Toxic Positivity

[Music] i'm rachel tuckman i'm a licensed mental health counselor working in the five towns um i am so grateful to amudim for giving us this opportunity again to have a conversation about the things that we're passionate about about mental health and about the topics that resonate with us getting together and talking with two of two of my favorite people rachel herkman and ellie chevalis and i'm going to let you guys introduce yourselves and then we will intro our topic for today i'm rachel herkman i'm an lcsw a licensed clinical social worker i have a an office on upper west side of manhattan and i also do trainings and speak in different communities and i feel really passionate about having conversations about mental health and the way we relate to our struggles i also have the honor of being the clinical director of the lawyers project magazine which is an online magazine for jewish women where we enjoy being able to create conversations about the real things that are going on in people's lives and the communal healing that can come from us having more of those open conversations so i'm so grateful to be here having an open conversation with both of you and thank you top moved in for being a trailblazer and really trying to push these types of programs forward so thank you awesome thank you ellie sheva hi thanks i'm ellie chavelis i'm a licensed marriage and family therapist lmft um i practice on long island and virtually um i also am a digital educator a lecture to groups but also online and i write i blog i have articles and a book on healthy thinking and like rachel herkman i'm also you know humbled and grateful to be included in these conversations and especially organizations like amudim that do so much to serve the greater community and um it's always so much fun to talk to my racial friends so thank you so today we are talking about toxic positivity um and so i want to hear from you guys i guess just when you hear toxic positivity what is the definition that comes to your mind um and then let's just talk about is it a problem is it something that is toxic positivity really a thing where does this come from um some of the challenges and then i guess finding the balance what is the balance if being so positive is really toxic like what are we supposed to do um so i guess we'll start with um rachel tell me when you hear toxic positivity like what comes to mind i think the word toxic implies something that maybe is healthier in lower doses or a lower amount but when it reaches a certain amount it is no longer helpful and can have a detrimental effect so when we talk about toxic positivity what comes up for me is what i see happening for many people in situations and i think this obviously it predates social media which is that when somebody is going through something difficult and they're in a place of pain and they get a message whether it's implicit explicit or they were educated in in a culture where basically there was a sense of you just need to be positive all the time and it's not okay to express feelings that don't sound positive and inspiring and uplifting and when that is the only way that people feel is an acceptable way to share when they are going through something i believe that it gets to a point where it's people can't hear the messages that others are trying to tell them which they think is coming from they're trying to help them and it's coming often very often it's coming from a good place but because people feel like it's at a point now where people throw platitudes around and it's kind of like that's not necessarily the space the person was in in that moment that's where i think it gets this place where we might call it toxic positivity where it's positivity being thrown at people or shoved down their throats right you could you can offer someone the most beautiful piece of napoleon and if they say no thank you but you shove it down their throat they're not going to be able to fully enjoy it because they weren't in the space where they actually wanted to eat that right so i think this idea of giving people space understanding what they are hungering for or yearning for in that moment i think the toxic positivity piece is this kind of like very um it can sometimes lack a certain capacity to read the room and be able to take a step back and sense where a person is at right kelly shova um it would be hard to add anything to that that was so eloquent and comprehensive here you i think you you said what all three of us really i just can't speak for rachel i definitely i agree with everything you said um i would just add you know my own thought is that something that i had been thinking about and actually had written about a few years before but um the language that i used was healthy and unhealthy positivity saying that you know positivity is not always appropriate for every situation whether internally or interpersonally but there is but it is useful to think in terms of healthy you know sort of thinking like when is it healthier to be positive and when is it healthier to explore you know other other orientations and emotions um and i had a conversation with a friend who's in more of the like spiritual motivational space but she has definitely gone through her own life challenges and mental health challenges um and her approach for her own self and in her own uh style is more of a radical gratitude approach you know very positivity oriented and she was saying that she doesn't believe that there's such a thing as toxic positivity she said like positivity can always be beneficial it just depends like you know who and when and how and i think we ended up coming to an agreement that it was more about semantics um but i but i it was interesting because i found that the first time i heard the word toxic i i was concerned because i think there are certain strong words that get overused um you know especially in the social media space and especially in what is a very polarized um kind of culture that we're living in right now where people like jumped very dramatic language and i was concerned while i do in my opinion there is such a thing as toxic positivity especially at the interpersonal level you know trying to put a silver lining on somebody else's cloud um you know but but i i wondered whether maybe toxic was a stronger word than i was personally comfortable with and then as i was hashing it out with his friends um something that i explained to her was that even in the interrupt personal like meaning within a person's own self right if i try to skip steps like if i try to jump ahead and just make it all good like everything's but it's okay it's all going to be okay in the end right um and i don't let myself first process the uh the emotional and the psycho spiritual like struggles that i'm having very often what will happen to people is they somaticize right they start to get like physical pain or ailments and people actually can get sick from stress we know this now um and so actually the word toxic in that case wouldn't be hyperbole like it would be appropriate to say that you know sometimes when we suppress when we repress and we don't deal with things it kind of manifests in other places for us you know in our relationships or in our bodies and so um you know so to me actually i kind of in debating this issue i actually sort of found like there is i think an appropriate um place to use and again language is very personal so if someone doesn't like the word toxic or doesn't like you know picking on positivity you know i had i remember once i had a client she was home very cheerful sweet upbeat person a lot of anxiety um and uh and and you know i had comments on them like oh you sure smile a lot she's like oh i grew up in a pathologically positive home it was so cute so pathological positivity and she gave me permission to uh to to recycle that phrase right um you know and it's it you know positivity can be a coping skill and coping skills aren't always bad but you know when we recognize them for what they are and sort of like acknowledge that um you know positivity is great but like like almost everything else there's context and you know almost nothing is for every situation and every relationship every moment yeah so i actually came across the term toxic positivity a bunch of years ago from a therapist that i follow on instagram her name is whitney goodman she's an lmft sit with wit she's got men trained she's fantastic and she did this post that like went viral it was all over the place about like helpful phrases when someone's going through something and we'll we'll talk about this later because the research that we conducted together was like so fascinating um but she she talked about toxic positivity and i was like wow i had never heard that term either um but it happens to be that i see i have an aversion now to that word toxic also when i actually saw another way to frame it would be dismissive positivity which i think is actually a lot more accurate right because when we are if someone is going through something or we're going through something and right away we look to posit put a positive spin on it and we push away all other emotion right not just we're trying to like focus on the positive or be optimistic but we don't want to feel any of the negative we are dismissing all other feelings so i think that dismissive positivity made a lot more sense right that there's no room for any negative feelings and we have to avoid those and what that does is kind of like what you just said is it just delays the inevitable like if you shove those feelings down and pretend they don't exist it will come back in some way either in your physical health like in your body you'll be feeling it or emotionally like you're just waiting to erupt um so i think that the whole idea of like toxic positive positivity is just again it doesn't acknowledge or make room for fear or pain or sadness or anger and some of the things that i've seen are like the one that drives me the craziest is really like happy girls are the prettiest right like oh so if you're not happy you're like ugly and disgusting and we're always just supposed to smile right um or like good vibes only like of course we all want like good vibes in our life but like the reality is like it can't always be good vibes and like what do we do when it's not and so i think it is important for us to address kind of finding the balance between like what's optimism versus toxic positivity let's talk about the emir the emotional spiritual intellectual components here let's talk about the difference between using positivity with yourself versus using it with someone else right because there's a huge difference like telling yourself like god has a plan and there's a reason for this that could be so helpful but to someone else it could be like really really hurtful and not helpful um and so i think that you know again there is a place for positivity and i don't want to leave anybody you know with the idea that we should never be positive or hopeful but we do need to know you know that a lot of the time i think positivity is usually more helpful for us um than for other people and we shouldn't make assumptions about what people need or or want to hear in moments of sadness um so something that we had we kind of touched on in our discussion before this was we were talking about um the difference between using positivity with yourself versus someone else and i guess now would be a good time for us to get into like our unofficial research that we can yeah because i think that that really would open up a lot of the different places we would go with this yeah can i interject something before we go there i just wanted to comment on something that rachel tuchman just said um you were saying how there's a very big difference between preaching to someone else you know like the perspective god has a plan kind of messaging versus giving ourselves that messaging and i completely agree with that but i also want to say that even within the self there's not always a consistent level of propriety so i think like even within ourselves there are times that we can sort of be more motivational in terms of telling ourselves like what we want to believe and using our belief and faith and strength to bolster ourselves in times of challenge but also even even within the self saying like that's not always sometimes even that can be dismissive that even like within the self that they're going to be times where that might not be what i need to hear even in my own head and that's okay too it doesn't doesn't we'll get into that more but it doesn't mean that you're a person of lower faith if you have to go through that process in fact faith gets refined and strengthened by uh by being you know sort of challenged in in times where the emotions challenge them but anyway we'll get into that more but because you mentioned it that is very important and i do want to talk about that because i do feel like people believe that it's like a lack of faith or a lack of amuna to like not be positive in hard times but i think that's even like the problem with dismissive positivity toxic positivity is that it uses all or nothing language so like everything happens for a reason it's all for the best sometimes maybe but then how do we just how do we believe that if like you know a young child dies or god forbid in cases of like horrible abuse like how can we say everything happens for a reason like we cannot use that line of thinking there so i think that that all or nothing language can be really unhelpful and detrimental um and it also kind of like makes us think that emotions are like nice and clean and simple and like you know happiness is a choice like yeah but sometimes it's not the healthy choice right and sometimes if you have depression it's literally not a choice right so it stigmatizes a whole group of people and creates a lot of shame and judgment and misunderstanding right so if you have a family member who's struggling with depression happiness is a choice why can't you just get out of bed why can't you just take your medication right right it creates this whole level of like misunderstanding or lack of compassion or lack of empathy because we think it's so simple you know just don't be angry just stop crying like but that's not how humans work you know we need a lot more space we need a lot more empathy sometimes the only way out is through you know we can't avoid like you were saying we can't avoid those feelings we asked on our platforms our social media platforms we kind of pulled our audiences and said like when you were going through a struggle what was something that that you were told that was helpful hurtful and something that gave you hope and what we ended up finding was that so that there was literally the same answer for each column right what was helpful for some was hurtful for others what was whole right has a plan god has a plan was in all everything and all three of us pulled our own audiences yeah and all three of us got repeat answers and all the columns right like it was so interesting that literally people would say like you will get through this i know it that was hurtful for someone like how do you know i'm gonna get through this you know and then it was helpful for people to hear like i'm gonna get through this like thank you for that vote of confidence you know um i'm just looking through some of them now like um you you're gonna be fine you're gonna be okay that was hurtful to hear you're gonna be fine you're gonna be okay um what can i do to help someone actually said that that was not helpful because they were like just tell me how you're going to help me like don't ask me i'm overwhelmed with that i don't want to hear what can i do to help i've heard both of those i mean there's people like to quote that one of like don't just say tell me what i can do to help because i'm confused and overwhelmed tell me what you're going to do to help and then i've heard people say the other thing so well now i have 12 lasagnas in my fridge because everybody told me they were going to give me a list so you can you can really play that both ways one one thing that i did think that i think did come across from the answers and me to cut you off will keep going but is that i think that the energy behind people's messaging more than the words was when the empathy comes through so whether and a couple people mention this is that when you feel like the person is like you know i'm here with you right like i really i'm present with you and even if i don't know exactly what to say or do i want you to know that i'm here to support you and i'm feeling pain with you then i think the language that they use is almost secondary to the sentiment that that that presence conveys like another one was like people said like i wish people would just call me and not send a text and i've heard other people it wasn't in this but i've heard other people say like why are they calling me just send a text like you know sorry rachel continue no it's true and i think that's that's really what it is i think the theme was that people wanted to just feel cared about you know um and i think that that it's a lot of the time i think it's important for us to realize that like you know we were saying earlier what's helpful for me when i'm sad might not be helpful for you and i think that the question of like what can i do to be helpful i want to be helpful is a great question but yeah then there's like well i don't know what i need and i don't know what will be helpful for me and that's where i kind of say okay then we kind of have to just try to kind of figure it out but definitely i think that when we use things like god has a plan and he was so good and that's why he was taken and only you can handle this and this will make you a stronger person and one day you'll be able to tell your story and strengthen people i think we have good intentions and again sometimes those things were helpful in our pool i saw that people sometimes did like hearing that but we also have to ask ourselves like am i telling someone this because i i am so uncomfortable with their discomfort right now and their unhappiness or their anger or their sadness that i'm trying to like make them feel no it's not so bad like there's a light at the end of the tunnel maybe they don't they're not ready for the light yet maybe they need to sit in the darkness a little bit and it reminds me of that famous brene brown video right where she says like sometimes it's getting down into that hole with them and sitting with them it's not pulling them out of that deep dark you know hole that they're in it's getting down and sitting with them and saying hey i'm here you know and whenever you're ready i'm going to come out with you i'm going to share a few points on that yeah one of the things that i thought was interesting first of all was how quick people were to send us their input and their experiences which i think that in and of itself was very was very telling in terms of that like this is something that is very universal that life struggle is very universal and that people i think do appreciate an opportunity to share what an experience meant for them and what they may have needed differently in that experience but not everyone's willing to ask that question right not everyone's willing to say what do you think you needed in that moment so i i was taking some notes on some patterns that i saw because i like to like classify things sometimes and what i noticed was this some of these lines touch on one's relationship to god okay some of these things touched on your relationship to pain okay just pain in general feeling pain right some of these things related to your relationship to time right so when people are saying things like oh like time heals all wounds which like we saw that in all three categories like people saying like oh with time it's going to get better and there are people who are like don't tell me that like you don't know that for sure um right so and i think another piece that came up was that and also you touched on this is that if the content is all about relationship to time or to god or to pain but there isn't really an appreciation for actually the relationship between these two people who are speaking in other words to take that into account of well who am i to this person anyway because i do find that sometimes when these things happen people take it upon themselves in a well-meaning way to share things and the other thing about that as well is that we're at a place now where we are making so much more room for people to share their personal experiences and personal experience experience is not the same as expertise and certainly personal experience does not make someone the expertise on how everyone else is going to do things and i think there's something hurtful for people or they don't feel seen when somebody is making their own healing situation the blueprint for your healing situation and and you're like but this isn't about you like that may not relate to me that may not be my my story and and i also like that i also had this as well that there were a few people who said something to me about it wasn't about what was said it was about the space yeah yeah and the relationship yeah the really the context and the relationship it was it was in the relationship and the other thing i noticed also was in the in the parts where people said things were helpful or hopeful the pattern i saw was there was permission permission for feelings permission for experiences permission for how can i be most helpful to you there was more of a permission there was more of a sense of presence of like i'm here with you i love you i'm here with you i have your back you're not alone and then the last piece was also appeal with the sense of possibility versus certainty yeah i think that that is something that is where it's very hard for us to stay with that uncertainty i think they call it maybe lands right it's hard to compete in the navy land or we're going through struggles and that people can sometimes feel like it's being put upon them in the sense of certainty of of i know exactly how it's going to go and then they don't it's not helpful for them because they feel like are you trying to console me or just control a narrative here so those were spells of mine thank you so those were some of my 1am observations and i'm grateful that they still make sense in the morning because you know one day you're not always like i think this makes sense yeah i also noticed on you know because some of the people who responded most of them are people that i don't know but there were a handful of people that i did know and just from from those that were i think you know again because of the way we did this research it was more ad hoc and more generalized but um i i think it also we can't always lump challenges together in one category so there's a difference between someone who's going through a challenge where the like that maybe land where we don't know what's going to happen next versus someone in the aftermath of a tragedy where there's a mourning process so let's say somebody wrote like i hate when people tell they this is someone who lost a loved one that at a young age said like i don't want people to tell me it's going to get better what's it and how do they know it's going to get better and maybe i don't want to get better maybe i'm scared it's going to get better you know whereas like i remember just to share a personal example many years ago my husband was very sick thank god he's well now um but there were people who were coming to us and saying oh i had that type of cancer and look at me i'm all better now and it was so interesting because his like feeling about that at the time was like don't put that kind of pressure on me like i don't know if i'm gonna make it let me like don't you know it's like if you can do it you know if i could do it you can too you know and for me it was very encouraging to see people who had been you know very very ill and now we're in such good health and i i don't think it's because he was the patient and i was the staff it could be but i think it just has to do more with like the way different personalities process other people's input and and that's i think a good personal example of the distinction that you were making just now rachel between experience and expertise and so even something like that fell within all three categories of you know someone coming along and saying you know this something similar happened to me as well and maybe my story can give you some encouragement or make you feel less alone some people found that incredibly um like heartening and empathetic and other people found it like threatening or don't make this about you it's not you it's not your time to shine or you know and and so it's kind of like what you said before read the room something that i sometimes will advise like when people say like okay what am i supposed to do i'm trying to reach out to a friend and i don't want to say the wrong thing because i think the challenge is and this is whether we're talking about tragedies whether we're talking about stressors where we don't know the outcome or even just more minor things like people just struggling with something that wouldn't be considered by most people to be like a big life crisis but you know they're struggling anyway um is that there are so many wrong things to say and so much fewer right things to say and so you know a lot of people sort of avoid and avoidance was one of the things that was listed as something that people were hurt by like hey my sister didn't even reach out and she knew i was going through a hard time it's like well there's a chance that your sister didn't reach out and she was so scared of saying the wrong thing or maybe thought you needed your space so something that i feel like you can't really go too wrong with in most scenarios is to reach out and my my uh bias is to do it not with a phone call but in writing saying you know just like text or message sort of saying like hey um i'm thinking of you you know i don't i don't really know you know sometimes it's not clear what i don't i wish i knew the right thing to say or to do or to offer um but i i just want you to know that i'm here um thinking of you available if you want to talk or if there's something i can do if you want to just get together and talk about something totally different you know just kind of like letting them like kind of calling out the reality for what it is of that like you're a person that's important to me and i know that you're in pain and and i feel that for you and so not pretending or guessing to know exactly what the right thing to say is but that sometimes i find that just saying i i don't even know where i wish i knew the right thing to say or do it but i don't but i also want to show up for you i think people appreciate that because it's kind of a blank page on which to to to offer like generic not generic in a bad way but sort of like gentle support um and it also kind of like offers the person to let you know like is there something that because sometimes like when you when i've asked let's say clients who are going to be very open with me like how should your sister your best friend your neighbor or your mother-in-law how should she have come through for you like what would have been the better response and very often they'll pause and they'll be like you know what i don't even know like i don't even know what i really needed i just know that what they did or didn't do wasn't right but sometimes what they'll do is they'll look in the mirror and say maybe there was nothing right to do in that moment maybe anything anyone doing anything or saying anything or avoiding i'm just in too much pain to receive any kind of support and just having that acknowledgement that people do care about you at a tough time even if there's nothing concrete or verbal that can make it better is is still better than nothing yeah i think that um i don't remember which one of you guys said it when we were talking but i think it might have been you rachel but any claim claim the the credit whoever said it but one of you said one one person's one person's strength and encouragement it can be another person's dagger in the heart i say that yeah but that was like for when you said that i was like whoa that was like so poignant for me i'm like yes that encompasses like our conversation so perfectly like something that could be so encouraging for one could be so hurtful for another and and i think that's why you know like you know this conversation is important i think we need to think about what are the norms in our community something that i heard on a david bashevkin podcast with um josh greger which was a really great podcast that i recommend people listen to he was talking about his loss and he was saying that like in our community like we don't have the language to handle sadness we're afraid of negative emotion and he found that that people like didn't know how to approach him like they it was awkward for them and uncomfortable and everybody had good intentions and and we were saying here people intentions did matter but for him he was saying it it wasn't even good enough the intentions didn't help because people were like fumbling and they and it ended up being hurtful to him um and so i think that there needs to be a conversation about that like we are as a culture not even our religion alone as a culture we are like happiness obsessed you know and i i saw a great um quote from esther perel where she was saying that like happiness has become like this burden for us that we're all like constantly chasing it and it's like this outcome and a mandate even and she was saying like we have to understand that happiness is like a moment you know and that we are complex human beings with a wide range of emotions and there's a place for all of it there's a place for sadness there's a place for jealousy there's a place for anger all these things serve functions and like we have to stop chasing happiness because something that she said also was like she's like we're so caught up in like asking like am i happy wait was that happening am i feeling happy that like we don't even get to be right that we don't taking our happiness pulse all the time all the time right we're not even we're not even here we're not even present one of the ways that when someone's in pain and someone else says something to them and it's like a total air ball is where it's basically the person is not dealing with an intellectual wound so we don't need an intellectual band-aid we don't need an intel and that's where i think some of these statements that we saw in our unofficial data is that some of these statements i think if someone's in a certain head space or heart space they might be open to hearing something like that and that might be helpful i think about the my own challenges i've been through there have been things that people have said to me that really were so awesome in that moment but i know that if i'd heard that at a different point in that situation it would have been very and and i was going to say hurtful but what makes it hurtful is that you want to say to the person hello like that that's not that's not the place that we're at right now in this conversation or you know are you consoling are you controlling this narrative right can you give permission for for an experience and i think something else that came up while you were speaking is that i find that very often when we pivot to fault finding when i slow it down with people clinically or even just an informal conversation will really slow down fault-finding there's a often underneath that there's this reservoir of powerlessness and that's why just to give an example let's say we talk about infertility but this can happen for other situations too where there's so much of the fault finding of like whose fault is it like i found like after me rome there was like an immediate like obsession with fault finding and yes there were clearly things that needed to be explored and and i really hope that that continues in terms of addressing that but i do think that it's sometimes easier to be in a blame place even blaming ourselves sometimes it's easier to be i call it preferred pain sometimes our preferred pain is to sit and blame ourselves about something that to sit with a certain really difficult powerlessness over life and over situation that may have happened to us and that when i find that's what's happening often in these social conversations where there's this misplaced positivity or this in your face positivity it's are we able to just sit and be still to be with the powerlessness of you know what there really is nothing to say right now there is nothing to say right now there is no you know i like to say like you know resilience you know you can't tie everything with a boat and there's this pressure that we have to tie everything with a bow during the process after the process and being able to sit with it that no not everything always is going to come together in this really beautiful way and it's all going to make sense it's all going to feel worth it you know resilience which by the way if we want to do another interesting kind of social media questioning thing is what is how do you define resilience because i think the word resilience has i think everyone has a different perception of it i think resilience first for one person can mean you just get up in the morning and you literally get up in the morning and you put one foot in front of the other and that's resilient they're people that resilience means that they then become this like motivational person where they like everywhere they go they're giving people encouragement so i think understanding that like resilience doesn't mean you sound like a motivational calendar and that people sometimes think of themselves as that they are not strong enough because they don't look like that other person over there who is supposedly so strong and resilient which also ties into that thing that and some people wrote this also that they don't like being told oh you're so strong because it's kind of like the the analogy that comes up for me is let's say like your car broke down and you're on the side of the road and you're changing your own tire and someone's like oh my gosh you're like so good at changing tires wow like i don't think you'd be flattered and be like oh my god thank you so much like i feel so good that like you're saying i'm talented at changing tires because you'd be like i don't want to be here right now i want to be changing this tire i want to be on the road with everyone else right there right now right so settle out there but again that that sense of like can we can we be with the person in this moment right now can we be with ourselves in this moment right now and be able to ask these questions like what is this really about what are we running away from right what what what is it that's holding us back from just being able to slow that down and be able to read the room better right yeah again it's not liking those uncomfortable feelings sorry no yeah i mean it's it's it's boiling down to like we are always trying to fix and we're so uncomfortable with brokenness right and like we don't like the idea that some things just can't be fixed and we have to just let things be and i think sometimes people confuse comfort with like advice or encouragement sometimes comfort is just like this sucks like this is i don't i don't even i just feel so sad and i wish this wasn't happening to you and you know like i don't this isn't fair like sometimes it's just acknowledging and people are like no that's going to make them feel worse but maybe it's just even saying nothing just sitting there you know and letting it just be but i think that we feel very afraid of brokenness we feel very afraid of things that can't be fixed we feel very afraid of uncertainty which makes sense you know nobody likes that we don't like to feel like they're we're hanging and we don't know what's going to be um and i think also i i know for me personally like when i've grappled with like a discomfort with someone sadness it's because like if we start feeling the fear of like oh my god like i remember that i'm vulnerable too to be in this you know and i think a lot of time we're trying to comfort ourselves like you're going to be okay like i'm here for you yeah i'm going to do you're not alone in this but we're like trying to do wrap it up but really we're trying to even comfort ourselves because i realize you know what god forbid i could suffer the same fate as you and like i don't even want to sit with that reality so i'm trying to like package it up nice and make it like oh you're so strong and like we're gonna get through this and you know and and maybe that is the truth they are gonna get through this and they are going to find their strength but that's not what they need right now in that moment but i think sometimes it's because we face our own fears our own mortality our own whatever it is and we try to push it away you know um yeah i think people even sometimes feel like pain is contagious you know what i mean like they're trying to protect themselves from it you know there's a fear of being silent because like you know silence is the worst thing ever right like it's too awkward right you know like and and being able to just sit with the quiet and say like this is hard and i'm here and i just that's all i know how to do right now because i can't wrap it up in the boat and i can't fix it um and i think there's also like you said we get reminded of our own fragility our own susceptibility right there but for the grace of god and luck we all you know we are what we are and we it could have just as easily been us and that's a scary feeling for people um but you know i think that that people really are afraid that it's like if i get too close to it if i feel the empathy too much i'm gonna catch that energy and i think even just knowing that that's something that people are sometimes uncomfortable from allows us to peel that back and say wait no they're them and i'm me and that's why boundaries are so important you know because if i know that you're you and i me then i can be there for you without becoming you right without being absorbed by you it's such a good point because what you're saying is what what i've heard in what you're saying is the sense of dysregulation that happens for us when we hear news or hear or we know about situations that make us feel that fragility of life and that on a practical level because we like to give people some practical you know examples or applications is that sometimes people want to reach out to the person to get updates to get updates and the person who's going through the situation is dealing with a million things and may not have the energy to start updating and by the way if if you're someone who hasn't been close with the person up until that point and now suddenly you're you know texting them all the time that i think can make people feel uncomfortable too because it's like we weren't so close and all of a sudden you want to be my best friend like i'm not a celebrity because i'm going for something like but and not everyone necessarily deserves to get an update like not everyone has to get an update but something for people to ask themselves is am i asking these questions to speak am i asking this question because i care or because i'm curious for myself and i'm dysregulated and i want to hear that you know oh there was a car accident and they weren't wearing seat belts so i could feel relieved and say okay i wear seat belts i will be i will make sure to wear seat belts and therefore i will be safe right that that this regulation that you're referring to and you know that fragility of life rachel that whole idea that that can drive some of the comments and questions that people can ask that for the person hearing it it just feels so like oh my god how could you ask that have you say that listen to yourself but that's the thing they're totally in their own they're totally in their own hedge regulated themselves so that they can continue on their day yeah yeah i think people want to know like i think that there's this fear that like not all pain is redeemed and it's like some things we just learned to live with and the pain doesn't go away and i love that like i'm sure so many of you have seen that but that visual of the grief ball in the jar right three different jars the ball never shrinks in size the ball stays the same but the jar gets bigger so your grief will always be with you and it doesn't necessarily get better but you learn to like build life around it i think if we like just learn to get comfortable with that or not even comfortable we learn to be uncomfortable yeah you know then i think that's like that's something that can be very empowering for us and it could make these negative emotions less scary um but yes sometimes pain doesn't go away and that's just a part of life there's there's another piece that i wanted that um rachel herkman what you were just saying reminded me of i wonder if you guys experienced this i know that for myself sometimes when i go to a funeral or a shiva house one of the fears that i have is that i'm going to feel something bigger than it's my appropriate right to feel so let's say like if i'm at a funeral and i feel myself welling up with tears before like the people closer in that circle are crying i feel like no i don't that's inappropriate you know like i don't want to be crying before they're crying or you know um you know feeling more emotional than the people who are expressing more emotion than the people who are more entitled to feel that emotion um you know and then that sort of very self-conscious feeling like i don't want to do the wrong thing i don't want to make it worse i don't want to you know attract attention and i think that's another piece that that people struggle with like i know i have i've heard people say this actually that like i feel like i don't have the right to be this sad i didn't even know them so well um you know and again i don't know that there's a specific solution to this but even just sort of like you know the concept of if you can name it you can tame it you know just kind of saying these are the different messy complex reactions and feelings and emotions that we have around other people's pain and stress like i think it's a universal thing when people hear that someone's sick it's like well what do they have when you know someone died it's like oh what did they die from it's like what like we're gonna do anything about it at this point you know like there's you know but it's just a kind of a universal human curiosity um you know and it's not always just coming from a place of empathy i think there's that's part of it but also this place of like the dysregulation that it brings to ourselves and again just being aware of that and knowing that like the goal is the empathy feeling the empathy and expressing the empathy and sharing whatever we're going to share and reaching out in that way with empathy um i think that that would be like sort of the grounding principle of how we want to show up and there's something else that i was thinking about hearing both of you speak which is that i think until now we focused a lot on what we as the supporting party can do right like when i'm the supporting party but i think also for you know in most people at some point in their lives are going to come bump up against something where other people are going to have to take care of us and also to remember that um when people show up they're going to do so imperfectly they're going to do something perfectly from their own space and also just based on like in that moment there might actually be nothing that i would be able to receive well not because that person is insincere or selfish or inappropriate but just because there is like there's just nothing that can comfort me which was said about yaakov a really great person right like everyone tried to make him feel comforted but there was no comfort to be found and to because i i have heard of people who would say this like at first i was just like not okay to hear anything from anyone and people fell away and then i felt isolated um so to remember that when people show up in imperfect ways either if they're people that um you know do really care for you and want to show up in the right way maybe to redirect them and say you know thanks for trying that didn't help but you can you can give me a hug or you can you can make me coffee or you know if it's someone who you think will be receptive to that and if not just to remind yourself like the difference between like the action and the intention to say like you know they're they're trying they meant well it's the kind of thing that maybe in another mood or in another circumstance i would appreciate hearing it just it was it was toned up for me right now but again it doesn't have to be that sort of black and white dismissive like it's all bad it's all good it's just people are trying if that makes sense yeah and i would add on to that if i made that i think this is so relevant especially now during the pandemic of just we've been dysregulated for a very long time a very very long time and that relationships change our relationship to our self changes and relationships with other people change and friendships change through struggle also and that can add i think to the grief sometimes when people go through painful times and you know they they learn more about the people around them and what they are capable of in terms of showing up or just the space they have and yeah you know making space for the fact that people aren't imperfect but i also think that because these experiences can change us as people that it is okay for us to feel sad if we notice that it changes other relationships as well and very often and we saw this in uh research of people talking about this thing of getting to the other side of things people often say like oh you're gonna get to the other side of it and it has this very linear before and after almost like you're driving you're gonna go through this dark tunnel and then you're just gonna like keep driving and you're gonna get back to yourself right and what do you think maybe it would help for us to make more space for as a community is that it's not just that we drive through that dark tunnel and keep driving but really to give permission for people to honor the fact that we might drive through that dark tunnel and lose a part of ourselves maybe gain a new part of ourselves or get to know and be part of ourselves but we might lose parts of ourselves that we're not going to get back that we might and we're not going to get back to ourselves in this like you are exactly the weight the same way you were before this thing happened to you and i think when we lower the bar on what it's supposed to look like when you've been through something and now you're not on the other side of it it just takes up a different amount of space like i often say like something something can happen to me or something becomes me right when we're in that thing we're going through it doesn't just happen to you like becomes you and then hopefully with some healing and with time which it may not time may not change that but for some people for some experiences they can start to feel like this thing i don't feel all the time like that became me so to speak that i'm still bad all the time and really honoring that in terms of that everyone is so different and how they relate to their experiences and we're not abnormal if we have and it's also it's okay to to not be okay it's also okay to be okay that's something else i think it's helpful to throw out here i think that i i i like all of your points but i even like the idea and i actually heard this recently about like using this language of like instead of i'm stressed i'm sad i notice i'm feeling sad i notice i'm feeling stressed and there there was actually like they had done like brain imaging where people were saying i'm stressed versus i'm feeling stressed and the impact that it had on the body and so it really does matter like and clearly it was showing that when you said i'm stressed there was like more reactivity in your body in terms of stress hormones versus i feel stressed right so noticing like that you are not your feeling or emotion but that you are experiencing it so i thought that that was such a great point and i think that like a good point for us to kind of wrap up with would be talking about like what's healthy optimism versus toxic positivity like what does it look like when we're just developing more inner resources and coping tools and what is it when we're being dismissive when we're shoving things down you know like is there is there this balance and the answer is yes but let's talk about it a little bit of healthy positivity and optimism and gratitude there is space for that and then where is there you know when is that maybe not the appropriate response so i the way i like to look at it i like the metaphor of the horizon right if you picture let's say like where the sky meets the water or the ground there's sort of a line like a horizontal line the word horizon is in there and the way kind of i like to help clients and myself actually look at things is that there are three general categories that we can find ourselves in as far as responding there's what i call below the horizon of healthy function when we know we're in that like dysregulated place and we're feeling this like flood of unwanted unpleasant emotion either in response to something that we're thinking or feeling or into a trigger you know a stimulus something that went on with another person a life event and that's when we're sort of below and the first thing to do there is to not rush out of it but just sort of say whoa okay this feels like a lot this is overwhelming and again there's a difference between i am versus this is but even if you're feeling at the first place like i'm feeling like a mess just give yourself permission to say one second i'm allowed to feel like a mess for you know for a moment or so right like it's you don't always have to be so strong right first acknowledge what is and not try to clean it up right away let it be sit with it feel it it's it's okay right then we want to pull it up onto what i call like the horizon of healthy function just like to to take a step back and detach from it so if i were telling somebody about this scenario and let's say i didn't know the person so well and i was just taking more of a dispassionate more of a clinical approach this is what this is what's going on right now right this is what we're struggling with right now and just kind of describe it in a more even keel narrative way so that way you create a little space a little bit of distance okay then the next question so it's a process right we're below that horizon of healthy function right there's like a lot going on we're feeling all the feelings that we don't necessarily want to sit with for a long term then they're sort of like acknowledging narrating what's going on just it is what it is the analogy that i use is kind of like a sailboat just like kind of tracing the horizon just bobbing along on the waves and then the sort of the next step which isn't always appropriate but it's you know always a possibility is to say what would be not a positive but a healthier way for me to engage with this reality this stressor this thought this feeling this relationship like it's not ideal it's not what i would have ordered it's not what i would have asked for but once i'm here right that space between stimulus and response what if anything can i do from a place of realistic empowerment to say can i make this a little bit better for myself and that could have to do with something internal right like generating a different way of thinking about it something external taking some sort of action i always say like kind of it branches it between action and acceptance sometimes there's something i can do to make things a little bit better sometimes there's nothing i can do externally so it has to do with kind of like taking some deep breaths and reassessing the language that i use even within myself to just sort of say okay but this is what it is right now um and and maybe i can start to make some peace with that so you know and to me that feels very different than the pollyanna i should like you know i had somebody who once told me that like she had a mentor that she used to call for like advice and encouragement but she stopped reaching out to her because this mentor eventually at some point in the conversation would be like but it's all good right like it's all good like gonzalo tova like homage to avid rashma everything god does is for the best and she was just like i know that i believe that spiritually and theologically but that's not like where i am right now like i just i need like a hug over the phone like i just like that's um you know whereas whereas kind of like exploring going through those stages of like wow this is really hard this really hurts this is not so easy and saying all the bad words you need to say in order to like feel those feelings then kind of getting up above like lifting your head out of the water and saying okay but like i can get some air here and like look what's actually going on like in a more strategic way and then finally pulling out to the next level and say is there anything that i can do differently is there anything that's within my locus of control that i can then take action or edit my thoughts to make this hurt less to make this less damaging either within myself or within my relationships and sometimes you come up with something and sometimes not but then that's the acceptance piece like no there isn't so i just have to like this is what this is and you know and move on you know forward that that would be like kind of a short version answer what i would say yeah rachel you have thoughts you want to share so many so i'm gonna try to sum it up so a few pieces so there was an answer that i got in a dm that i actually like if i was crying from it it was just such a powerful story this woman shared that when she was in seminary she was very close with her teacher and she invited the teacher that she had relapsed regarding self-harm that she had struggled with self-harm a couple years before and you know now in seminary she she relapsed and she she she told her teacher she was very close with and her teacher responded and said how many days had it been up until this relapse and she said you know it was like several hundred days 500 days or something and her teacher said okay well we're going to go out to dinner and i think we should celebrate that because we we have to celebrate that and i have chills just thinking about it because in in the dm it was basically saying like it it pulled me out of a despair that i really could have gotten sucked into and it was really just it hit that spot of we're not going to just sugar coat this and we're not just going to say gonzolotopa and we're going to recognize that that something happened here but we're not going to do it in a way where we're dismissing the whole picture where we're dismissing your feelings and it was it was i was so happy she sent me that message because it's so beautiful and i think there's a difference between burying our feelings and being with our feelings and we all have various ways that we might bury feelings sometimes we have to bury feelings because we have a lot to do right now and we can't deal with something so we vary it and people have different ways of bearing feelings the issue i find is that when we're always burying our feelings and the ways we might bury it can be by just saying it everything has to be positive and we're not going to even allow ourselves to be with the feeling we could bury feelings through other behaviors that we might call self-destructive but are often meant to be self-soothing and if we're always burying feelings number one we don't develop tools to deal with and be with our feelings we don't develop the confidence that we can be with our feelings and we think that feelings are always very heavy and the reason one of the reasons why we think the the feelings or emotions are so heavy is not necessarily because the emotions are so heavy but it's because we're always bearing feelings that means we're always walking around the shovel yeah and there's something exhausting about that of always having to be on guard making sure the second feeling might come up we're going to bury it and that that process can happen within ourselves we're trying to bury our own feelings and it can happen when people are trying to console someone else that they're trying to bury the other person's feelings that to them sound negative or not hopeful and the idea of can we can we be with our feelings and if i would just wrap up with my last point i think and this we came across this a lot of messages the idea of that personal touch that when someone is going through something and they feel alone and they could be surrounded by other people they could have 55 lasagnas in their freezer and still feel incredibly alone you know i remember when i was going through something very difficult and it wasn't a common diagnosis at the start for a long tumor i remember saying i i feel really lucky and very lonely also meaning i felt very grateful that i i got it was excellent prognosis and i recovered but it was also a very lonely place to be to be diagnosed with something and not something that a lot of people have so the idea of the personal touch and i think i'm on a practical level i think in between let's say between sending someone a text message or calling is sending a voice note because i think a voice note at least you can hear you can hear what they're saying and it's not just a copy and paste text message right when we hear someone's voice i'm a big fan of handwriting i know hands writing is an endangered species but it's there's something so powerful when you see a handwritten card versus something typed i'm not saying that everyone now needs to start mailing letters although i think it's cool about letters but whatever that's just me but even just something like that of just the idea of showing a personal touch and can make such a difference in how people feel in those moments that it's not about what we say necessarily it's about our ability to be still with them but also to be aware that to be aware of the boundaries even even within that context and and to be able to sit with the humility of the powerlessness of these challenges that we go through and and to be able to be with that and to be able to lean on each other and also understand that these are things a lot of people deal with so with that i'll pass i love that so i mean i guess to wrap it up i would just add to i mean you guys expressed it so beautifully but i guess i would just add like when we are trying not to bypass our feelings you just want to make sure also that like we're not you know we had mentioned in our talk separately we didn't touch on this here but like fixating and versus focusing right so you don't have to like if and we had mentioned this earlier even in this talk like you know if you're not feeling like you you know need to sit with your feelings right now you don't have to so you can decide like right now i don't feel like i want to be in my pain but maybe just being self-aware to ask like but am i avoiding it right now or is this like an actually healthy coping mechanism right now because sometimes that is what we need to do to get through we need to kind of like not process it and we need to just keep moving um you know you can sit with your feelings but don't obsess with them and start living in those feelings and you know say like my therapist told me like it's okay not to be okay so i'm not gonna be okay like but like you said rachel it's okay to be okay too you know um and and we can we shouldn't ignore problems but we also shouldn't pretend that that's all that there is you know and i think that there is that balance of optimism and i think it's important to distinguish even like what are like some optimistic things you can say that are not toxic positivity and i actually had written a post about this i called it non-pollyanna mantras that you can say to yourself because mantras in general i think can be very helpful and i think saying something like this is really hard but like i'm gonna get through it or i know i'm gonna be okay or i know i have support or you know i know my friends care things like that those can be optimistic without like taking away how you're feeling or without denying the reality of your situation um and i think in in some cases yes we do have choice how we want to feel and i think that you should exercise that choice right now i don't want to be miserable i want to get up and take care of my kids because i have to this is my choice right now you know or i don't want to but i'm going to make that choice to get up and do that or i don't want to show up at this thing but i'm going to because i know that ultimately like this is the path to healing so it's not black and white it's extremely nuanced and i love that we did highlight how you know we sometimes feel like our community does not have the language but through all of the tanakh i feel like rabbits and elisheva here just gave us all of this wonderful you know like it is so much a part of our in terms of the jewish community there is that language it does exist and i remember alicia you had a post um around circus time about reading kohelet and about how this time of joy we're reading this like really depressing seems like super you know negative like i hate my life literally that's what it says right and that really stuck with me how it works like a teenager like slamming their door going to their room yeah you know like it's this time of happiness but we're reading about this guy who's like really like like struggling yeah yeah and i think that that was like again it was such a reminder like and even in your caption how you wrote it but it was a reminder of like there is a time and we say that in kohala there is a time for happiness time for sadness there's a time for joy there's a time for mourning like we do have this language with this language and we do validate the the range of human emotions and um we should do that within ourselves and with other people and again i think that something that stuck with me from the answers about what people said gave them hope was when they would hear stories from people who went through similar things and not even about like their personal experience but just when they would see those people show up and say like look i'm here you know like i went through too and i'm here i mean i remember i had recently just gone to show the house of someone who lost a spouse and i went with a friend who had lost her spouse and this person was saying like seeing you here gives me so much comfort you're smiling you know and she's like it just gives me comfort that you're smiling and you're laughing because right now i don't feel like i can but like i see that you're doing it she hadn't even said a word we were just sitting and she was laughing at a story that this person who was mourning was sharing and she's like you're laughing and smiling like i know one day i'm going to be able to help you me too me too presents her presence was so like she hadn't even that's the key she didn't say look i'm smiling so you will too she didn't have to preach it it's the showing up that made it less is more innocence yeah and i thought that was so it was like wow she just came in the room you know presents it was it was my presence and i think the power of presence i think that's kind of even what we have to emphasize we don't have to fix we don't have to put a bow we don't have to tie it up we don't have to promise everything's gonna be okay because we can't you know sometimes we have to like i said not all pain is redeemable sometimes we just have to like sit with that so thank you guys so much for this thank you amudzim for creating this opportunity for us to just like chat and talk about these things um and we look forward to hearing feedback from you guys about your thoughts on this um [Music] and to good things in the future thank you [Music] you