Talking heads and PTSD
Well, I just got the cable back for the internet.
After 10 minutes of shufty-ing around the web – I understand again, 10000%, that I am missing totally nothing when I’m offline.
Basically, I missed a whole bunch of hot air, ‘talking heads’ rehashing stuff over and over again from the last 30 years; more pointless ‘prophecies’ of Bibi being MBY (that’s so ridiculous….), and then Trump presumably being MBD (if Jonathan Pollard doesn’t beat him to it.)
Whatever.
It’s a free world, people can waste their time, and befuddle their minds, any way they want.
Thank God, I’m spending less and less time in that ‘pointless at best’ waste-of-time space.
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In the meantime, I had a few days to try to digest what we actually experienced just motzash – four short days ago!
My daughter was so scared, she was literally shaking for an hour as we sat down our stairwell reciting tehillim together – the Tikkun HaKlali.
Which worked wonders, btw, to quell my daughter’s fear.
I wouldn’t say I was feeling totally unafraid, because whatever it was that was going on outside was extremely disconcerting, even if it didn’t feel dangerous at the time.
In one second, ‘reality’ can change around totally.
You feel your mortality. You feel the fragility of life, and how powerless we really are.
Even when ‘nothing much’ actually happens.
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The following day, Sunday, I was feeling really angry.
Yeah, I got ripped off by the arab car washers, who charged me a fortune for a ‘Pesach clean’ and then barely even hoovered stuff you get hoovered when it’s not a ‘Pesach clean’.
The arab teenager also leaned over me – twice – when I was actually still in the car to ‘do stuff’. And that bothered me a lot.
Sadly, I was still too British to make a scene and yell at him to get the heck away.
My ‘Israeli’ kids do a way better job of that, thank God.
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But the low-level anger continued for two days.
And then yesterday, the mood shifted into feeling pretty down.
My husband was also feeling pretty ‘down’ yesterday, and apparently, so were a few other people
I did some hitbodedut on it yesterday and today, and it struck me that it’s probably some mild PTSD reaction to being stuck down my stairwell at 2am, considering the remote possibility of dying while stuck down my stairwell, while watching my daughter shaking like a leaf from fear.
And then the next day – we’re all just expected to ‘go back to normal’.
It’s totally head-wrecking.
But this is the insanity-inducing ‘pace’ of life online, where you can’t even really get your head around massive, life-affecting events (in theory, at least) before the next ‘big headline’ looms into view to take your mind off it.
No wonder so many people are popping ‘calm’ pills and smoking industrial quantities of pot just to get through their day.
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It’s taken a couple of days for the ‘down’ to make its way out of the system.
This morning, I was still feeling quite ‘pointless’ and depressed.
(‘Depression’ is also a stress response, associated with FREEZE, and like all stress responses, it’s actually connected to a very strong chemical reaction cascading through the body. Once the FREEZE chemicals made their way out, I started to feel so much better. But it takes time for that to happen – and the bigger the FREEZE experienced, the bigger the quantity of chemicals that needs to exit the body.)
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But by this afternoon, I was back cleaning, and doing some other stuff.
And feeling better again, BH.
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We went to the Rav this evening, but he’s lost his voice, so he didn’t give a shiur this evening.
What we think he said Monday morning, briefly, is that 360 rockets were sent in 12 minutes, and this is something that won’t be forgiven even on Yom Kippur….
Me and my husband were discussing this, as Yom Kippur atones for Jews, not goyim, not ‘Iranians’….
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In the meantime…
There is some very interesting stuff going up from Rav Elmaliach, (and also, the Rav) and I will try to post something from him up next, and to translate some more stuff.
You should know, I only translate the ‘low-hanging’ fruit from R Elmaliach, the stuff that is easier to put into English. He’s putting out some shiurim that are such high-level kabbalah, it’s very hard to follow what he’s saying (at least for me.)
His chiddushim and messages from the Rav are awesome, and literally on a totally different level from what sadly passes as ‘Torah’ in our very low generation.
Even when it’s just the ‘low-hanging fruit’.
But I guess people are attracted to the stuff that reflect their inner dimension, which is why so many Anglos are just not interested in what he has to say.
(We really are in a pickle…)
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So look out for that.
And if you’re feeling a little angry / scared / depressed / super-fake-pretending-everything-is-sababa – know this is most likely a stress response to motzash, a mild (or not-so-mild) episode of PTSD – and something that needs to be recognised, acknowledged, and worked through the system.
Turn off the internet, do some hitbodedut, and let yourself feel and experience and recognise whatever you need to, about what you went through motzash.
These things are not ‘small’, even when big miracles occur.
They aren’t ‘small things’ at all, emotionally.
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And I also didn’t get five minutes to grieve the murder of Binyamin Achimeir.
With all the madness of motzash, I forgot for a couple of days that he’d been missing, then found murdered.
It’s like the Gemara says, that before one trouble is even over, the next ‘wave’ is hitting.
And that ‘wave’ on motzash was big, for all of us here in Israel, and in Jerusalem, on some level.
Such a mad world we live in.
“360 rockets were sent in 12 minutes”!!! This is very important to note that the Vilna Gaon wrote: “The last war, Milchemet Gog uMagog, is going to last only 12 minutes because they are going to have such weapons….”
I assumed that meant a nuclear blast that took 12 minutes to arrive but maybe this fulfills the prophesy even if it didn’t cause damage!