Tikkun Magazine, September/October 2008
When Someone Gets On Your Nerves
By Leonard Felder
WHAT TENDS TO HAPPEN WHEN SOMEONE OFFENDS YOU, ATTACKS YOUR ideas, or treats you like you don't matter? How do you deal with situations where you feel enraged or hurt by someone you can't easily dismiss or ignore?
If you walk into a Mussar class or read one of the books about the 200-year-old history of this character-improvement methodology within Judaism, you will find it's not about being a passive doormat for hurtful people. Instead, the Mussar techniques explore how to handle these difficult situations peacefully and with great respect for the human dignity of every individual, even those whose beliefs or actions offend you deeply.
Most of the Mussar mentors and scholars talk about how hard it is to overcome the reactive human tendency to verbally attack or self-righteously lecture someone who says or does things we can't stand. It might be a member of your family who gets on your nerves about politics, religion, your physical appearance, or your love life. It might be a colleague at work who's saying things behind your back or putting down your favorite project at a high-pressure meeting. Or it could be someone in public life who embodies the exact viewpoint that you have been working for years to change.
As soon as you hear someone saying or doing the very thing you detest, your heart begins to race and your hormone glands begin to pump a "fight or flight" megadose of survival juice called adrenalin. This could become an ugly scene, or it might become the Mussar moment when you remember that hundreds of years of Jewish teachings ask you to take a deep breath, connect with the big picture, and respond with decency, inner strength, and compassion rather than self-righteousness or sarcasm.
It's not easy to do. But if you start to monitor yourself during heated, contentious moments to see how you're doing on the scale of "quick to lash out with verbal attacks" or "willing to build a human connection even to those who get on your nerves," you will be amazed at how much progress you can make.
In the Mussar system of daily, weekly, and yearly character self-examination, you are taught how to engage in a Cheshbon Ha-Nefesh (an Accounting of Your Soul) to see if you are walking-the-walk or kidding yourself. Each day becomes a learning laboratory to see how far you've come, and how far you still could journey, toward living up to the teachings of Leviticus 19 to "treat the stranger and the person nearby as you would like to be treated."
Here are a few examples of the variety of breakthroughs that can happen if you decide to see each person you encounter not as an opposing force to be attacked, but rather as a precious spark of hidden light.
1) The Unexpected Overheard Conversation
QUITE OFTEN WHEN YOU ARE IN A TENSE SITUATION THERE ARE SURPRISING MUSSAR opportunities in which a person remembers to think about crucial Jewish teachings rather than just reacting from anger or fear. Like a pebble tossed into a body of water that sends ripples for many miles, these Mussar opportunities can have a long-term impact that are beyond what anyone anticipated.
An inspirational example is that of a Palestinian man named Sami Adwan, who had been born in the West Bank, near Hebron, in the village of Surif (Newsweek, 8/13/2007). He recalls growing up with many family stories from his father and his grandfather about what life was like for their families prior to 1948. As a young child, Adwan was told in detail how Jews had seized his family's orange groves and wheat fields.
These negative perceptions about Jews were so strong in Adwan's mind that when he came to the United States in 1978 to study for a PhD in education at the University of San Francisco, he felt visceral discomfort in the presence of Jewish students or teachers. He admits he refused to listen to Jewish students and went so far as to transfer out of classes if he thought he would have to sit in a room with Jews.
After returning to his homeland and joining the Fatah Party, which had been outlawed by the Israeli Government, Adwan soon got arrested and, despite never being formally charged, was put in jail in 1991. One day he overheard an argument between two Israeli soldiers over whether Adwan should be forced to sign a document in Hebrew that he couldn't read.
One of the soldiers, basing his arguments on Jewish teachings, was insisting that justice and human dignity were more important than anything else. To Adwan's amazement, this Israeli soldier was arguing vehemently to a fellow Jew, insisting that this Palestinian man named Adwan needed to be treated with human kindness and fairness regardless of his beliefs and his past actions.
That surprising moment of overhearing two Jews arguing passionately about how to live up to the teachings of Judaism caused Adwan to ask himself an important question, "Do I really understand very much about Jews and Judaism?"
A dedicated educator by training and temperament, Adwan eventually became the co-founder and the co-director of an organization called Peace Research Institute in the Middle East (PRIME), which is involved in helping Israelis and Palestinians (children and adults) to learn each other's history, pain, and longings. The PRIME goal is not to validate or agree with the other side, but simply to understand it and to respect the humanity of those who have a different narrative than your own.
Since 1998, Adwan and his colleague Dan Bar-On, a professor of social psychology at Ben Gurion University in Israel, have produced numerous interactive booklets for each side and reached tens of thousands of individuals in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza. The PRIME model for exploring each other's narratives has also reached tens of thousands of people in the conflicts between Albanians and Macedonians through Skopje University in Macedonia and over 23,000 French citizens discussing the friction between Muslims and non-Muslims in France.
Yet it all began with an Israeli soldier taking an accounting of his own soul and arguing for justice and compassion, as well as a Palestinian educator and activist who was willing to question his earlier training about the Jewish people.
2) The Strange Pairing of Liberal and Conservative
A SECOND REAL-LIFE EXAMPLE (THAT INVOLVED TWO NON-JEWS BUT FELT VERY MUSSAR-like when I read about it) happened more recently in the frequently polarized United States.
The two who decided to treat each other with decency despite their clashing views were a liberal African-American Senator from Illinois and a conservative white evangelical minister from Orange County in California.
The minister, Pastor Rick Warren of the 20,000-member Saddleback megachurch in Lake Forest, California, was well-known nationally for his bestselling book The Purpose-Driven Life and for many years of aligning himself with conservative opposition to gay rights, abortion, sex education, and other causes.
But in January of 2006, Warren met the junior Senator from Illinois, Barack Obama, in Washington, D.C. and they began talking occasionally on the phone. During those months, Obama was re-writing his second book, The Audacity of Hope, and decided to send Warren a working draft of his chapter on faith to ask the minister to review it and offer suggestions.
At the same time, Warren and his wife Kay had begun to shift away from the traditional evangelical view of AIDS as "punishment for sexual immorality" and were planning their second international conference on responding to the spreading worldwide HIV crisis. They decided to invite Obama to address the Saddleback Church conference with a session entitled "We Must Work Together."
This caused an uproar among many conservative evangelical leaders nationwide. They were furious at Warren for inviting someone who was pro-choice and supportive of gay rights. Many prominent evangelical leaders begged Warren to retract the invitation and they condemned the conference. Some even accused Warren of heresy and said he was becoming part of the evil forces of destruction in American society that would bring about the end of days.
But Warren insisted, "I've got friends here, a Republican and a Democrat. Why? Because you've got to have two wings to fly." This led fellow conference speaker Senator Sam Brown-back of Kansas, a conservative evangelical who has traveled to Sudan and other parts of Africa, to say, "There's nothing political about dealing with malaria and global HIV. If we'll just give them the crumbs off our table, they can live and we can save our souls."
Hugely outnumbered by conservatives at the conference, Obama still received a standing ovation from the 2,072 pastors and others who were gathered to talk about Christian church approaches to the HIV crisis. Obama challenged the gathered audience by saying that simply discouraging promiscuity would not be enough to stop the spread of AIDS. He said, "We can't ignore the fact that abstinence and fidelity, although the ideal, may not always be the reality--that we're dealing with flesh and blood men and women and not abstractions, and that if condoms and, potentially, things like microbicides, can prevent millions of deaths, then they should be made more widely available."
Obama agreed with the ministers that "the relationship between sexuality and spirituality has broken down and needs to be repaired," but he added that on his visits to Kenya and South Africa he had seen that a major part of the problem occurs when men visit prostitutes and bring the disease home to their wives, or when young girls have been subjected to rape and abuse. So Obama talked directly but respectfully to the Christian conservatives about a more feminist/progressive approach, saying, "These are also the issues of prevention we can't walk away from ... The relationship between men and women needs to be repaired."
As a result of the conference, increased pressure was put on the Republican and Democratic leaders in Washington to improve the programs they support for preventing the spread of AIDS. Instead of liberals and conservatives demonizing or verbally attacking each other, they were (on this particular issue) forming a common bond of humanity and teamwork.
Yet the first step was a conservative minister and a liberal political leader getting to know each other personally and privately to discuss complicated issues of faith and social justice. Only when they had looked into each other's souls could they take the risk of honoring one another in a public forum.
3) The Vulnerable Counseling Client and Her Mother
THIS THIRD EXAMPLE OF HOW THE MUSSAR APPROACH CAN TURN A VICIOUS POWER struggle into a renewed sense of humanity and teamwork happened with one of my therapy clients, a woman in her early 20s named Rachel (names have been changed to protect confidentiality). Rachel had grown up with a very attractive but somewhat self-absorbed mom named Phyllis.
As Rachel explained during her initial counseling session, "My mom can be quite charming and charismatic. She's an incredible real estate saleswoman and she can throw the most elegant dinner parties with decoration skills that are beyond Martha Stewart. But when it comes to empathy or flexibility, forget it! My mom gets real testy and sarcastic when she's not in control, or when either of her kids ask her to consider their point of view in a situation where my mom fears she's going to lose face or look bad in the eyes of someone she's trying to impress. She can say the most vicious things and not care one bit if she's hurt you deeply. For her, everything is an issue of survival and she doesn't care who gets crushed as long as she gets her way."
For years Rachel had gone to therapists who told her to cut off from her mom or to "let it all out--tell your narcissistic mother exactly how you feel." Rachel found, however, that "each time I would start yelling at my mom, it got me nowhere. My mom's sarcastic put-downs and her lack of caring hurt me even more than before."
Then a year ago Rachel enrolled in a Mussar class and began to explore the idea that finding a way to act with integrity, inner strength, and compassion even when her mom was being unpleasant was an option she hadn't tried yet. Along with her Mussar training, Rachel came to see me for a few counseling sessions about a specific dilemma she was facing.
Rachel had known since her college days that she was attracted to women, and she had recently fallen in love with a friend-of-a-friend named Ellie. But Rachel had never told her mother about her sexual orientation and now Ellie was asking if she could come and meet the family at the upcoming lavish high holiday dinner that Phyllis was hosting in a few weeks.
At first Rachel admitted, "I feel caught in a no-win situation. If I come out to my family and I bring Ellie to one of my mom's big events, it's going to be horrible. My mom is going to say vicious things to me and she's going to find a way to make Ellie feel unwelcome and rejected. I don't want to do that to her, but on the other hand I can sense that Ellie has no desire for us to have a closeted relationship and she's wondering why I lack the courage to stand up to my mom and say, 'Hey, this is who I am and this is how it's going to be from now on."'
During our counseling sessions, I asked Rachel, "From your Mussar readings and assignments, what might be another possibility for how to approach your mom?"
Rachel looked at me with a blank expression for a moment and then something lit up in her eyes. She said, "In Mussar, we take a moment to look at ourselves as a humble-but-improving vessel for God's love and holiness and to look at the other person as a humble-but-improving vessel that also contains hidden sparks of light. But that's not easy to do with someone like my mother, because her sparks of light are so deeply hidden under layers and layers of status-seeking, ego, defensiveness, and sarcasm."
So I asked Rachel the tough question, "What do you think might be some of your mom's hidden sparks of light?"
Rachel smiled and admitted, "I've never really asked myself that question." Then she got a mischievous grin on her face as she said, "Do I really have to consider my mom in such positive terms?"
I replied, "It doesn't mean we need to whitewash or lie about your mom's difficult traits. It just means that in your next few interactions with her, you might benefit from seeing if there's some light and goodness hidden under all that puffed-up protection."
Rachel thought for a moment and then said, "The truth about my mom is that she desperately wants to be loved and approved of by everyone around her. She's like a little girl who never quite believes she's good enough or pretty enough, so she's always trying harder to prove herself. It makes me sad to think of just how vulnerable and fragile my mom is underneath all her bravado and sarcasm. She's always in fear that someone is going to figure her out and reject her. I guess that's going to make it hard for her to deal with the fact that she's about to find out she's the mom of a lesbian and that her impeccable dinner parties are now going to have something controversial that might cause narrow minds to question whether she was a good-enough parent."
That insight about her mom's vulnerability and longing for love was the beginning of a breakthrough for Rachel. For the next few weeks, Rachel initiated six gentle phone calls and three face-to-face conversations in which she listened compassionately as her mom described some of her own fears and concerns about what people might think or say about the news that Rachel was bringing her female lover to the holiday dinner.
As Rachel discovered, "Once I realized that my mom's insecurities and sarcastic cover-ups were about her and not about me, it was so much easier to just listen and appreciate how hard this is for my mom. I actually had a moment where I looked into her frightened, defensive face and saw my mom's vulnerable longing for love shining through. She's not an easy woman to love, but my mom is so hungry to be appreciated and cared about. Talking to her about how much I have longed for love with a woman I could trust and build a life with, and how much my mom has longed for love in each of her three marriages and many breakups, has helped us connect in a way we never did before."
I cannot say that Rachel's mom became a perfectly behaved, compassionate human being as a result of these heart-to-heart talks. At the high holiday dinner a few weeks later, Rachel's mom was still quite bossy, controlling, and even made two sarcastic remarks that had subtle hints of homophobia.
But Rachel found, "My strength and my happiness didn't come from holding my breath and waiting for my mom to change into a perfect empathic human being. I'm feeling good about Ellie's first visit to my family because for the most part my mom and I treated each other with dignity throughout these past few weeks and the family gathering was 95% decent and only 5% toxic. There were a few tense moments, but using some of the Mussar techniques for asking God to keep my heart open, I was able to feel loved and accepted by most of my extended family even when one or two people had judgmental looks on their faces."
Rachel concluded, "Despite her discomfort with the whole situation, my mom seemed to appreciate that Ellie dresses well, that Ellie helped with the table decorations, and was quite charming and presentable in front of all the relatives. I think my mom felt good about the fact that I'd given my beloved single parent a lot of time and attention to explore her concerns with me during the weeks prior to the holidays. And I felt great about the fact that I was able to hear her insecurities and judgments without resorting to my old habit of feeling shut down, defensive, or crushed like I used to get. My mom is still a vulnerable work-in-progress, but as I've learned in my Mussar studies, I'm also a vulnerable work-in-progress."
(In the March/April 2008 issue of Tikkun, Leonard Felder wrote about the origins and daily practice of Mussar, a self-monitoring system in Judaism that helps a person respond with decency, integrity, and mindfulness even in stressful moments when confronted with someone who disagrees with you passionately. Now in Part II, we asked Felder to offer some additional real-life examples of how the Mussar confrontation style avoids the "I'm right, but you're an idiot" tone of most political conversations and therefore might allow bitter adversaries to become occasional partners for making progress.)
Leonard Felder, Ph.D. is a licensed psychologist and the author of eleven books, including his newest, Fitting In Is Overrated: The Survival Guide for Anyone Who Has Ever Felt Like an Outsider (Sterling, 2008).
