Teshuva, Shame, Guilt, and Mental Health

This year hasn’t been the easiest one for anyone. For me, preparations for Rosh Hashana and the Day of Judgement have been extra challenging because of the combination of my mental health challenges and physical disabilities. I was trying to figure out what my approach should be for the day from a religious and mental perspective and wasn’t sure where to start.

Teshuva, tefilla, tzedaka. Of course. Repentance, prayer, and charity. Asking for forgiveness from those we’ve wronged and forgiving those who have repented and have asked for our forgiveness.

Easier said than done. There are people who have wronged me greatly and still wrong me and I don’t have it in my heart to forgive them, so that’s not happening. (Don’t worry, I spoke to my rabbi and he said I have no obligation to forgive them at all.)

Repentance and asking for forgiveness should be a no biggie; I’m actually really good at feeling guilty and terrible about everything I do, and in fact I needed an in between session phone call with my therapist today because of how terrible I was feeling about asking for my bare minimum needs to be met and it was causing me to spiral. Yay complex PTSD, yay for trauma and the never ending effect it had on people like myself.

So yes. I can beat myself up about every little thing I’ve done wrong, I do wrong, will always do wrong, but that’s what I do my entire life anyhow, something I’m working hard in therapy to stop doing. Should I be doing this more in my search for repentance before Rosh Hashana?

Honestly, I don’t think that’s what God wants of me. I guess I should be repenting and beat myself up for always feeling terrible about everything about myself. (See how easily I turn to that cycle of self shame and guilt?) That’s what I mean.

So not repent? Because God wants me to work on loving myself? Come on, what a load of crock. What a way of being lazy and saying that I’ll skip the hard work of actually improving and bettering yourself, by saying that that’s not what God wants of me. What laziness. What if everyone did that and therefore didn’t repent?

As these thoughts go circling through my head, I get two voices in my head, one from the world of mental health, and one from the juxtaposition of and mental health and halacha. I have quotes and ideas I heard from these two important people and figures that have done great work in educating the world on these topics, Brene Brown, the shame researcher, who is, as I heard someone put it, the Gedola Hador in the mental health world, and Rabbi Yoni Rosensweig, the expert on mental health and halacha who has changed the world with his Sefer and his organization, Maagalei Nefesh, in addition to being a kind and supportive and amazing Rabbi.

Photo by Serje Lahoud (Pexels)

I listened to Rabbi Rosensweig’s discussion on the latest episode of the podcast, Intimate Judaism, with Rabbi Scott Kahn and Talli Rosenbaum. One of the questions that came up was about the place of shame and guilt about sexual things and sins in general vis a vis teshuva and the Yomim Noraim (Days of Awe) and mental health.

Rav Yoni said that obviously teshuva is an important thing in Judaism, and shame and guilt are an important part of that. “But what happens next, the day after?” he asked.

After this teshuva and shame and guilt over sins and after Yom Kippur is over are you going back to the regular cycle of life and back to your usual happy functional self and celebrating the holiday of sukkot, Zman simchateinu, the time of happiness, only 4 days after Yom kippur ends, as one is supposed to do? Or will this self reflection and guilt just add on to the excessive amount of self flagellation that you live with each day, and it isn’t something you can just bounce back from?

Discussion was had about tefilla zaka prayer in the Yom Kippur Machzor in which one says how they’re just a tipa srucha, putrid drop of fluid, and all types of self flagellation, and Rav Yoni said that he personally appreciates that prayer and benefits from it but there are many who should definitely not be saying it, and you need to know yourself. It made me think of the following.

Rabbi Simcha Bunim from Pshischa and the Alter of Slabodka both told their students to have two papers in their pockets, one that says “Anochi afar va’eifer”, I am but dust and ashes, and the other that says “Bishvili nivra haolam”, the world was created for me. So that you’d have each one to remind you of each of those perspectives, as needed.

Brene Brown talks about the difference between guilt and shame and how important the distinction is. Guilt is “I did something wrong or bad”. Shame is “I am bad.” The first can be healthy, it can be constructive. The second is not a healthy view and has no purpose.

The biggest difference between someone who is in a healthy mental state or not can be do they live in a state of shame or do they feel guilt, say “Chatasi, I sinned”, then repent and move on? Do they get mired down in the shame spiral, with a constant internal reel, a broken record dissing, saying “you suck, you’re stupid, you’re lazy, you always do the wrong thing, you’re too [fill in the blank]…” Or can they say “I flubbed up. Let me fix this. Ok now let’s move on.”

Or as Rav Yoni said “What happens next?”

Some people need to see the note in their pocket that reminds them periodically not to get too full of themselves, that they were born from dust and will return to dust. They do well with an occasional tefilla zaka to ground them a little bit.

But other people need to throw out that note and just keep reminding themselves “God created the world for me.”

You know yourself best. Are you a person who struggles admitting when they did something wrong? Maybe your job this Rosh Hashana is to work on that, take accountability for what you did wrong and try to improve.

But, if like many people with mental health struggles feeling guilty comes easily to you because you live in a place of shame, that is not your job this Rosh Hashana.

Instead, maybe focus on the other parts of the day, the part where we praise God and talk about His awesomeness, and remind yourself that you have a chelek eloka mimaal, a part of God above, within you, and you were created in His image.

Maybe your preparation for Rosh Hashana and Yom kippur is to meditate on the important line, Bishvili nivra haolam, that the day you were born is the day God decided the world couldn’t exist another moment without you in it.