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Book Excerpt from The Power of the Positive

The Power of the Positive: Stories, Strategies, and Insights:Transforming our relationships with hope and joy By Joshua Mark, Ph.D. Stories, strategies & insights to help you harness the power of the positive and transform your relationships & your life with hope & joy, from Dr. Joshua Mark, Ph.d. Buy The Power of the Positive at a special online price at www.targum.com

JOY IS CLOSER THAN YOU THINK

Consider the following make-believe story:

A friend approached me recently with a proposition.

“Josh, I’ve got some really good information on a new hi-tech company. It’s about to go public. You can quadruple your money in a week.”

Normally, I would dismiss such tips as too good to be true. The problem, however, was that my friend was a well-known investment counselor. He definitely knew what he was talking about.

“What’s the minimum investment?” I asked, scared of hearing an amount that I couldn’t possibly afford.

“Ten thousand. And I need it by the end of the week. You know, it takes money to make money.”

“Ten thousand bucks! I don’t have that kind of money lying around. Thanks for the tip, though.”

End of story.

It does take money to make money.

But it takes nothing to experience joy.

In fact, the less you want, the more joy you have.

In the view of Torah-true Yiddishkeit, joy is right now. Any moment that one can fulfill the will of Hashem is a moment that can be filled with joy. And since every single moment of one’s life can be filled with service to Hashem, every single moment can be filled with joy.

Joy is not at the end of a journey. It’s not at the end of a shopping spree. It’s not at the end of a rainbow. Joy is whenever you decide to experience it.

This is the day that Hashem made; let us celebrate and rejoice in it. (Tehillim 118:24)

It’s not tomorrow.
It’s not when you get married.
It’s not when you finish Shas.
It’s not when you lose twenty-five pounds.
It’s not when your son cleans his room.
It’s right now.

TACHLIS DIRECTIVE:

What can you get rid of right now so that joy would take its place?

OUT OF THE DEPTHS I CALL TO YOU

One way that I supported myself while learning in yeshivah was by working as a counselor in a group home for the developmentally disabled. I could fit various shifts around slots in my learning schedule, and since the facility was shomer Shabbos, I often spent Shabbos there.

At the time I was deeply confused. I felt myself to be the lowest thing in the world. The pain had become so intense that escape and death occupied my exhausted mind almost constantly.

Despite how horrible I felt I decided to put in several shifts at the group residence. The truth is that had my boss not told me that one of the other counselors had canceled I would have stayed in my bed for Shabbos. But because they needed me at the group home I gathered the few items I needed and took the subway to Brooklyn.

The men in the particular residence where I worked were very low functioning. Because of their long confinement in state hospitals, they had never received any occupational therapy. Hence, they needed assistance in dressing, bathing, toileting, and eating. Some of them could be impulsive, acting out violently for no apparent reason.

Adding to my low mood, we were even shorter staffed than anticipated. The weather was miserable. This meant that we couldn’t even take the residents to shul, an activity that always seemed to relax them.

Here I was: depressed, suicidal, and exhausted in a room full of profoundly retarded men. Not a fun situation.

In between trying to keep some semblance of control, my mind staggered from one misery to the next.

And that was when I hit bottom. A thought, horrible as it was, flashed through my mind.

Why don’t we euthanize these guys? Why are we keeping them alive? What purpose do they serve?

Even before I finished that horrible thought, I was stunned by its repulsiveness. That is what the Nazis, yemach shemam, did. One of the first groups they killed were the mentally handicapped. How could I even consider such an idea?

I knew that any logic that brought me to the same conclusion as Hitler must be wrong. The reason that we don’t “dispose,” rachmana litzlan, of these men is because they were created in the image of Hashem. Regardless of their capacity, they retain Hashem’s image.

And it was with this realization that I finally understood the Torah ideal of self-esteem. On this agonizing, rain-filled Shabbos afternoon I knew that my value as a person had nothing to do with what I did or didn’t do. Nothing could ever erase it. My value as a child of Hashem was etched in my very skin.

That “eureka moment” was a turning point. From that moment I knew I could go easier on myself. It was an important step on the way back to joy.

TACHLIS DIRECTIVE:

What imperfection, mistake, or failing is preventing you from feeling like a child of Hashem?

MAN’S BEST FRIEND AND CLINICAL DEPRESSION

Much of the modern understanding of clinical depression dates back to the 1960s. At the time, the pioneering American psychologist Martin Seligman was studying helplessness, which refers to the state in which a normally capable person is unable to solve seemingly simple problems.

Much of Seligman’s understanding came from an unexpected source: a dog.

As a young graduate student, Seligman worked in a behavioral lab at the University of Pennsylvania. The lab made heavy use of dogs in its psychological experiments.

One of these experiments was intended to determine if dogs could be taught to respond the same way in many different situations.

In order to find this out, the researchers began by pairing a mild electric shock with a musical tone. When the dog was shocked, the tone was sounded. While undergoing this “training,” the dogs were restrained and unable to avoid the shock. Over time, whenever the tone was sounded, the dogs began to whimper pathetically even if there was no shock.

Once the dogs were sufficiently trained, they were transferred to a large cage which gave them plenty of space to move around. They could run, jump, and move about as they pleased. The scientists then sounded the musical tone, expecting the dogs to react to it by jumping back to avoid the imminent shock.

Guess what?

Try as they might, the researchers could not get those mutts to move. When they heard the tone, the animals simply lay down in their places and whimpered.

Tone after tone, nothing could be done to get the dogs to move.

Young Seligman, observing this unexpected reaction, began to wonder.Was it possible that during the initial shock-tone training the dogs had learned that there was nothing that they could do to avoid pain? Had these dogs been taught that resistance was futile? Had they learned to be so helpless in the face of pain that even when they could actually do something, they remained helpless?

The answer, of course, was yes. The dogs had learned from the first stage of the experiment that there was nothing they could do to make their lives better. They were stuck. They had learned to become helpless.

I often share this story with my patients. They always connect to it. Like these poor dogs, they too feel helpless. Everywhere they look they see pain and fear. Nothing they have done in the past has helped, so they feel that nothing in the future will help either.

Their attitude, in brief, is, What’s the sense of trying? Passivity leads to demoralization, which in turn leads to more passivity.

During my training in cognitive therapy I had a patient, Avromi, who exhibited this crippling helplessness. A recently divorced graduate student, he was immobilized by his depression.

Over the past several years, he had gone through a number of extremely difficult experiences. An extended period of unemployment led to significant financial problems. Difficulties with his graduate thesis caused a great deal of anxiety and disappointment. And finally the unraveling of his marriage appeared to knock him down for good.

His helplessness was understandable.

Yet over the course of several months he emerged from the worst of his depression, and within a year he was fully back in the game of life.

What happened?

Let’s go back to the dogs for a moment. If you’ll recall, the dogs were ultimately placed in a cage where there was no actual shock. The only problem they faced was a musical tone, which reminded them of an electric shock. Their present situation was vastly different from the one they had been in previously. Yet their biased perceptions led them to conclude incorrectly that they were helpless.

This is what psychologists call a “perceptual bias.”

And it is the most destructive thinking error of the depressed person. Unless the depressed person can break with this perceptual bias, he or she will, just like the dogs, continue to see only the walls and none of the opportunities.

Early in our work together, Avromi and I began to examine what he could and couldn’t do. It was clear that he felt trapped. He saw all of the conditions of his life that confirmed his feelings. As we examined these conditions, he admitted that there was much he could do. And with some courage and faith, he took the action necessary to prove to himself that his perceptions were wrong. He did, in fact, have choices and power.

TACHLIS DIRECTIVE:

What is making you feel helpless right now?

Buy The Power of the Positive at an online discount at www.targum.com

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