clock on the zoom id and different topics from next week we're going to be having more rabashkin again also around two discussing today's crazy times he's speaking right before tish above he asked the lord comes until we're getting ready for that so please come here it's going to be an amazing program if anybody knows ravishing he's a he's a powerhouse so um he was actually our longest year we ever had we actually finished almost at one o'clock in the morning with him and then we started singing so uh get ready not to sleep tomorrow night again tonight's share sponsored by recovery at the crossroads recovery at the crossroads is the only inpatient treatment center in the tri-state era that are licensed co-occurring treatment facility which means that license to not only treat substance abuse but also all other underlying mental conditions such as anxiety depression or trauma if you anybody knows you're struggling with an addiction feel free to reach out to them at 888-466-5950 new jersey new jersey this year is all recorded it's going to be tomorrow on management.com website if you have any questions please email coach midnight from gmail.com tonight's share shares number 62 and if you want to hear it on the phone tomorrow we'll be on our hotline at 848 777 grow g-r-o-w i want to give a thank you to all our advertising sponsors lakewood scoop robbie again kyla kaplan from jcn let's go to closing first coach menachem closing words i just want to say thank you for doctor and doctor i think after all these weeks of listening to different shows of whatever it was is very important just to sit here not reading a book just listening and being gave hopefully people to be able to take some steps to some sort of healing thank you very much thank you for nathan dr tamar [Music] it was such an honor to share this with you and to learn with you and i just want to give you one tidbit that is i get to experience sometimes i get to bring in a guest into the room when i'm working with somebody just one time and um let's say i'm working with this young lady who is you know 20 years old and she's talking about her need of her mother to to be able to accept parts of her that are not perfect and i bring in the mother and the mother sitting across from her and and this daughter is taking that risk of vulnerability and i don't know whether or not it will go well because i don't know this mother and this daughter is saying but ma like i i can share with you things that i know you will be proud of but when i tell you something that you don't like you just walk away you just shut me down and i'm ready i'm ready i'm ready for us to to get closer i'm ready for the next step and and it's this moment where i hold my breath sometimes i i actually say a quick feeling to hash i'm like this can't go wrong right this this is such an opportunity and and i could tell you that really 99.9 of the time it's really rare this doesn't happen there's this moment where the mother turns to this daughter and she says in a genuine way for 30 seconds she says i want to do that for you i'm ready and there is this genuine movement for these 30 seconds of this powerful pure connection where they're both higher self just met and it actually those are the moments that help me understand jim kipper a little bit better because we come into this day and it's not a real scenario we shed our you know physical needs and we come in and we say that we will be all these things that we know tomorrow we will have a hard time being but in that moment when the mother says i want to do that for you she means it and that moment is true and that moment is real and those young kippers when we say that even knowing tomorrow will be hard they are real we mean them they're true and they end up being that what helps us propels us into that slow movement into that higher self so i guess the reason i'm sharing this is to say to trust that there that your your power is better than your brokenness and that your power is even powerful because of your brokenness to trust in that self you have a lot more impact already than you think you have in a good way and i just give us a collective bracha that we see our true selves we see who we're meant to be and that we see ourselves the way god sees us in in the way that we're meant to see ourselves and that our happiness and our connection is enhanced through that thank you everyone thank you for learning with us thank you dr kimo the floor is yours very short i i'm always so again not always this is the second time i'm here and it's such a humbling experience each time possibly more so than even the first um i do want to say and this is not where i wanted my closing remarks to be but i'd rather i'd like for them to go into this direction that i've i've learned a lot from my clients and this is how we started they taught me everything about what it means to to attempt to live wholesomely to attempt to live fearlessly and and look at yourself in the mirror and it's something that we did a few years ago i put a mirror in the office because one thing i've discovered is that people who hurt on a regular basis they are afraid to see their own reflection so it's something that i could use sometimes and say listen you can turn around and look and tell me what you see and behind all the tears behind all of that is a sense of humanity that begins to emerge that they could begin at times for the first time to to see themselves the way like my wife was saying the way that that the people of the world that are looking to see them in a positive way will and certainly the way that hashem sees us but but truth be told the people who have taught me the most in this world have really been my children and i didn't know that and i i'm not doing this to embarrass anyone god forbid but i did not know that my son would be on i have a son who's 18 years old going to yeshiva near cisco and i just want him to know that of all people in the world him and his siblings have taught me the most about what it means to be human what it means to be alive and fragile and make mistakes and i just want to thank him for teaching me what it means to be alive and what it means to be a parent and you permit me to become a better version of myself and i hope without shem's help i could permit you to become a better version of yourself as well even though i love you and you're perfect the way you are but i just want to thank you for the humanity and humility that you've provided me and your mother with and the joy of seeing you in this space alongside us uh is immeasurable so those are my final words beautiful thank you dr perlman and dr proman tonight was off the charts thank you very much good night everybody we'll see you next sunday same time