110723 Monroe Institute First Meditation Session - Impressions

I realized that I could lock the door to my office and do a Hemisync Discovery Introductory session.

I wanted to do this because after everything I have been learning from Reishis Chochma and now Sefer HaGilgulim with Reb, I have somehow cycled back to the Rabbi where I got my start in Torah and religion.

I ended up here because I was looking for English translations of the Hebrew Kisvei haAri books I was learning, and I came across one of Rabbi BT's videos which caught my interest. He said that astral travel was real (even from a Torah perspective) and that even though Robert Monroe from the Monroe Institute got the practice and described the experiences accurately, he didn't know Torah so his names for the places and the experiences were very scientific (although they accurately described what goes on spiritually).

[Just so we are clear, I think the concept of "astral travel" is hokey and stupid... but when you call it "tefisas haDerech," well, that made me curious.]

The connection between Robert Monroe, Hemisync, and Torah blew my mind because I spent SO MUCH TIME before becoming religious practicing and dabbling in Holosync and Hemisync binaural brainwave technology.  Seeing this connection, I realized I might have the perfect background to check this out and maybe practice it for real.

And, with all of the learning with Reb, so much has opened up for me spiritually, so these experiences have also opened up for me. I am not fighting this, but I am exploring this with deep interest.

First of all, it is better to do this than to play video games, waste my energy doing nothing, or watch Netflix. Plus, if this stuff works, that would be super cool.

Rabbi BT says that Judaism is not only supposed to be studied intellectually (like rules of Halacha) but Judaism is supposed to be EXPERIENCED, like meditating on the letter Aleph or doing more advanced meditations to experience Hashem and all of his creations (not just the physical within the bounds and limitations of the physical world). He says there is more, and it is there for us if we want to do the work to try to achieve it and experience it.

"This guy (Robert Monroe) did, so why can't I? (a frum Jew with Torah, Mitzvos, a family, etc.)"

So Robert Monroe wrote a book about his experiences. I've been reading that voraciously so that 1) I can compare it to what a spiritual experience would be, 2) so that I can learn the characters in the spiritual world and know what to expect, and 3) so that I can try this out myself.

On top of that, Dr. Monroe got to these experiences with mere visualizations. But then years later, he went on to create technology (Hemisync) that can alter the brainwaves to allow the meditator to enter these altered states of consciousness. Focus 3, Focus 10, whatever -- I don't know them yet.

AND, I HAVE GOOD EXPERIENCE AND KNOW HOW TO USE THIS DEVICE.

My idea is to play his audio Hemisync courses while at the same time, wearing the Muse brainwave feedback headband to get active feedback on whether I am properly modulating my brainwaves into a meditative state or not.

On top of this, I have the Neurowhatever white neckband which can send signals to my brain to move towards various deeper states of awareness.

I have my arsenal, AND I have my Torah and my desire to connect to Hashem and explore spiritually to see what there is to see. This has GOTTA be fun!

So here was my first experience:

11/7/2023, 4:45pm, my office, door closed, locked.

I found it difficult at first to modulate the Muse brainwave device because it was giving static (meaning I was in an agitated state). I noticed the A/C fan was blowing on me, and it couldn't be good to have a fan blowing on my body if I was trying to leave my physical body, so I turned it off.

I was able to get the Muse device quiet, which meant I was 'doing well' meditating (whatever that means). The neckband was running a "Vagus Nerve" program, and even though this wasn't the meditation-inducing program I wanted, I didn't want to change the program because it is an experimental program that I wanted to keep installed and active on my neckband.

I opened the "heavy box," from the audio instructions, put my physical belongings into it, turned my back, and then just listened and relaxed, focusing on the brainwave feedback every time it got noisy.

At one point, there was chanting "ohm" or "ah" as part of the Hemisync tuning program. I thought it was powerful, and at one point I wondered if everything I was hearing was the audio, or perhaps I was already doing something more.  The reason I mentioned this is because I've done these audios many times before, but at one point I thought I recognized a voice that didn't belong to the tape.  "I'm imagining this for sure," I thought, and moved on.

Either way, I found it deepening to do this. I tried "Voo" to go along with the Vagus nerve signals [to connect to the 'gut' emotional brain, why not?], but that seemed not to go along with the "ohm" so I resumed the audio tuning.

I'm not sure if this next part happened before or after the audio tuning, but it was interesting to me, especially since I am reading Dr. Monroe's book on his own good AND BAD experiences with astral travel, so he was giving us suggestions which I understood were suggestions to ask for spiritual guidance from GOOD spiritual beings (who were more advanced than us), not from bad ones who could hurt, imprison, or attach themselves to us [you know, to "eat" us like we are food].

So while he said the requests and asked us to repeat them after him, I did, but since this is a spiritual journey for me and I am a Jew, I said the spiritual requests in Hebrew (as best as I could). What I didn't know in Hebrew, I just used the English words he suggested.

This was powerful for me because I realized that maybe I could attract to me spiritual helpers or "good" beings who could guide me further on this exploratory path rather than attracting klipot or spiritual animals who would see me merely as food to eat and devour. So this gave me some reassurance that I was doing the right thing.

At one point, I realized I was very relaxed, so I figured now would be a good time to do some "Yichudim" (if that is what this is called). I am reading an Aryeh Kaplan book on Kabbalah & Meditation, so this is where I got the idea to do this (aside from the fact that Rabbi BT told me to focus my anger and hatred using the sheimos of Hashem at the terrorists in Gaza, I was nervous tapping into this energy so quickly). Better to start with Y-K-V-K and A-D-N-Y yichudim (I said this with sarcasm; mixing the names of Hashem seemed to me to be akin to be playing with gunpowder and not having any idea what I was doing); but mixing holy named seemed to be "safer" than digging into the "left Kav" of pure Gevurah and channeling that like a lazer at my enemies in Gaza.  

So I got interrupted when trying to do the Y-K-V-K first, so I decided to do it with A-D-N-Y first.

I pictured a big white mountain, and before the mountain was the A; the mountain was the Y. Then before the next mountain was the D; the mountain was K, and so on.

I remember the komatz and patach and tzeiri, etc. sounds, and how to move my neck [from the Sefer Yetzirah courses I did many years ago before I was frum], so I did that too (although my Muse brainwave device didn't like the movements and it got static'y). I am guessing this was roughly 10 minutes into it because the Muse started sensing a lot of movement after 10 minutes.

I was able to do the A-Y-D-H-... yichudim, and then I did it the other way around with Y-K-V-K first.  They are both names of Hashem, so I couldn't imagine it would hurt flipping them around.

I wasn't looking for a response; I was actually happy with myself that I was able to keep the focus so I could complete it. Doing Yichudim sometimes can get really long and complicated, so doing just this for me was something I was proud of.

Until this point, my heart rate was between 84 bpm - 95 bpm, but after I started doing the Yichudim, my heart rate dropped down to 74 bpm - 84 bpm. I don't know if that meant anything, but what I did notice was that the oscillations of my brainwaves picked up steadily after 10 minutes.

The oscillations didn't mean I was in a deeper state. I wasn't. But the brainwave activity really picked up after the 10-minute point and remained high throughout the rest of the session.

I'm not sure what happened next, but we were supposed to go deeper. We were supposed to imagine that various parts of our face were getting sucked into our brain. "Weird," I thought, "but OK."

I did it, and as I remained in that state, I noticed that my forehead was getting hot. It didn't bother me, but I noticed the temperature change, and I was wondering whether this was a good thing or not.

I continued the meditation, and it seemed to be uneventful. I was surprised that I made it this far because I usually fall asleep by now, so I was impressed that I was still present and awake.

At one point, the speaker (Dr. Monroe) suggested that if I ever want to get back into this state, just take the fingers of my right hand, and touch them against the back of my head. "An Anchor!" I thought. "COOL!" This will be useful if I ever want to return here! (wherever "here" was).

Then, he installed another anchor. "If you want to remember what you are experiencing in this state, touch your fingers to the center of your forehead." "Cool," I thought, and I did that.

Then the Muse 30-minute session expired and the sound feedback turned off. I assumed this was what happened.

Shortly afterward (the 40-minute session was ending). I was surprised that Dr. Monroe took so long to get us back in our bodies to wake up, and he had a whole SLEW of suggestions, basically to make the body, the nerves, the endocrine system, or whatever function the way it was supposed to.

"Some hypnotic suggestions for health couldn't hurt here," I thought, and I was happy to entertain the suggestions. However, honestly, I had a difficult time understanding exactly what he was talking about. His speaking seemed like a foreign 'science' language to me.  I was a bit weirded out by this, "Why give such complicated hypnotic suggestions that the brain wouldn't be unable to understand?" I thought, but since I saw that he does this in another course I was looking at last night, I assumed this is what he was doing here. "I'll take it," I thought.

Then I woke up, refreshed, and then I changed the baby's diaper and checked on the kids.

In hindsight, the "not understanding his closing hypnotic suggestions" thing bothered me somewhat.  Not that there was something wrong here, but based on what I was reading in Robert Monroe's book, it occurred to me that I might not have actually been "here" when listening to his suggestions.  It occurred to me that maybe I was "somewhere else," and that is why I didn't understand his language and why his suggestions didn't seem to make sense.  [I am not giving myself this much credit yet -- I am *NOT* anything other than a real beginner on this topic -- but it does weird me out a bit that maybe I didn't understand his words because I might have been "somewhere else," on the way back to "here."]

In sum, honestly, I don't think this experience was meaningful or that anything out of the ordinary happened.  But perhaps if I had to choose a few items, what for me was noteworthy was 1) the 10-minute mark -- what did I do at 10 minutes, and why did my brainwaves get so active? Did I successfully 'do' something with my meditation? And why did my pulse drop almost 20 bpm (from 95bpm-75bpm) during this same time? What relevance was it that my pulse slowed from 10 minutes onwards?  The second noteworthy item (and I think this is stupid), 2) why didn't I understand his hypnotic suggestions at the close of the session?  Hypnotic suggestions are supposed to be simple so they can be acted upon by the brain and the unconscious mind.

Also in sum, the reason I wrote this down is that I intend to take this further and to experiment further. I am wondering whether something I wrote here can be referred back to later, or maybe something I 'heard' in the experience, I later discover "wasn't on the tape." [That would be creepy.] So that is why I wrote all of this down.

I also secretly feel that I am in a place in my life where it is appropriate and healthy to try this type of meditation. I am hoping this will deepen my religious observance, my Torah study, and it will get me closer to Hashem.

I have a sadness that maybe I'm not doing everything that I could or should be doing. Like for example, if I am dabbling in this kind of spirituality, I should be saying brachos, davening, and putting on Tallis and Tefillin each day, on time (b'zman). ...For my own protection, of course. 

I also learned that these Jewish everyday "mundane" religious practices (brachos, davening, tefillin, mikvah, kashrut, etc.) actually have deep, far, and wide spiritual effects that we are not taught about and that we have no idea we are doing. We just know "this is good, this is bad, this is what we are supposed to do because it is good for us." 

Was this ignorance of what is happening spiritually the plan all along? To make us a spiritual nation but not have us understand how we are creating and affecting the worlds around us and within us? That seems wrong.  

The Rebbe'im over time all had spiritual experiences, as did the chassidim -- in their davening, in their deveikus, in their meditations, etc.  But our generation is so dry, so lacking in spirituality, even though Chassidus and revelation is so much part of our everyday lives.  

We understand Hashem so deeply with Maamarim, Sichos, and with our daily Torah study and observance of Shabbos and the Holidays... But unless we are caught in a niggun, or we are part of a good quality farbrengen, or we break into some kind of achdus dance, really, there is little going on spiritually, at least where we can tangably experience that 'something' is happening.

Maybe this experiment in meditation will fix that.  Maybe you will figure out what I am talking about and you will try this stuff too, so there will be two of us, then three, then three thousand, then a hundred thousand, and so on.  At a minimum, I'll start with my own meditation and shoring up my own observance so that I only do good by meditating and that I don't end up lost, psychotic, or dead.

The importance of "shtill" - don't analyze when speaking to your wife. Just listen and respond.

 061223 Monday 6/12/2023 Lori Therapy Meeting

In this morning's therapy meeting, we focused on how my wife does not feel like I am listening to her. She thinks my responses to her are mechanical and unemotional, and so our conversations die a horrible death.

My frustration when communicating - no "stated" emotions to grasp onto.

On my end, I am feeling frustrated that I am unable to get anything tangible from her emotionally -- words -- that I can grasp onto, analyze, and properly respond to. As a result, I have no idea how to respond to her or to know what follow-up questions to ask in order to keep the conversation going. So they end, and I feel unfulfilled because "nothing happened" in our conversation, and I got nothing out of it that could help me to get closer to my wife.

The exercise - "Just Listening and Responding"

The therapist did an exercise where I just closed my eyes and listened to her. I listened, and just responded. When my wife said that she felt disappointed that something didn't go the way she hoped it would be, I responded, "sorry, that must be frustrating... or, that must have sucked." But I didn't add in anything of my own thoughts.

I didn't try to add in any "pearls of wisdom," nor did I try to elicit further how the experience made her feel (which is ordinarily what I would do in a conversation from her -- I would try to find out how what she is telling me affected her, at which she gets frustrated that I am not hearing her, she gets angry at me, and the conversation dies a terrible death, and I am left confused and frustrated.

Rather, if I just listen and respond naturally, WITHOUT trying to elicit her emotions or to see how something effected her -- if I just respond and say nothing -- then she could feel that I am hearing and sharing her emotions, and that I am actually hearing her rather than pushing away the emotions that are "all there laid out in front of me," by trying to have her give a name to her emotions so that I can properly respond to them.

Today's Lesson - Be Quiet, Don't Analyze, Just Listen and Respond.

So the lesson for today is shtill (in English, "be quiet.") Just be quiet when speaking to your wife. Just listen, respond with, "oh, that must have felt X," or "oh, that's terrible" and say NOTHING MORE. Maybe then she'll feel like you are actually understanding her feelings.

My thoughts? My wife seemed very interested in this idea, so maybe we're on to something. Me? I don't think this will work. I don't think we'll get the opportunity to have these interactions because I'm concerned that she won't share with me her thoughts or her feelings. But let's see. I'll try this.

Reflection: How analyzing words blocks my ability to just listen.  Presence.

The Mindsera AI (link) had an interesting question -- it was asking me, "how might your desire to analyze and respond to your wife's emotions be impacting your ability to truly listen to her and be present in the conversation?"

I think that [at least for myself], by always searching for the emotion -- for always seeking to see not some event as it is, but the event as how it has an affect on the person experiencing it, I am taking myself "out of the conversation," and instead of being present for her so that she can feel like I am actually listening to her, I am in my analytical head trying to figure out how she is feeling and how I can help her feel better, more supported, etc. But instead of doing this, I am literally emotionally abandoning her by not staying with her and her emotions when she shares them with me.

Thinking Forward -- Going Deeper!?!?

That's an interesting insight. Do you think her and I can "go deeper together" by just meeting her here at the surface? I wonder what that could mean, what that could feel, what that could do for our closeness, etc. Can this actually help our marriage? Is this really "a thing"?!

061123 "The Keystone" and "The Black & Grey Globs" (Blocking Emotions)

 061123 June 5, 2023 Therapy Session with Lori (Continued) -

I keep procrastinating on this topic, so I have no doubt it is important. Lori (our therapist) thinks that while I might be in tune with my emotions, she observed that they are not coming through in my facial expressions or my body language.

She had me do an "eyes closed" visualization, which I enthusiastically participated in. I thought it was a "parts therapy" kind of exercise, but she gave me the name for it (something else), but the name eluded me.

With my eyes closed, she asked whether there was any part of me which was stopping me from experiencing my emotions.

YES there was -- "The Keystone."

Visualization: The Keystone:

The Keystone was a child's wooden block toy shaped in the shape of a bridge. It was straight on the top and sides, but it was a semicircle on the bottom. It called itself the "Keystone" because without it, all the other pieces of the bridge fall apart into pieces.

The Keystone also had the shape of a black-and-white triangular antenna. It said it was hundreds of years old, and that it joined me when I was born. It later told me that I created it which contradicted its initial statement, but to me, it seemed like an angel (a malach).

Lori was asking questions to get me doubt whether I really wanted it around. It seemed like she wanted me to realize that it might have served a helpful purpose at one point in my life -- like the "Framework" which came to me in an earlier visualization that I built up and around a blackened-soot-and-angry childlike version of me -- but I actually enjoyed the presence of The Keystone.

The Keystone genuinely desired to help me and to protect me "from the wooden spikes that would shoot out of my heart and injure me deeply." (Funny how it was a wooden toy, and the spikes were from the same wooden toy set - I wonder if there is something there latent in my memories with that set.)

I imagined that maybe it was evil (and I visualized it as possibly evil), but it really radiated a warmth and a protective comfort. I didn't want to kick it out of my psyche -- rather, I wanted to hug it and thank it for protecting me all these years. It was quite tired from all the hard work, but it was willing to persist for as long as I needed it. It did this out of a sense of loyalty and duty to keep me safe. This seemed to be it's reason for being inside me.

Lori had me show it around to my "adult" life -- my wife, my home, my shul, my kids. I think she was trying to have me ask it if still thought it was needed in my life or not. It asked me this, and I answered that I do still need it in my life, and I appreciate all the help and safety it continues to give me from the spikes shooting out of my heart.

Lori wanted me to ask it if it was willing to step aside, and it was willing to, but it was concerned I would be injured [not killed, but badly hurt] by the spikes from my heart.

The AI from Mindsera.com (link) wants me to answer, "What would it feel like to fully embrace and express your emotions without the presence of "The Keystone"?"

Funny, it thinks The Keystone prevents me from expressing my emotions.

Lori also had me visualize this. Without The Keystone, I would get injured by painful emotions that my heart is ejecting out of it, but I would live. I realized that The Keystone could be bypassed by asking it to be transparent. It is still there if I do this, but I deactivate its function, and it is willing to let me do this.

I don't think I get positive benefits from this, because it appears to me as if the job of The Keystone was only to prevent me from getting hit by the spikes because they can badly hurt and injure me. I have not thought much about what the spikes actually are (although I have imagined a few times that they remind me only about the COVID spikes, but these are actually like thin wooden sharp cylinders which are so thin they are thick, but needle-like.

Without The Keystone, I would still not be able to feel my emotions because... I noticed that there are two other characters also protecting me.

Visualization: The Black & Grey Globs

At first I thought it was one large, thick, black, slippery but rubberlike glob that was covering over my heart ("The Black Glob"), but then I realized that there were two of these (the second one was more grey'ish, and it looked the same, but it said it shared a different function) ("The Greyish Glob").

What was interesting to me is that The Black Glob did not want me knowing it was there. As soon as I noticed it, it caused me to forget what it looked like. The Grey Glob did this too (made me not be able to see it), but it seemed busy doing its work while The Black Glob was more concerned about me seeing it.

I thought it was silly that The Black Glob thought I wouldn't be able to remember what it looked like because I had a short term memory of what it looked like. However, I was impressed and a bit surprised as how effective it was at causing me to be unable to see it, as if it didn't turn itself invisible, but rather, it literally blinded me as to its existence.

I still, however, was aware of its presence even when I couldn't see it anymore, but I knew it was still listening to me and it would respond to my questions.

The Black and Grey Glob each were pretty focused on its mission. I do not know what the grey one was doing -- it seemed busy during my visualization -- but the Black Glob's job was literally to thickly cover over the bright red radiance of my heart, specifically to absorb the wooden spikes that shoot out of it quite frequently.

When I spoke to it in Lori's visualization, it too seemed to have good motives, namely, it was there called by me to protect me from the spikes. However, the Black Glob seemed more intent on doing its job with a serious intensity which I found to be interesting.

Lori had me show these Globs my adult home, my wife, my family, etc., but the Globs didn't seem interested in stepping aside. It seemed they were unimpressed, and more focused on their mission rather than communicating with me to do my will or my bidding.

The Keystone had Self-Awareness; the Globs were Machines.

While the Keystone seemed to have its own consciousness or benevolence to it, the Globs seemed like they were task-oriented entities, like a fireman putting out a fire, or a vacuum cleaner seeking out the mess that spilled.

Trying to Switch them Off

Without the Keystone and the Globs, I believe I would experience more emotions without them accidentally filtering and in some cases with the Globs, accidentally blocking them entirely in their attempts to contain the spikes which would damage and injure me.

I tried to imagine they were all transparent (meaning, switched off), so the spikes and everything else would express my heart's feelings to me, but noticing that I was squeezing my eyes and feeling sadness and pain in my heart, I am concerned that there is a lot of this that is being covered up also.

That was all I wanted to cover. I shared this with my wife and she was impressed that I had such visualizations with Lori, but she didn't have any other comment.

Poison in the Heart

Personally, I think this trio helps me to manage an otherwise raw and inflamed heart. I think there is an inflammation of the heart, and it is shooting the spikes to eject the poison from my heart. These spikes might be feelings of sadness or pain, they could also be anger.  Intuition tells me this is cortisol.

The problem is that I don't think I am in a healthy emotional place, especially if I am visualizing a raw and aggravated heart which is pumping and shooting out poison just to survive. I think I am poisoning it with my pain, and my heart is just trying to survive.

I imagined what would happen to me if I were hit with the spikes, but I don't know the answer. I think they would stick in me, but my immune system would be knocked out and I would get sick. 

I would really love to stop feeding my heart poison -- these are clearly my emotional stresses and sadness and pain, just as they are the additional stress I carry from trying so hard to manage my ADHD while at the same time keeping myself deceptively productive and normal (not showing that I am struggling to keep my executive functions at "normal" levels) just so that I do not "annoy" those around me with my stupidities.

061123 Sunday Afternoon, No Love For You.

Okay, so after a few brief interludes of pushing myself to share with my wife that I am genuinely interested in going as deep as possible with her, a few minutes ago, I came out of my office, and with humor, hiked up my pants to emulate my kids in jest (my daughter came downstairs expecting to go out wearing almost nothing), so I too exposed my body parts to show how silly it looks to have so much exposed.

I told my wife that I am in my office working, but if she gets overwhelmed -- even with her superhuman ability to have the kids all jump on her -- just come into my office and I will stop what I am doing and I will come out and give her some slack. I do have work to do, but I am not doing anything that needs a response this minute.

She came into my office and shared excitedly that she is taking our oldest daughter to sushi tonight, and that she felt that she is getting through to her. Honestly, I didn't hear what she said because I was so excited that she was joining me in my office that I thought that finally, we are starting to act like a couple again.

After we spoke, instead of sitting back and returning to my work as I would have done in the past, I took a chance and I pulled her lovingly towards me -- her standing, me sitting on a chair -- and I was going to give her a hug.

Instead, her eyes widened and she said, "no - you don't get that yet. I'm still upset with you for what you did to me." (Or honestly, something of the sort.) I am so overwhelmed with sadness and confusion by this rejection - yet again, a perfect running streak of rejections where my gestures of love are not accepted by her - that while I should I totally have seen the rejection coming, I stupidly thought that maybe she had forgiven me, and that maybe we were taking a first step to healing our broken marriage.

So, let's do this emotional audit thing. I'm paying $14.99/mo for it here with Mindsera.com (here's a referral link) so let's see what comes of it.

1. What kind of sensations do you feel in your body right now?

I feel sadness in my heart. My face is scrunched up in a ball, my eyes are squinting because I am feeling emotional pain and I am either trying not to cry, or I really do want to cry. No idea.

My lips are curled in a frown - at first I thought this was disgust, especially because I feel the anger of my teeth behind my lips exerting themselves, and because my jaw is tight and my teeth are clenched, but really, the lips are in a frown of sadness.

I also have a foggy headache, as if I cannot believe that just happened... again.

My heartrate is elevated, and I can feel a tightness in my chest from the sadness. I am also slouched over and I really want to just crawl into a ball and cry.

2. What kind of thoughts do you have right now?

I am thinking that I can't believe that I got rejected yet again. I feel so stupid that I misread the situation yet again. I am so upset with myself that I thought hopefully that maybe... MAYBE... she was over her anger and her disgust for me, and that she was finally willing to forgive me for whatever she still believes I did to her (or specifically, that I neglected to dig deeper into her three experiences last week), and that maybe we were going to resume having a loving and connected relationship that actually involves us not standing six feet apart from one another. Nope.

I feel stupid that I have no idea what she was thinking when she came in here. What did she want from me then if not my emotional support, comfort, affirmation, and love? Why did she jump back in horror when I reached out to pull her in by her hips to hug her and share that I love her? Why is she always so oppositional to gestures of love and intimacy?

I am feeling hurt in my heart that I will never have a loving relationship with her. I am feeling that she no longer loves me and that she just wants me around so that she can get past the parenting stage of our life so that she can plan her exit. I feel rejected. I feel sad. I feel despondent, I feel like a loser, I feel unloved, I feel tricked, I feel manipulated, I feel used.

3. Do you feel overstimulated?

Well no, I didn't feel overstimulated when I started writing, but the more that I focused on the sadness, the confusion, and the anger from being rejected yet again -- yeah, I'm feeling a bit overstimulated from my own emotions, and I feel the need to just shut them down and distract myself from them so that I can go back to some more "productive" journaling.

I guess I could go for a walk now, or I could go out to get some fresh air, but I find that sitting with a journal and outpouring my feelings is probably also a healthy option (although I acknowledge the value of a walk right about now). But then the journal won't happen and I'll get distracted with something else.

4. If you would need to name the emotion, what would you call it?

I would call the emotion "hurt," "disappointment," "hope unfulfilled," even "rejected," "anger," "even seething disgust for manipulating me again and leading me on," or something like that. I would have rather that you (wife) left me alone and let me think rather than further drive a nail or a wedge deeper between us.

5. When did you start to feel that way, and what caused it?

The rejection? Easy. When I went to hug her thinking that FINALLY, we emotionally connected, and then her eyes widened and then boom, rejection. I felt stupid and annoyed at myself for even trying.

So what was the trigger? Reaching out physically, touching her, and then experiencing that she recoils away from me yet again in disgust.

6. Is it something life-threatening?

Honestly? Am I going to die right now because she rejected me yet again? No. I'm a big boy and I know how to handle my emotions.

Am I going to die eventually of not being touched? Yes.

Am I over-dramatizing my feelings because I am emotional about being rejected? Not really. I don't expect much from her, and I had no intention of her reaching back out to me and hugging me back, chos v'sholom, nor did I expect a loving response, a kiss, or any kind of intimate response. What I did expect was that she would enjoy being touched and that she would enjoy that her husband reached out lovingly towards her and pulled her into him so that he can push his chest against her stomach and lay his head in her bosom.

I was hoping to just spend a moment sharing my emotions with her and loving her. I was hoping that she would experience that I love her, and that whatever her emotional turmoil that caused her to come into my office for support, I hoped that in addition to good advice, good listening, good reflective speaking, a smile, and some encouragement, I thought she would also enjoy a bit a physical connection too.  Nope, that was just me.

Looking back to just now a few minutes or weeks from now? What just happened was inconsequential. It will have no affect on our future, and it is just yet one more rejected attempt to reach out and touch.

7. Is there anything about that emotion that you don't understand?

I don't remember what emotion I was feeling, because I have already calmed myself down and moved on. Being rejected by her is nothing new. Honestly, 99% of the time, I don't even try to have any physical contact with her because she will almost 100% of the time reject it. So, why should just now have been any different?

Usually I just give her space, but after what we just went through these past few days (where she completely had a hissy fit of rage and anger over putting thoughts into my head I was not thinking), I thought perhaps this was an "I'm sorry" from her, or at least an attempt at a reconciliation so that we can have a better marriage.

What don't I understand about MY emotion? I don't know why I keep reaching out to her. I don't know why I keep trying. I don't know why I have endless optimism that perhaps this time things will be different. Things are never different. She doesn't love me. She thinks I am a selfish bastard.

8. What can you learn from this experience?

What can I learn from this? To keep my f*n hands to myself. To stop seeing her as my wife, and to start seeing her as someone who has already disconnected herself from me.

I should probably just shut down my emotions or learn to express them with other people. Apparently Hashem didn't want me to have a wife. I am a workhorse, not a person. I am a thing to be used and thrown away when she is done with me. I should probably learn to live with that because I'd rather live this life of emotional emptiness and move on once the kids are grown up rather than move on now (already grey) and try to "find love" with all the other divorced men who were smart enough to leave their wives before they started a family together.  I would never destroy my family trying to find my own happiness, especially because there is still the possibility that my wife is right and that I really am the problem here.

Rather, I'll just keep growing, and I'll become a better person whether my wife can see it or not. Then if she still sees me as a piece of garbage she can throw away, by the time we're older, assuming I was unsuccessful in endlessly trying over and over again (I'll never stop) to show her love and support, maybe I'll have come to terms that she was never able to receive love, and I'll find other ways to find connection, tranquility and peace. Maybe I'll take up boxing, and I'll find my source of connection in life getting punched in the face.  It seems that is less painful than being stabbed in the heart.  Realitically, I do realize that there is a strong possibility that I am the cause of my own problems here.

OK, answering honestly. I need to learn from this experience that nobody just forgives another person overnight, and that relationships take time to heal, and I should give our relationship as much time as it needs. After all, I have another 16 years to burn before my kids are grown up and are out of the house. I am hoping that by then I will have fixed the problems here, and if not, maybe I'll have the humility then to love and accept my wife for whoever she is, as she is.  Maybe by then I will have found another way of expressing and feeling love, and we'll be getting along great!

9. What would be one to three things that you can do in the future not to feel that way again?

HAHA how do I not feel rejected again? Stop trying to improve things. Stop trying to reach out to her in love. Learn to read the room and not to let my hopes and my wishes influence the actual vapid unemotional emptiness and abyss of nothing but broken dreams that is probably really in front of me.

So yeah, avoid the trigger. Find my own ways to give myself the hugs I need. Give hugs to the kids, have meaningful relationships with friends and community members, lay under my heavy blanket when I need a hug. Anything but try to get it from someone who can't understand how much I need it.

In the instructions, it says, "other times we need to let go of things, end a negative relationship, or go to therapy." End a negative relationship... that makes me want to cry.

10. What could you do right now to feel better?

I could end this stupid line of questioning which is only leading me further down the thought process of being angry at both myself for thinking something might someday be there when I'm already very worried that she's no longer there emotionally. The therapist says she is starting to reach out, and I'll believe that when I see it. But at this point, I could only keep her happy by doing things for her, watching the baby when she wants me to watch him, take care of the kids and do anything I can to alleviate her from her being a parent, and give her as much freedom as she needs to find ways to fly the coup.

At this point in my old age with my grey'ing beard, I am more than happy to sacrifice my own physical needs for love and touch and intimacy and closeness, and having the kind of relationship I'm pretty sure a Jewish husband and wife are supposed to have together in return for providing for my family with love and being a present and loving father (as much as I can) that brings our children up with good values and moral support. If love is in the card for me, I'll get it when I get it.  I just hope it ends up being with my wife where we have a long, happy marriage together and we die at an old age in each other's arms.

11. How much has your emotional state improved compared to how you felt at the beginning of this session?

I'm actually feeling a bit better about this. I'm feeling more "calm in my head." I have come to terms with my situation, and while I can always be hopeful that things will improve, I won't be stupidly optimistic like I just was. I should always remember who I am dealing with. I don't know what or who broke her and shut her down emotionally, but at least I'll give her a good life and a good parenting experience.  Beyond that, let's hope there is something left between us once our kids leave the home and we are forced to look at our relationship as husband and wife, and not only as father and mother.  

I do have to admit that every rejection, every opening and then rapidly shutting down again, every attempt followed by a certain withdrawal really chips away at me emotionally.  I feel like it deprives me of my humanity, of my sanity, and it leaves me hurt and jaded.  Sometimes I'm so afraid to even try because I really don't want to experience the rejection that is certain to be the result, or the result after whatever pyrrhic victory I might experience in momentarily succeeding in lowering her shield (only to disappoint her immediately afterwards and feel the guillotine of sadness and dejection as soon as her shields come crashing back into place like armor securing her from further perceived hurt or misunderstanding).

In sum, my heart is still racing, and I'm annoyed and a bit angry. I am truly loving, however, the prompts the AI is giving me. It is basically telling me to stop trying to get the intimacy and connection I desire, and find other "outlets" to experience intimacy and connection. Hahaha.

G-d, you make those permissible outlets forbidden, and yet you put me right it the path of sin in order to satisfy my desires for connection while at the same time keeping me from experiencing real love and connection through the "kosher" ways I am supposed to sublimate my desires and channel my love and natural inclinations in a holy and G-dly way. Why don't you just order me to keep kosher while you are at it, but forbid me from eating anything fleishig except pig? Do you really want me to eat nothing at all? Ever? Really? Do you really have that much trust in me to think that I can be that holy?

June 5, 2023 Therapy Session (Why I Block Emotions)

My Therapist says I don't let my emotions out.

The premise of this morning's session was that after so many years of thinking that I was in touch with my emotions (I still think I am), while I might be feeling my emotions, I have been informed that they are not being expressed in my facial expressions or my body language.

I am stoic. I am like a poker player. There is no "tell" as to how I am feeling, and my body language blocks this too.

I always thought that was a good thing, especially since I feel so much loneliness, pain, and sadness each day. Who would want to let something like that out into the world for other people to see? Why let my emotions out? ...AS IF someone would see my sadness and they would feel ANYTHING for me?! AS IF someone would take a moment and share a kind gesture or a bit of non-selfish warmth towards me?

If I cannot get this from the woman I love -- from the most important person in my life -- then why in the world would I dare risk the pain of feeling these crap feelings if there is nobody there to express them to, or to share them with??

I am alone.

I know emotions need to be experienced or they won't go away.

I know, I am only speaking emotionally. It is so important for me to feel my emotions -- all of them, even the painful ones. Without feeling them, they don't just go away; they wait there... lurking... in line waiting for me to be ready to give them the love and attention they deserve. THEN, when I feel them, they feel comfortable leaving me and they are free to be released back into the world.

Loneliness in Marriage

But I don't want to feel these emotions. None of them. I don't want to feel sad, despondent, lonely... like a failure that I made really stupid decisions in my life, and now I am stuck in a relationship that I don't want to leave, but which leaves me unfulfilled, lonely, and alone. "I can fix this!" I say to myself over and over.

The Uphill War for Love

Each time I try, after fighting what feels like a literal war "to get the woman," well, she slips away from me. I might have many weeks of woo'ing, pursuing, showing attention to, and loving with a direct purpose of strengthening the connection between us -- and by extension, the intimicy shared between us as a husband and wife are SUPPOSED to WANT to experience together --, but if that ever happens, the next day it is erased and I must start over again. It is so tiring!

You would think it is the MAN who slips away, out of the bed in the middle of the night; you would think it is the guy who loses interest as soon as he scores his touchdown. Maybe here, I'm not the man, and my female "husband" has no interest in showing any attention to me, and so I remain the masculinely male "wife" in the relationship who wishes that her husband would even glance ONCE at her. I don't wear any fancy negligées, and I do not clip "How to be a better lover" articles from the newspaper -- she wouldn't be interested, and she would find my attempts for closeness to be a burden.

"I am one of the kids" to her, as she says frequently. I am only a burden to her. All I want from her is the limited amount of emotional energy she does not have to share with me; she does not WANT to share with me. I'm still the selfish bastard that hurt her in 2016 with my criticisms and my critiques when we were newly married, but it only gets worse from there [even though I became a more compassionate, thoughtful, and loving husband in 2009, 3 years after trying to make our marriage what I thought we were supposed to be; where we happily played our roles as husband and wife, father and son, provider of the home and provider of the family. Yeah, it got worse.]

Her Trauma is ME.

It's too painful to even share what happened since 2009. I am ashamed, I am humiliated, I am ripped apart with sadness, grief, and agony. Even now, I cannot believe my wife went through what she did, all under my nose, all under my "watchful eye." She experienced trauma for so many years and I did not see it because I was loving, I was caring, but to her, she was stuck in an -- dare I say, from the outside world, imaginary, but to her experience, REAL -- abusive cycle of pain.

OK, so I'm going there. This is really painful for me. [Damn you, privacy.  In respect of my wife's privacy interests so that I do not embarrass her "secrets," I did "go there," but then the next day, I edited out the specifics of what I wrote about below.  Sorry; I believe in honesty, but in this life, I seem to live with a muzzle around my lips always been told not to tell the truth about what is happening around me.]

I have always believed strongly in roles. Women roles, male roles, Rabbi roles, student roles, who is the child, who is the adult, who is the master, who is the servant (bad examples, not relevant to this), and so on.

As a Jewish husband, I understood that it was best for me to give attention to my wife all day, every day, doting on every need, every desire, every wish. "Great!" I thought, I can do that. Even emotionally, I thought I was emotionally present (always working on this one, because there is always room for improvement), giving her attention every day, every week.

What I was not aware of was that while I was trying to make our relationship fine, she was experiencing trauma.  I think she should have confided IN ME about the trauma, but I was the problem.  I was the one that according to her was emotionally closed.  I was the one who couldn't "see" her or the pain she was in.  I was the one who in the early years of our marriage didn't understand yet the importance of keeping criticisms to myself, or better yet, don't even feel criticisms towards your wife.  Just let things slide -- life doesn't need to be the way we were told things would be.  She didn't need to be the wife I thought I was marrying, and I didn't need to be... well, I have no idea what she wanted me to be to her.  She is still not happy and she won't tell me why.

Maybe I'm just an idiot.  Maybe I'm just emotionally closed.  Maybe I'm just so self-involved as she thinks I am, where everything I do -- whether it is spending time with the kids, buying her flowers, or saying hello to her just to see how she is doing -- she interprets each of these things as "he [the selfish bastard] is doing this for himself."

But while I can't defend myself to her because every denial seems to just affirm her suspicions that I am not listening to her, and while I can't defend myself to our marriage counselor because every time I do, I am "being defensive" and I am not hearing her true pain, and I must put my own thoughts aside of how I remember things to be, and I must see things from her perspective, as if every skewed memory is true, every warped understanding of context, or why I did a particular thing I did is false (even though I was the one who remembers what I was thinking when I did something because I was the one who did it)..  But no...  MY REALITY must be put aside, and I must entertain her reality with all of her assumptions and warped way of seeing things that happened, placing into me thoughts I did not have, intentions I did not think... and instead of my reality, I must enter into HER WORLD, HER REALITY so that I can see her as she really is... to see her and the pain she is really experiencing.

Reading that, you probably thought I didn't do that, right?  WRONG.  This therapy session where the therapist suggested that I place "my reality" aside so that I can see "her reality" was more than six months ago, and I immediately understood exactly what she was speaking about, and I was immediately able to jump into her world and see things the way she was seeing things and experiencing them.  It made me feel like crap that "I" (the husband of her internal story that she has been creating for herself) did all those aweful things, and that "I" thought all of those aweful things, and that "I" had all those terrible intentions each time I did something -- whether it was a hug, an inquiry into "hey, you look sad -- how are you doing," or "let's spend some time together," -- all of these things were some evil "me" who hurt her, criticized her, harmed her, hurt her, didn't see the pain that she was feeling.

[YOU KNOW, I totally erased, edited, and danced around what I wrote here the first time.  I was VERY SPECIFIC about something that "real me" did in real life, but that when she saw it through the lens of "evil me," as she did in the stories she told herself, she turned me into a sinister, horrible person -- a person I would never have wanted to live with either.  But to protect her absolute secretive need for privacy from everyone outside the 4 walls of our home, I made the edit after realizing that she wouldn't want her friends to know what she really experienced.]

I almost feel like a convicted criminal for something I know she feels like I did (or neglected to do), but it hurts my heart to have been seen as someone who thinks that way, who acts that way.  Where is my pain for my intentions being so so badly misunderstood and judged so viciously?  I'm editing this post now, so I don't want to mess up the stream of thought I had when I wrote it the first time.

Bottom line, I truly did see that she was sad all of these years.  I could read on her face every time she was upset, and I understood that she was sad, but when I asked her what was bothering her, she denied that she was sad or unhappy.  She made me think that I was imagining what I was clearly seeing on her face so often, so frequently.  There were so many times in our marriage I wanted her to consider taking medicine for what appeared to me to be depression -- and there were times she was so depressed that I couldn't even get a "hello" out of her.  But she told me everything was fine, and so I learned to just listen to her and not push deeper than she wanted me to go.

I learned to trust that when she says she is fine, that she probably is fine.  And, if she is upset, I learned from our first bout of marriage counseling not to take things so personally.  Just because she is upset doesn't mean that it was about me.  So yeah, we've had many years of a rocky relationship, but I trusted her when I noticed she was not happy, and so I inquired about her feelings, and she said things over and over that things were fine.  

But I knew in my heart that everything was NOT FINE. I thought she was lying to me, but I never could put my finger on it where she wasn't being honest with me, because I could always find places I could improve, things I could have done to make her feel more loved, etc.  But every time we were in the same room, it felt like it was only me in the room and I couldn't understand WHY. Now I know -- I was the only one in the room; there was nobody "standing in the closet" with me. She was somewhere else, emotionally "checked-out," experiencing who knows what kind of pain, and I was left alone, confused, wondering why my wife was not emotionally "with me."

The pain I do NOT want to touch.

IF you want to know what kind of pain I myself don't want to touch? It is the pain of fiery sadness, anger, rage, and literally shame and grief because 1) not only was I the stupid, oblivious husband that knew nothing of the agony of what my wife was going through for so many years (again, I wanted to know; I asked over and over again and she kept it from me), but 2) she turned me into the abuser -- a selfish person who did not see her, who did not see the pain she was experiencing. We spent so many months focusing only on her pain in therapy, and rightly so -- she is the one that experienced this.  But do you want to know my pain?!

Do you have ANY idea how that felt for me to be turned into such a horrible selfish person? I feel like a criminal, accused and convicted for something I literally did (I did the things she remembers I did; I said the things she remembers that I said), but how she twisted so much into evil was kept from me. I don't know if I am more sad for her or angry at myself, or angry at HER for letting this happen for so many years!! All that love wasted, all the energy wasted, all that time literally turned into shit and turned from something so beautiful and wonderful into something so demonic, evil, and horrible.

Two Worlds... Both REAL.

I struggle so hard with the two realities -- was I really the abuser she made me into? Or was I really a loving husband but all this trauma was created in her head and was a story she told herself? And, when I know all of the efforts I did over the years -- all the love, all the work, all the sharing, but her reality was that anything that came from me was shit that was worthless and meaningless to her -- how do I reconcile those two realities?  And how today do I stand tall with a smile when I know that she still feels like punishing me for the misdeeds I have done both in the real world and in the stories she told herself?  How do I look her in the eye knowing this is how she spent so many years seeing me, when I too felt real pain in our relationship, but I acknowledged my own flaws and faults, and I worked (and continue to work) to improve myself and to make myself a better person?

So this is my loneliness. This is my pain. In one reality, I am a loving husband who tries as hard as I can to be emotionally present for my family, to work hard to be supportive of our life together, to be a good father to our children and a kind and gentle person to our family. In the other reality, I am that selfish bastard to her that for so many years did not see the struggle and the agony my wife went through, and it was right in front of my face happening under my nose.

Am I a dumb fool?? How could I NOT have seen this? I knew she was in pain all these years, but she never let me see it. Do I defend myself that I tried to see it but that she hid it from me? Or do I accept her reality that I am an abuser that needs to make endless amends and endless "I'm sorry's" for something I didn't do in the first place? ...but I did do it, right? To her, I did it.

So this wasn't my therapy session. This was a piece of my pain, and now I have no emotional energy to continue.

Again, I hate you world for forcing me to hide myself and my true thoughts and feelings.  I hate you world for muzzling me yet again because my wife would be embarrassed if I shared the truth about what happened.  [As if lying to the world for so many years that I wasn't being beaten and abused by my parents and neglected and not fed and forced to live in filth most of my childhood wasn't enough.  Now in my adulthood I am forced to lie again for the "woman in my life," this time the one who would be ashamed if the world knew what she experienced when she was shown judgement and criticism at first in our marriage, but then love and kindness as I grew and developed with so much effort into a better person.]  And I hate you world for putting me in this situation where so many things I have done have been twisted and warped into something ugly and in so many circumstances evil and shameful.  What did I do to deserve this, G-D?  Why was giving up my life to live a life of frumkeit rewarded with a wife who sees me as evil and with so much pain and loneliness I don't know what to do with myself?  Why is this a reward for doing the right thing and making the right decisions in life?!

Virginity. Don't lie to your kallah. Omissions are LIES.

This Frumpter blog used to be my source of comfort to throw around what I thought were anonymous ideas.  I was deeply saddened to learn that having a blog identity did not keep my identity private, and eventually I felt as if I was the laughing stock of the community to those who knew who I was.  Thus, I stopped writing in horror.

It has been too many years, and I do not remember the things about myself I "changed" to preserve my privacy.  Today, with the Google login forwarding to my real e-mail address and my real phone number, there is no longer privacy.  So with this in mind, I wanted to share a few marriage-level experiences with you about secrecy.

I always thought that there was a private self, and a public self -- even in a marriage.  There were thoughts I kept to myself, and things I did before I was married which deserved to belong in the dustbin of history.

Women do not think that way; well, at least my wife does not think that way.  She ascribes to the "open and honest" philosophy.  I ascribed to the "be the best person you can be given current circumstances and leave the past in the past" philosophy.  These philosophies clashed last week.

RULES:

• LYING.  Obviously an omission is a form of lying.  Leaving out relevant details which remove the choice from the person you are speaking to is lying.
• FOLLOWING A RABBI'S ADVICE TO OMIT INFORMATION is also lying.  Even if years later you have not thought about the topic.
• VIRGINITY or the lack thereof is a very bad topic to lie about.
• PAST GIRLFRIENDS is another very bad topic to lie about.

I think you are starting to understand what happened...

BACKGROUND: It occurred to me recently that my wife thought I was a virgin when we got married.  I wanted to correct that misconception [after 15+ years of marriage], especially because I was pretty sure she knew that I dated girls and was a regular non-religious guy who went clubbing, was a member of a fraternity, and did a whole bunch of things I no longer do as a religious man before we met.  

I tried to speak to her about my past multiple times since this happened, but our communication has not been that good lately, and each time I tried to breach the topic of sex before marriage, boyfriends, or what we did when, she was not interested in speaking to me about these topics.

I asked a friend for guidance on whether I should correct her misconception.  She answered, "if it is not something that you need to 'get off of your chest' (which is was not), then there is no need to speak to her about this topic."  My friend then turned around and blabbed to her that I was not a virgin when I got married and that I had girlfriends before her.

In tears, my wife confronted me immediately after this.  I answered every uncomfortable question honestly and without hesitation, but these topics were topics I was told while I was shidduch dating that YOU DO NOT DISCUSS.

For the next week, she was deeply betrayed by my lie of OMISSION.  When we were shidduch dating, we started discussing the topic of our pasts.  I told her that my rabbi suggested that we do not speak about our pasts because past girlfriends do not belong in a marriage relationship; they belong in the past.  I thought all these years that she knew there were girlfriends, but unknown to me, I learned that her kallah teacher lied to her and told her I was a virgin.

I never met her kallah teacher, and I assume that the kallah teacher either got confused (she wasn't young), or that my rabbi lied to her (possible), or perhaps that his wife (the rebbitsen) didn't know about my past, and she spoke to the kallah teacher on my behalf.  Either way, intentional or not, my wife was told I was a virgin -- a lie.

I tried to explain to her that 1) I did not know she did not know, 2) I did not create the lie, I wasn't involved in the lie, and I never knew the kallah teacher told her I was a virgin, and 3) I was just following the instructions (one of MANY) that I was given when I was shidduch dating.

During our marriage, I thought begrudgingly about the topic of past girlfriends and how I was not supposed to speak about them, and over the years, I tried to share all of the stories with her that she would need to know, but I left the girl out of the stories.  In my recent marriage-level fight with my wife, she screamed that this was lying by ommission (and it WAS), but I thought I was still following the rule of "don't bring your past girlfriends into your marriage."  I thought I was being open and expressive, and that I was sharing stories of my past with her when really I was just lying over and over by hiding relevant information about the girlfriends who were part those stories.

THE LESSON that I learned from this (and the lesson that I need to share with you) is... DON'T LISTEN BLINDLY when a rabbi or authority figure tells you to do something that is against your ethics.  THINK FOR YOURSELF for each of your belief systems. And, LYING IS WRONG!

If you are a baal teshuva, then you likely changed your belief system to fit the belief system of the rabbis and your yeshiva peers.  "Make your thoughts G-d's thoughts, and then you will by G-dly yourself," I used to be told over and over in yeshiva.  "Align your thoughts and values with Torah, and you will live a good and happy life."  

This is all true, but Rabbis telling you to lie about your past (sorry, "not talk about your past") is not "aligning your thoughts and values with G-d's thoughts and his Torah."  Really, the discussion of my past girlfriends and what I did with them was really a discussion I should have had with my shidduch date to LET HER make the decision whether I am the kind of guy she is willing to marry.  By LYING BY OMISSION about my past, I took that decision away from her.  I also violated her trust all of these years by CONTINUING TO LIE about that topic -- not actively, not even thoughtfully (I thought 15 years later that I was still following the rules of what is appropriate and inappropriate topics to discuss), but good intentions or not, it was still a LIE.

UPDATE.  You should know that my wife has since forgiven me for being an idiot all of these years.  She faults me for not thinking for myself and for allowing me to get brainwashed into thinking that it was okay to deceive her all of these years.  Personally, I am pretty disgusted with myself for hurting her, and for not revisiting that topic, and I wonder whether there are other "it's not nice, it's not appropriate to discuss this" topics there are that I have not yet thought for myself about what is right or wrong, and that I still haven't discussed with my wife.

She wants an "open and honest relationship," and since our fight, there have been things that we discussed, and within the topics of past girlfriends, conclusions she made that for 30 seconds or so I was quiet about -- that I did not want to speak about -- but then I decided to interject and apologize for not immediately correcting her on the topic.  Then I would speak about it, whatever it was, uncomfortable or not.

Honestly, with so many years of marriage communication (and often the lack of communication), I wonder what things I *should* speak about, and what things I should keep to myself.  I probably still have many "believe this" beliefs that were given to me from my rabbi and my yeshiva that I have not thought about lately, if ever.  I probably am following many rules without even thinking of them as to why they are there and whether they are right or wrong.

I guess the lesson I wanted to convey is that I never meant to hurt my wife, but not speaking about something because you were told it is inappropriate or not tznius is not a reason not to speak about it.  In every circumstance, I need to ask myself, "is this something that my wife would want to know about," and if yes, she deserves the truth over and over.

UNTOLD STORY: There is so much more to this story -- secrets I thought she was keeping FROM ME which have been causing me to mistrust her all these years... I feel like such an idiot that I have had the opportunity to ask her so many questions since this fight happened (we have established a new understanding of each other as a result of this fight, and hopefully we are building each other's trust). To my confusion, those so-called "secrets" I have been harping on all these years are turning out to be me projecting my own secrets onto her past, the stories of which FOR HER never happened.

As a result, now I am seeing my wife as a woman who is a different person from the woman I thought I was married to for the past 15 years.  She is a different person simply because the stories I thought were there [that I suspected were hidden from me] never happened.  This changes things, and it changes her.  It also explains so much that has confused me all these years.  

MY CONFUSION: For her privacy, I will abstain from going into those details, but I am feeling a cascade of changes in my understanding of arguments I have had with her.  Can a person just be a kind person who in her youth liked to party with her friends, work hard in school, and never fraternize with boys as boys fraternize with girls (touch, seduction, hookups) and keep from getting into relationships prior to marriage?  Are there such people in the world who are able to maintain their innocence in such a horrible morally corrupted world?  I am having such a hard time rethinking all of this.

*NOTE: The last time I wrote in this blog was 2017.  Now it is 2021, and I still do not check e-mails.  I might not see your message, but I still appreciate your feedback.

"There is no world" versus "Bereishis Bara;" a Dose of Reality.

So, I have ten minutes and the blog window is open.  I wanted to share something philosophical with you, which is probably attributable to something wrong with me, but whatever.

I have always seen life as fluid, "streaky."  Light has always flashed before my eyes, and without glasses, one thing seems to merge into everything else.

Couple that with some cell theory that when you touch something (e.g., a table), cells of your leave your body and join to become the structure of the table, and cells of the table leave the table on a cellular level and join to become part of who you are.

We are not talking shmutz here, but real transference of cells.  Pretty cool concept.  Add in the thought that the world is pretty much empty space, and you have a world view that says that the world doesn't exist except for an illusion which tricks you into believing it is real, and then there is that "Bereishis Bara" problem where G-d CREATED a world, tangible and real to you.

Then there are mitzvos which bring down G-dly energy which re-vivifies the world and studying Torah, which is a physical vessel (a klaf and ink, or in English, a scroll, parchment, and ink), yet it is able to hold and contain G-d's essence himself, as if we could understand such a concept.

Like a dog can see a malach without freaking out (because it lacks the comprehension that it is looking at a spiritual entity), when we study Torah, we connect with G-d in a way that if we truly understood what we were doing, we would expire and die from the G-dly light.  Yet we don't.  We look at the parchment and ink, we read the words, and it does ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to us, as if we were a dog unable to comprehend the magnitude of what we are seeing or doing when we read a word of Torah.

Then there is the TV screen problem, namely, that I see my reality as if my eyes are glued to a TV screen and as if the TV screen is like VR goggles (virtual reality glasses).  The better analogy is eyes being glued to the TV with sticky glue, and thus we 'see' our body, and the 'world' that Hashem created for us to live in.  But... just as a TV can be shut off, so can our reality.

I have often visualized a spaceless expanse that when I "shut off" the TV, I can float down, up, forward, backwards... in any direction like a Peter Pan, and yet the 'image' of the TV remains in front of me.  I can in my mind switch it on or off, but independent of what my eyes see and what my mind tells me is real, it also tells me that the spaceless expanse is also just as real, if not more so.

So I live in the world and allow myself to trick myself that everything is real, when in my heart, I suspect it is not.  But then, "Bereishis Bara," so who knows.

Lifting the Veil of Fog (so, Waking).

I am writing this after having experienced a re-awakening after a few days, but last Wednesday after writing the "dying" article, I resolved that the current vitamin regimen wasn't working, and that I would go back to the DHA that was working for me.

I ordered it last Wednesday, and it arrived the following day.  I took 300mg of the vitamin on Thursday night, and then again on Friday morning again.

Friday morning, I lay on the floor of my office taking one nap after another ("Alexa, set alarm for 15 minutes" over and over again), and around noontime, something weird happened.  I felt as if the veil of fog lifted from before me.

"That was weird," I thought.  All of a sudden, I was able to think, and not just think, but I could think clearly... about life, about work, about goals, and so I grabbed a pen and paper, and started goalsetting (something I have not done in weeks).

I called my wife and said, "I don't know what has come over me, and I hope it is a permanent thing, but for the first time in weeks, I can think clearly.  I am almost afraid this is a fluke, but whatever it was -- whether it was the Alter Rebbe's Tanya I started learning deeply, or the new vitamin (likely the vitamin), it was working."

I wish my wife was more supportive, but it seemed as if she was happy to hear the good news, but she didn't really appreciate what a big deal it was.  I think she sees me as lazy or unmotivated, and this hurts.

Anyway, I wish I could make this article more exciting for you, but really, that is all I have to share.  It is now five days later, and I have maintained the clarity, but I still don't like the idea that my ability to think is hinged on my maintaining some drug or vitamin chemical level in my brain.  I wish I functioned well without having the need to DO anything or TAKE anything.  My inability to think without vitamins or chemicals makes me feel flawed.

Anyway, it is the late afternoon on Wednesday, and I did not take my afternoon vitamins (nor have I had my afternoon coffee), and I am feeling a bit down in the dumps.  I am lacking motivation, but I understand that it is not that I have no motivation; I am simply not feeling it.

Dying

My vitamin regimen is not working.  It has been how many weeks since I started taking the vitamins for ADD, and I am literally feeling nothing.  It has also been three weeks since I gave up soda, aspartame, and artificial sweeteners cold turkey.  Instead, I purchased a soda stream and have been making seltzer each day with some non-artificial sweeteners.

Yet it has been three weeks, and my brain is still a fog.  I have difficulty focusing, and my motivation has dropped through the floor.  Honestly, I feel as if I am just clawing to make it through the day, only to repeat the same dreadful devoid of meaning routine and day of taking care of the morning routine with the kids -- getting them woken up, negelvasser, dressing them, getting them fed and out the door, only to repeat the process with the younger kids for a second round.  Then, exhausted, I go to work, and without motivation to do anything, I take care of the incoming inquiries and I take whatever calls come my way, all the while struggling with a foggy brain and waiting for the day to be over.  I come home (usually in a rush because I've lost track of time), I take some child to some afterschool activity, I get a 30-minute workout at the gym, I pick them up, put everyone to bed with kisses, and I do it all over again the next day.

This evening coming home from a grueling day at work (where I feel as if I got nothing done) [brain fog, wanting to roll into a ball and cry], I sat down in my office at home which has been taken over by my wife with her post-graduate medical program.  I told the kids to please leave the room, and they didn't listen.  I waited a few minutes asking a few more times and being ignored before I screamed, "get out of the office!"

My wife looked at me, and said, "If you died tomorrow, their last memory of you would have been you screaming at them."  Not exactly understanding what she was referring to, I smiled at the thought that tomorrow I could die, and I thought, "Baruch Hashem!"  At least then I would be released from this life of boredom, meaningless, headaches and pain.

When I told her this, she got concerned, as if I should see a doctor or something.  "I'm not suicidal!" I exclaimed.  Rather, it would be nice to get away from all this garbage and my meaningless existence.

I thought more about it, and maybe I didn't eat lunch, or maybe I didn't drink that second cup of coffee (I haven't been drinking much coffee since I gave up artificial sweetener), or maybe I was dehydrated, or maybe my brain was mush from staring at the computer all day, who knows.  Either way, when I later took my daughter to her afterschool activity (of which I am sitting in the cafeteria typing this article), I couldn't help but to almost start crying when I was talking to her.

I am obviously not anywhere near ending my life, but you know, if it ended via natural means in a way that wouldn't hurt my family, that would be great.  I could feel myself dying inside just from the thought of being willing to let go, as if -- if I willed it strong enough, I might just be successful in dying just because I will it to be so, without any overt action needed.  Again, I am obviously NOWHERE NEAR this point, but it amused me to notice this.

[ENDED ARTICLE HERE.]  [NOTE: I meant to speak about how meaningless I have been feeling life was, and that I was not feeling anything that gave me the feeling of a REASON to be enthusiastic or motivated about life.  It all just seemed meaningless.]

Six months of a blur... ADHD... discipline... and a struggle between considering medication or self-medication through vitamins and hard work...

Six months... That is how much time has passed since I have returned to the US.  Six months ago, I had a plan to return to my home, reintegrate with my community, solidify friendships I did not take the time to solidify the last time around, and fix my failing business.

I had a good start.  I came back, spent time with friends asking questions about THEM and THEIR lives, trying to make connections were I was unsuccessful the last time.  I made some progress, but then life got in the way and I sank back into my old hermit routines of hiding behind a busy family and a headache I just cannot shake off.  It's not a real headache, but rather, it's a bit of depression... or, inability to focus... or unmotivation, whatever.  I'm just not on my game.

My wife went back to school for a graduate program in an area of practice she has been speaking about for years.  This is a wonderful accomplishment for her, but in return, I have given up my routine, my sanity, and my ability to function as a cost.  I am very happy for her and I will do whatever I can to help her get through it, but I'm suffering as a result in ways she will never see.

You see, it's been roughly ten years since I started this blog, and I started it to clarify religious concepts of frumkeit that I was still thrashing out, and to understand myself and my surroundings from a philosophical point of view.  I stumbled onto other blogs which led my observation inward, where I attributed every psychological disease to myself, trying it on as one tries on a new dress in the fitting room, only to realize that the hips are too wide, or the dress doesn't quite fit right.

It's been ten years, and I kind of figured out what it is I suffer from, and it embarrasses me how simple an answer it was... ADD (or, as they now call it, ADHD).  The thing is... as a rule, I don't believe in ADD.  I also don't believe in medication for ADD, and I really believe that people should work through their problems, so here are mine (I've figured them out).

I suffer from depression as a result of being unable to focus.  My mind works at high speeds, but my ability to keep up with my thoughts tires me out.  I can't focus well, very often I can't think straight.  You wouldn't know it by my thick shell and my calm and cool demeanor, but I am very emotionally sensitive and am usually overstimulated by simple interactions with people (even my own family and kids) to the point that saying hello to someone or having inconsequential interactions overstimulates me to the point that I cannot think, and I often need quiet time to recover (and sometimes I am unable to recover so I know to isolate myself and distract myself with some activity until my mind defuzzes).  My wife thinks I need a psychologist from this, but I have tried a few of them over my years and we don't get anywhere... ever.

I live in a state of overwhelm, even when the stressors are minor.  I should be much better than the person I have become, but I live in the shackles of a head that keeps me from being able to be organized enough and motivated enough to do the things I know I need to do, so I procrastinate until deadlines loom, and I forget and forget and... what was I writing about?

My memory is horrible, not because I have a bad memory, but because I am having difficulty remembering that I am working on a subject, or that some thing, event, or to-do is important to do.  I'll start plunging a stuffed toilet, and then I'll walk into another room for whatever purpose, and I will 100% forget that I was plunging a toilet.  Or, I'll start a course on whatever topic I determined was important to take my law practice to the next level... or to learn a new skill... or to reach a goal... and mid-way into the project, I will 100% forget that I was doing that project, only to realize months later that it has been weeks or months since I was working on a particular topic, and I never continued it.

This is fine for a goal or for a project, but when it comes to remembering to pick up the milk, or to pick up my child from school, well, that's an issue.  I solve most of my issues by setting clocks and alarms, and this works somewhat well, but I forget simple things, like, what day it is, and... to eat, or to come home from work, and I'll look at the time and it is 10pm, and I was doing who knows what... but not work.  That project still had to be submitted because it was due the next day.

I could go into 1000 more examples.  I wear two watches (one on each hand), the watch on the left which reminds me to move every hour or so to reach my step goals, and the one on the right which merely beeps every 30 minutes to remind me that 30 minutes have passed by.  It's silly, but seven hours can pass in a few minutes.

So, I fight through my life with discipline in order to get by.  When we returned from Israel, my wife and I arranged that I would focus on what is important to get everything back on track.  Our business was failing (believe it or not, not because of my inattention, but because I allowed one client to become 99% of my law firm's business, a big 'no-no', and that client went out of business as soon as I returned to the US, and I needed to rehabilitate it.  I took a class at a local law school to teach me the skills I needed to move forward (pretrial litigation, something I never took in law school but was very important), but part two -- trial advocacy -- well, that was this semester, and the professor wouldn't allow non-law-school students to attend, so I bought the books for the course which I hope to get to and read one day.

NOTE: If I ever wrote a book on this topic, I would call it "Open Parenthesis," because this concept (opening parenthesis) embodies my experience of opening topics, but never getting around to completing them.

In addition to getting the law firm back on track, I had the project of buying the home we were renting from our in-laws (who bought it for us so that we can buy it back from them when we arrive on US soil), getting our taxes in order with back-filings and IRS estimated payments (the Israeli accountant we hired did not do a number of things we thought he was doing for us, and our accountings were a mess when we returned to the US for more reasons to outline here).  On top of that, and possibly most importantly, I wanted to get my 'daylight' schedule back on track.

I wanted to wake up in the morning, shower, get to minyan, help my wife get the kids to school, get to the gym, then get to my office and have a productive day.  For me, this was a brutal undertaking, but for six months, I made it happen... until my wife started school in January.

I could totally blame her for my life falling apart, but really it is my fault and my inability to be able to handle certain things a normal person should be able to take care of.  Since my wife started school, now I do the morning routine with the kids.  The first thing I do upon waking is that I wake the kids, get them dressed, fed, and then off to school.  Because of the number of kids we have, it makes sense to do this in two shifts -- an "older kid" shift, where the first set of kids are out the door by 8am, and a "younger kid" shift where the younger three kids [who fight, don't get dressed easily, and throw temper tantrums] can get my devoted attention getting them dressed, fed, and out the door by 8:30am.  When the younger kids wake before the older kids are out of the house, well, that's a nightmare.

I tried doing one morning shift with all of the kids together, but I can't handle the crying, the 'he hit me' or 'she's wearing my shoes' or the youngest one's tantrum when she doesn't like what I feed her, or what I dress her in -- and she NEVER likes what I feed or dress her, and it's a daily struggle.  Finally when I get them to school, honestly, I have nothing left in me.  Really, almost every day, I get them to school, and I collapse, emotionally, physically, or otherwise.  I get to work and I lay on the floor looking at the ceiling.  Or, I stare at a wall until my emotional tanks recharge.  Or, I waste time doing something inconsequential because honestly, I would at that point want to do anything but work.

This hurts me so much, namely, that I am unable to get them to school and get myself to work.  I tried putting davening in the mix, but it doesn't work.  I tried putting the gym in the mix, but it too doesn't work.  I can't --- and believe me, I am saying this with a cry and a tear -- I really CAN'T do anything after the morning routine except want to roll into a ball and cry.  I really don't do this, rather, I walk around in a fog and a stupor for the next few hours, and this sometimes lasts the entire day where 7pm rolls along, and I still haven't gotten any meaningful work done.  My wife -- well, she doesn't understand this, and she is dumbfounded and offended why I do not find pleasure in the interactions with the children.  She thinks I should treasure these moments, and that there is something seriously wrong with me that I don't.  Honestly, I really love my kids, but I find the morning routine very draining.  Again -- roll into a ball, want to cry.

So I've thought about going to a doctor and taking medication for this... ADD, or whatever it is, but I remember the last time I went to a doctor during law school, and he prescribed me Adderall.  What I remember, however, was not the increase in productivity, but the feeling of being a failure because I couldn't function on my own two feet without the help of a drug.  I remember not wanting to do anything except get off of the drug, which is exactly what I did.  I took the bar exam, I got off adderall, and I got married and started a family, started a successful law practice (which [with G-d's help] has kept our family fed, comfortable, lacking nothing) and now we are ten years later.

I sometimes wonder how life would be different if I stayed on the ADHD drug, but instead, I powered through every mood swing, every bout of depression, and every inability to function with self-medication (usually coffee did the trick -- many, many cups of coffee each day), vitamins, exercise, and a whole lotta discipline.

Today I take a nice regimen of vitamins, including L-Tyrosene, DLPA, Ibuprofen, GABA, and a good multivitamin.  I am doing this based on a book recommendation from a text which goes through the various types of ADHD with an exhaustive questionnaire and a description of the six-known types of ADHD (the book is called "Healing ADD, the Breakthrough Program That Allows You To See and Heal the 7 Types of ADD" by Daniel G. Amen.).  The book also recommends medication, but this vitamin regimen is an alternative to it.  I am probably three or four weeks into it, and quite honestly, I feel nothing because I don't think it's working, but the book suggested that it might take up to seven weeks before the effects are felt... and, I am not that disciplined in taking the sufficient dosages (...3x/day, or on an empty stomach, etc.), but either way, I am still optimistic.

Lastly, I haven't been to the gym in a month, and I have regained all of the weight from before I started going to the gym in July when we returned... What a waste of time and energy!  I say that with a bit of jest, as no doubt the six months of discipline that I had MUST have had some beneficial longterm affect on my health, and I must think that the months I spent sweating away on the treadmill MUST have benefited my heart or my fitness to the point that I am probably not the same unhealthy body I was when I returned from Israel six months ago.  I just somehow gained back all of my weight in one month from snacking and eating unhealthily.

In sum, life sucks.  I have bought a house, rescued my law firm from disaster, got the state and federal taxes in order (I hope), got our finances in order, reintegrated with the community, got fit, got fat, cut out all zero-calorie drinks and aspartame, took over the morning routine, stopped going to minyan, lost all meaning in life (another blog entry for another time), and now I'm just trying to pick up the pieces and get through each day before I find the motivation to pick myself up from the bootstraps, as they say, and push through this last bout of fogginess so that I can get my life back in order.  Yeah, right.  That'll happen.

NOTE: This doesn't need to be here, but I'm writing this article from a completely self-involved point of view.  There are so many people with so many problems far, far worse than anything I am going through, and it is almost embarrassing to think that anything I am dealing with in my own head compares in the minutest way to the 'real' problems others face, e.g., poverty, death, divorce, cancer, abuse, oppression.  I live in a free world with apparent free will.  My financial needs are taken care of, I have health insurance, I have a way to derive a healthy income (for the time being), I have a happy wife and baruch hashem, a healthy family.  While I regret a number of decisions in life, my life has turned out quite well.  ALL THIS BEING SAID, I am focusing the conversation in this article on the issues that I personally am struggling with because I want to be and to function at my best so that I can contribute to the world and give thanks to my creator in order to succeed in the mission for which I was created, whatever that may be.  I also know that I am not the only one who is dealing with issues such as these, and so perhaps this article can be of use to someone who is also suffering with similar circumstances.

Fight with G-d Almighty and you will for sure lose, but in my heart, I want to start swinging at the sky anyway.

Okay, so re-watching the Al Pacino "G-d is a prankster" scene does not have the same power for me as it once did, but the subtle message within this scene affected what was my young mind (at the time) in a way that it left an indelible mark that has never erased itself.

"G-d has a sense of humor," is what I remember of this scene, and now more than ever, I am feeling the truth of this statement.

We arrived back in the US, and the Customs and Border Patrol held our crate back for additional inspection.  This was an inconvenience at best, but I wondered whether it was a message from G-d that maybe we weren't supposed to be here.  Up front, this thought makes absolutely no sense to me because I am more than thrilled to be back, and I wake up each day excited that there is sunlight outside and I have a minyan to go to.  For the first time in my life, I have structure and organization, where in the past, I had none.  I am davening each day WITH A MINYAN... on time, with tefillin, with kavanah.

I even have my "old stuff" back.  I am back in my old town with my old friends and acquaintances... I have even been able to re-acquire my old office [which still had my old refrigerator that I left in here when I left].  Everything appears to have fallen in place, and then boom.

I am not speaking about the container being held back by the CBP, nor am I speaking about the additional scrutiny which I wonder whether it was random or whether it was because I was using VPNs from Israel to access my bank accounts in the US causing a stir when my accounts were frozen for suspected terrorist activities (I was wiring my US funds to my Israeli account) immediately after I made aliyah.

The "boom" is that while in Israel, my law firm business chugged along.  I was running on "three cylinders," so to speak, but the law firm was getting clients, and I was making US dollars to spend in Israel.  I came back to the US not only because of the deadly night hours, but because I knew that if my business ever "went bust," I would have no means of supporting my family.  I decided that I would return to the US, and I would develop a practice that I could do in Israel, with Israelis as clients, and during Israeli day hours rather than servicing US clients working in the US time zones.

This is always dumb to do, but I got into the position where most if not all of my law firm's clients came from one set of plaintiffs.  I knew that if their company ever went broke that my stream of clients would dry up overnight and I would no longer be able to provide for my family.

Well, we returned to the US exactly one month ago, and as soon as I landed, I got the dreaded call that this company -- the one from whom I am getting all of my clients -- is going out of business.  Apparently, doing what they were doing is no longer profitable, and thus they are closing their doors.

...Overnight, my firm's client list dried up, and for the moment, I am out of business.

This is where G-d has a sense of humor.  Now that I am davening every day with talis and tefillin with a minyan, and now that I am somewhat connected to him as a Jew should be connected to his creator, is he now punishing me for all of the years of disobedience?  Is putting me in the "dog house" his way of saying, "welcome back you mother fucker. now get out!"??

I was telling my wife about this (that our firm is out of business overnight and that I need to find a new area of practice), and I told her that I was relieved that we came back to the US before this happened, because at least now I can sit down for the next couple of months and reinvent myself with a new area of practice.  She retorted, "maybe you lost your business because you came back," as if losing my law firm's clients overnight was a punishment for leaving Israel.  I happily twisted her words into thinking that the only reason this company kept their doors open for as long as they did was to feed us while we were in Israel, and it was G-d's mercy that kept us fed over the past two years.

Now my wife and I have settled on the common Chabad belief that everything G-d does is for a purpose.  Hashkacho pratis.  That there are no coincidences, only divine providence, and me losing my firm's income source is Hashem being merciful to us because although we cannot see the goodness in this painful experience, this is really being done for the best, and there is only goodness that will come from this.

Okay, I am not buying it.  Me losing my job overnight and essentially having to close our firm's doors, reinvent myself, learn a new area of law, and reopen the firm in a new area of practice sound more to me like G-d is a trickster, and that this is all a test or a prank, and I will need to roll with the punches or get attacked even more severely.  Not only do I think G-d is testing me, but I think or I fear that he has determined that the time of me and my family being wealthy has come to an end, and now it is time for us to experience how it feels to be poor once again.

This thought fills me with anger, because 1) we went to Israel for HIM, to serve HIM, to give our kids over to HIM, to bring them up in HIS way, to provide them HIS education where we would not have been able to provide this on our own, and 2) we moved back and strengthened our connection with him by me going to minyan every day, davening with a talis and tefillin, and spending time getting closer with the community.  Why punish us after we took such leaps of faith in G-d's honest truth so that our kids can be brought up with a proper Torah education?  It is not like we decided that we don't care about G-d when we came back to the diaspora.  Rather, we returned because I was not surviving working the overnights, and it was affecting everyone negatively.

So why decide all of a sudden when yeshiva tuition is now due, when shul membership will be paid, when I just sold our Israeli car and all of the furniture and "stuff" we bought in Israel at a horrifying loss (essentially giving EVERYTHING away at a total loss) and now I bought my wife a nice newer car, and now we need to buy the house from our in-laws (we committed that they would buy the house for us, and we would buy it as soon as we landed), and now we have to pay for Obamacare, etc., that Hashem decides that it is time for me to lose my income?!?

This seems like a cruel trick.  It seems like a prank.  It seems like a joke.  Fight with G-d Almighty and you will for sure lose, but in my heart, I want to start swinging at the sky anyway.