This morning, I got a text from a good friend of mine, also with Breslov leanings, also with the Rav, who just got back from a few days up North.

They ignored all the ‘heatwave fearmongering’, and had the best time hanging out in a few rivers all day. She also told me the North was relatively empty for this time of year – apparently because yet again, the ‘fearmongering’ had worked amongst the frum public, and people were staying home.

That was probably the whole point.

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All this got me thinking, about how more and more, people are trapped in a cage of their own making.

For as long as it’s socially acceptable to keep passing off known PTSD and C-PTSD symptoms like ‘catastrophic thinking’ as ‘information sharing’ as ‘news’; and for as long as people are going to keep lying to themselves that ‘catastrophic thinking’ and believing the news is OK, mental-health-wise – they are going to stay stuck in that prison of ‘dramaqueen-itis’, where every little thing is a big deal.

Needless to say, ‘dramaqueen-itis’ is also a key ingredient of mental illnesses like narcissism and so-called ‘Hysterical Personality Disorder’.

But the good news is, all this can change – if you start to ‘think Breslov’, and make building your emotional, mental and spiritual resilience a priority.

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Before we get into how to start doing that, here is a little more about ‘catastrophic thinking’, which I cannot stress enough, is a known symptom of both PTSD and C-PTSD (that last one occurs when you grow up in a ‘dangerous’, unstable or ‘narcissist-run’ family, where big threats and big punishments are used as manipulation tactics, to keep the kid perpetually scared of what’s coming, and towing the line.)

Because I can’t be bothered re-making the wheel here, take a look at this post on the happierhuman site HERE, called:

https://www.happierhuman.com/catastrophic-thinking/

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Snippet:

“The thought process involves predicting a negative outcome and then jumping to the conclusion that the outcome will be disastrous. Psychologists call it irrational thinking since there’s usually no evidence to support the belief that a catastrophe will occur.”

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That is basically 99% of what passes as ‘news’ in our world, and 99% of what passes as social media ‘influencing’ in our world, too.

You know stuff like this:

The Enslavement of Humanity is Almost Complete

And this:

HOTTEST NIGHT EVER, UN HUNGER LIES, DEF. MIN vs IDF CHIEF, SNAPBACK IRAN

And this:

Two die of heatstroke as temperatures, electricity usage break records in extended heatwave

And this:

BDE: Unvaccinated Toddler Dies From Measles Complications In Jerusalem

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I could literally spend the next three days posting up links just from the last 24 hours of so-called ‘news’ and influencer posts that are 100% based on ‘catastrophic thinking’.

Not only are the people writing them engaged in ‘catastrophic thinking’, they then infect the people reading them with ‘catastrophic thinking’ too.

And as said above, ‘catastrophic thinking’ is a known symptom of many mental illnesses, but especially PTSD and C-PTSD.

For the people ‘stuck’ in the mental illness of ‘catastrophic thinking’, the bars of the cage get smaller and smaller, with each fear-mongering headline they read or engage with.

And life quickly becomes one unbearable, overdramatic, super-stressful, burdensome experience.

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Haval, to live life like this.

And super-haval, because the Evils find it so easy to manipulate and control people who are stuck in that ‘PTSD’ mindset.

That’s probably the whole point, of why the news has been set up to continually churn-out false ‘negative predictions’, together with a hefty-dose of ‘catastrophic theorising’.

The good news is: Rebbe Nachman already set out the guidelines, to fix this problem at its root.

Read on.

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Rebbe Nachman was always trying to encourage his followers to see the world properly, with realistic eyes about what we are really down here to do, and why things are the way they are.

Take this, classic, example from ‘His Wisdom’, page 340 (#250):

I heard the Rebbe say, “Why worry about parnassa? The only thing to worry about is that you may die of hunger if you cannot make a living at all.

And if you die, what is so terrible?

You have to die anyway.

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The first time I read that, 20 years ago, I was literally shocked.

How can Rabbenu be so callous about people’s suffering, like that?!

But I persevered, and at this stage, every day, I see the wisdom in what he said more and more.

We have to die, anyway.

That’s the bottom line, the ‘uncomfortable truth’, that most people, even frum people, spend their whole lives running away from.

By Rabbenu, he put it straight out there on the table:

You have to die anyway.

And the corollary of that fact, that profound truth, is that if you have to die anyway – at least make sure you lived as fully, and as uplifted as you could be, before the final day arrives.

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People who spend their whole time stuck in the prison of ‘catastrophic thinking’ aren’t really living life, in any beneficial way to themselves and the people around them.

It’s a literally a prison where the bars shrink down more, each time you start ‘catastrophising’ that you got a fatal illness, that ‘humanity is doomed’, that evil just has to win, that everything and everyone is being controlled by the Evils…

Thinking like this is the shortcut to massive depression and suicidal ideation.

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That doesn’t mean we bury our head in the sand and hum, we still have to deal with ‘reality’, such as it is.

There is Evils, pedophilia, puppet-politicians, corruption, yucky people in the world, doing horrible things.

All this is true.

But, it’s the spin we then put on this reality that makes all the difference.

And Rabbenu’s spin is quite simply:

Ein od milvado – God is running the show, here, God is doing everything, everything is just a ‘test’ from God, personally designed for each person, to bring out the best in them, and bring them closer to God.

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How do you get to that conclusion?

By doing some real, hard, work emotionally and spiritually, ESPECIALLY in hitbodedut.

Literally, sit down and commit to doing at least five minutes a day of hitbodedut, where you can speak out your fears to God, tell Him all about your ‘catastrophic thinking’ mental illness, and get some reassurance, deep-down at the soul level, that God is running the show here, however it looks externally.

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Today, lots of people try to medicate or smoke their way out of their anxiety and fears, either with the prescription pills, the grass, of for cases of immense, or long-standing anxiety, even stronger substances.

That’s a short-term solution, at best.

(It’s a post for another time, but every time a person gets ‘high’, even with grass, they are effectively vacating their own soul-space, and letting demonic entities into their souls. That’s one big reason why drug abuse leads to some very negative outcomes for users, because while the anxiety is ‘pushed down’ by the drug, affording some temporary relief, the soul just ends up getting even more estranged from itself, and God. And this also applies to natural ‘psychedelics’.)

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God is giving us all these tests, all the time, because He wants us to start doing some hitbodedut, to really get to know ourselves better, and where all this anxiety and fear is coming from, and to make God a real part of the solution to our problems.

That is literally the whole point of everything going on in the world.

The people who are missing this piece of the puzzle are stuck in a prison that will just shrink smaller and smaller and smaller, until enough people finally figure this out.

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One bar of the cage will be called ‘war in Gaza’; another bar of the cage will be called ‘fear of a serious illness / dying’ (this was the one exploited by Covid); another bar is called ‘fear of being poor’, another ‘fear of looking bad to others’ aka, not keeping up with the Joneses.

There are a million, billion bars, including ‘fear that the ‘heatwave’ is too dangerous for me to go outside…

Each day, there is a new mutation.

And the choice, as always is ours, about what we are going to do with all these ‘fears’ and catastrophic thinking.

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Choice one: totally ignore what I wrote above, and continue to engage with the stuff that multiplies these fears, especially fake news and online social media, until we feel so anxious all the time even a hardcore heroin addiction sounds like something to ‘look into’.

Choice two: admit that ‘catastrophic thinking’ is actually a byproduct of mental illness, usually caused by PTSD / C-PTSD, and start to explore ways of getting on top of it, and taking responsibility for it – especially, sessions of regular hitbodedut.

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I don’t blame anyone for having ‘catastrophic thinking’ – it’s a symptom of experiencing severe trauma, one way or another.

But – and it’s a HUGE but – I do take issue with people not taking responsibility for their mental illnesses, and trying to create a whole society where we are all being governed, controlled and manipulated by mentally-ill ‘catastrophic thinking’.

And where the more stable people are castigated for not believing that ‘the end is nigh’ for humanity, or for not believing that Israel is going to be destroyed, God forbid, if more young men aren’t sacrificed on the altar of a pointless, evil war, or where lunatics are convinced that ‘everyone will die if you don’t take your shots’.

Enough is enough already.

Man up, and deal with your mental illness.

There’s a whole beautiful world out there, still.

And God is just waiting for us to realise that, tune out the news, and really start to live a joyful, meaningful, life, where even when the inevitable fears and anxieties surface again, we can hold God’s hand, and then finally turn to face them.

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PS: Just to keep this real, I have had huge issues myself, with ‘catastrophe thinking’, until about six years ago, when I read Pete Walker’s book on Overcoming C-PTSD, and finally realised it’s a symptom of experiencing trauma.

Just that knowledge in itself was enough to start changing the picture considerably, because once I knew it was NOT ‘rational’ or ‘healthy’ to be thinking like that, I stopped making excuses for it, and stopped being so angry with people who didn’t take my ‘catastrophic thinking’ seriously.

Over the last six years, I have gone through a whole bunch of massive fears, mostly justified, about what is going on around me.

The bottom line, the thing that always brings comfort and succour, eventually, even if it takes me tens of hours of hitbodedut to get there, and paying pidyonot as the shortcut – is that God is behind all this.

That is really the answer, the ‘solution’, to catastrophic thinking.

To only fear God, and not fear anything else.

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I am still a work in progress, and sometimes, the fear can still pop up and paralyse me.

But that’s not something that I am prepared to just accept and live with, any more.

It’s a call to action, a prompt from God that I need to work on my emuna.

There is nothing like lying in bed with a siren going off (at least, the first time…) to kick that process off. Or, worrying about the pedo network in Israel that keeps disappearing kids. Or, fearing the worst for people you know fighting in Gaza, or even just driving around roads in the Shtachim.

The list of my own fallen fears stretches a million miles long.

But the answer, the solution is always the same thing:

Taking it back to God, and accepting He’s running the world.

AKA:

You have to die anyway.

The real challenge is actually living life fully, before that happens.