Dear Therapist:

My son is scheduled to go to Eretz Yisroel to learn next year. He had a difficult high school experience but has grown tremendously over the last 2 years. The yeshiva in Eretz Yisroel is a great opportunity for him to keep growing. He is, however, extremely nervous about the whole security situation. As I write this, Haniyeh ym"s was just killed and things again look like they could escalate. It's always back and forth and I don't think we will know what the status is until he gets on the plane, and it could still change once he is there. I am trying to figure out how to get him though these next few weeks. He is really agonizing over this. I also don't want him to give up on this opportunity just because of his fears, but we have learned that pushing him doesn't work. I would appreciate any suggestions you have for us. 

Response:

I’m sure that many people are concerned about their own and their loved ones’ safety and security in today’s climate. There are certainly reasons for concern, and I’m sure that you share your son’s concerns.

There is, however, a difference between concern and anxiety. For the sake of this response, I will define concern as logical, realistic worry that is consistent with the situation. In contrast, anxiety would be emotionally-based fear that is in excess of what one would expect given the circumstances. Thus, your son’s feelings about going to Israel are likely a combination of concern and anxiety.

You mentioned that pushing your son doesn’t work. Perhaps you have tried to make him do things that cause him anxiety, only to discover that this doesn’t help—or even makes him dig his heels in deeper. Or maybe you have tried appealing to his logical side. If so, you have also made little headway, if any.

There are many therapeutic modalities that would offer suggestions and strategies to help deal with anxiety. From a cognitive perspective, I would focus on two concepts. The first is a surface-level view of your son’s thoughts and emotions. The approach would involve clearly identifying his logical thoughts and his emotions, and beginning to separate them from one another.

As mentioned, your son’s thoughts and emotions are combined. His feelings can easily feel like thoughts. Therefore, if he feels very afraid, his conscious mind attempts to associate this feeling with the actual situation. Since he feels very afraid, his conscious mind tells him that the real situation must actually be very scary. If he doesn’t acknowledge that there are two different things going on in his mind, he might never recognize that his emotions do not accurately correspond to the actual situation.

Thus, the first concept relates to how the conscious mind deals with unconscious anxiety. The second concept relates to the way in which the unconscious mind deals with anxiety.

When someone feels anxious, the unconscious mind often tries to “protect” the person by preventing them from considering the source of anxiety. Unfortunately, this protection is typically an emotional defense that was created in early childhood. Therefore, it was designed to protect a young child from fears that they did not have the capacity to resolve. Although as an adult the person is capable of dealing with the fear, this defense mechanism is triggered causing the person to get stuck in the emotion. When this happens, the person’s mind is consumed by the emotion, leaving no room for logical consideration of reality.

In addition to the lack of logical clarity, since the unconscious mind is triggering childhood feelings of anxiety, these feelings are often as intense in adulthood as they were in childhood. Since young children do not properly understand situations, they often feel significantly more fear than warranted by the situation. When these childhood emotions are felt in adulthood, the intensity can be exactly as it was in childhood.

When this occurs, one strategy is to imagine a feared situation playing out step by step, and to identify the worst-case scenario for each step. As each aspect of the fear is clearly identified and considered, the conscious (adult) mind often automatically calculates the likelihood of the fear actually occurring, thereby reducing anxiety. If this last step does not happen naturally, it can be done deliberately.

You may find that your son’s anxiety is strongest in anticipation of an event, and that it fades once he is forced to face the situation. This can be viewed as a behavioral concept: exposure therapy. Have you ever wondered why exposure therapy works? If anything, I would think that exposing someone to the very thing that they most fear would cause their anxiety to increase. The reason that exposure therapy works is that it forces the person to consider the situation in an adult, conscious way.

Because childhood defense mechanisms can be so powerful, it may be difficult for your son to face his fears, even just as a cognitive exercise. Perhaps reminding him that past fears have been alleviated by facing and logically considering them will help him to get past this reluctance.

-Yehuda Lieberman, LCSW

  psychotherapist in private practice

  Woodmere, NY

  adjunct professor at Touro University

  Graduate School of Social Work

  author of Self-Esteem: A Primer

  www.ylcsw.com / 516-218-4200

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