As the spiritual high of Yom Tov begins to fade, we are left
with some important questions. What do we do now, after the
teshuvah? How do we integrate our growth process into
the rest of the year?
In order to contemplate this integration, we must look at the
process of change itself. Change is loss. Giving up who we
were yesterday is not as easy as we think, for yesterday is
familiar. It is uncomfortable to part with what is familiar
to us. Let us examine change from two different perspectives:
external transitions and internal transitions.
Let us first look at the external transitions in our lives.
When we experience positive changes such as marriage, birth,
and moving houses, many people are not aware of the
psychological energy that must be invested in navigating such
transitions. Perhaps because these types of events are part
of the natural flow of life, we fail to notice their
significance. However, if we look at each example mentioned
above, it is clear that these major life events require
adjustment on several levels.
First let's take a look at marriage. This joyful event is
rarely viewed as a traumatic change that will require hard
work. Yet it is experienced that way for almost all new
couples. The Torah's wisdom of course takes this into account
as we see in the whole concept of shonoh rishonoh and
the laws that surround it. A single person becomes part of a
unit and must learn to integrate his or her individuality
into the marriage. In addition, many spouses realize early on
that their homes had different financial styles, parenting
styles and myriad other areas in which they have contrasting
ways of handling situations.
Bruchie shares: "The first year of marriage was so hard. He
liked to save: I was a spender. He liked plastic over the
Shabbos tablecloth. I couldn't stand it. These were trivial
details, and we figured out how to compromise. But it was
difficult, even on these seemingly irrelevant matters, to
give up the way I used to do things."
It takes a tremendous amount of communication and effort to
integrate two different ways of life. More importantly,
couples need to accept change as part of the fabric of
married life, especially if children soon come into the
picture. Let's move on to the birth of a couple's first child
which often occurs while they are still adjusting to
marriage. Rav Pincus zt'l said that it takes two years
to adjust to the birth of a child. This means that even if
there is no postpartum depression or other external
difficulties, it will take two years for the family to form a
new dynamic that integrates the new family member and for the
mother to physically and emotionally regain her stability.
Shira comments: "When my first baby was born, I was so
overwhelmed, I went from laughing to crying in seconds. I
thought I was crazy. I was exhausted and didn't know what to
do with the steady stream of well-intentioned visitors. It
took me years (and a few more births) later to figure out
that I was perfectly sane."
Birth is an event filled with such joy that we often fail to
give ourselves the space to adjust. Many women feel the loss
of the close connection that they experienced with their
babies when they were pregnant. Of course, they know that
they are now forming a nurturing, deep connection with that
new baby as a person. But the mother must be able to
acknowledge that she feels some sense of loss and that this
is normal. Additionally, we should accept that it is normal
and healthy to feel overwhelmed by a new baby.
Even as we look at some typical changes that might face any
family, such as a move to a new house, we see that the
transition merits being examined. For example, we need to
know that moving will entail emotional stress along with the
physical practicalities. Faige shares: "When we finally moved
into our new house, I was so excited. It had taken years of
thought and savings to get here. And suddenly, inexplicably,
I began to miss my tiny, old apartment! Not miss it in the
sense that I wanted to go back, but I missed its familiarity.
I missed being able to walk through it in the middle of the
night to feed the baby and knowing exactly where everything
was. It takes a long time to a make a new house into a
home."
Even if we are excited about the move and have been planning
it for years, we will still need to be prepared to undergo a
transitional period of loss in which all members of the
family must struggle on different levels to learn how to
integrate into the new environment. However, when we
experience these positive changes in our lives, the sense of
being overwhelmed is mitigated by the belief that we have
indeed gained far more than we have lost.
In contrast, when we deal with negative changes such as job
loss, failed relationships or death, the difficult transition
is compounded by our sense that we have irretrievably lost an
essential part of our lives. On one level, job loss threatens
one's self-esteem. Besides the critical financial pressure
that job loss brings in its wake, there is a great deal of
personal struggle that often ensues. Will I be able to find
another job? What does losing this job say about my abilities
and my character? And if the job is part of an intricate life
plan, then, sometimes, the loss can be devastating.
Shuli, a brilliant woman, dropped out of law school after her
marriage. "I realized one day as I was sitting in class that
this was just not what I wanted to do with my life. I was so
shocked by this thought that it took me a long struggle to
finally leave. For years I had been preparing for this
profession, I had shaped my dreams around it and suddenly, I
knew deep inside that it wasn't me. The funny thing was that
it had nothing to do with my marriage. When I left, it
devastated me. Not because I still wanted to be a lawyer, but
my identity had been inextricably intertwined with that
profession. The day I walked out of the law school, I felt
completely lost. Now who was I? It has taken me years
to form a new identity that is not dependent on any
profession."
One last aspect about job loss that adds to the stress is the
inevitable loss of structure in one's life. As Kayla put it:
"Suddenly, I had a whole day stretched out in front of me.
For the first couple of weeks, this lack of structure just
paralyzed me. I finally pulled myself out of it, but it took
an enormous amount of energy and motivation to begin
again."
If we move on to interpersonal loss or failed relationships,
this sense of paralysis is even more common. Many people feel
a tremendous sense of hopelessness when faced with obstacles
in a relationship, and when those obstacles are
insurmountable, it takes a long adjustment period to
integrate the loss of that relationship in one's life.
Braindy comments: "I still remember when I lost my best
friend in high school. We didn't have a fight or anything. We
just grew apart, and somehow that subtle, ambiguous gap was
even more painful. I wished that there was a reason that I
could understand, and it took a long time for me to form new
friendships without the fear that one day, they would just
taper off without warning."
This sense of loss takes its most extreme form when we are
faced with the death of a loved one. This is a loss that we
never adjust to, but we do find ways to deal with the pain.
After the initial shock wears off, people often go through a
period of anger or guilt. Why did he have to die? Why now?
How could he leave me? Or harder still: I wonder if I did
enough? Did he forgive me in the end for the
misunderstandings between us? But many of us then move on to
a period of acceptance in which we hold on to the precious
memories and are grateful for the time that we had. However,
the most crucial part of this loss often catches us unaware.
We are indeed, at some point along this transition, forced to
evaluate our purpose in this world and our eventual passage
to the next. And the experience of death makes time grow
suddenly short and we begin to wonder: are we accomplishing
what we need to in this world? Are we growing, reaching,
connecting?
Now we are faced with a different type of transition
entirely. Until now, positive or negative, we have been
discussing external change; circumstances that occur in our
lives. However, we see that often these circumstances can
propel us into the realm of inner transformation. As we move
on to the issue of internal change, we are navigating much
deeper waters. The process of internal change is more
abstract and therefore, more difficult to examine. But we
have all just been through the Yomim Noroiim, and we know
that however deeply we have committed to make changes in our
characters, the change itself is difficult to implement. In
the early 1980s James Prochaska and Carlo DiClemente
constructed a "Stages of Change Model." Let's look at the
stages briefly:
1) Precontemplation: In this stage, a person is not yet
acknowledging that there is a problem behavior that needs to
be changed. We are generally defensive at this stage. "It's
not a big deal." "I only lose my temper once in a while."
"Most parents do that," etc., etc
2) Contemplation: In this stage a person acknowledges that
there is a problem but is not yet ready or sure of wanting to
make a change. One spends time thinking about the problem,
and is generally ambivalent about taking steps to solve it. A
person can spend weeks in this stage or even a lifetime.
3) Preparation/Determination: In this stage, a person makes a
commitment to change. "Something has to change, now what
should I do?" This is ideally a kind of research phase.
People gather information by reading or learning or planning.
Unfortunately, many people skip this research stage and jump
right from contemplation into action. We usually fail when we
do this because although we have made a genuine, internal
commitment to change, we haven't looked into HOW we do so.
What are the steps? How will this change affect my life? Can
I accept and be prepared to deal with a major shift in
dynamics that follows on the heels of even the most positive
of changes? This is where most of us get stuck after Sukkos
We jump right into action without a plan and without an
awareness of the practical ways that life will have to change
to integrate that change.
4) Action/Willpower: This is the stage in which a person
actually believes that he can change and begins to take steps
to do so. This is often the shortest of the stages. It can
last six months or even only an hour. This is a stage that
takes an enormous amount of willpower and therefore, we are
most vulnerable to regression at this stage. People who are
successful in this stage are usually the ones who are open to
receiving help and proactively seek out support from
others.
5) Maintenance: This is a stage in which a person seeks to
maintain the behavior change. Usually we must ceaselessly re-
formulate our goals and must simultaneously, acquire new
skills to pursue them. In addition, the people who maintain
change successfully acquire an ability to anticipate
situations in which regression might occur, and prepare
coping strategies to deal with those situations.
6) Relapse: In this stage a person might regress to previous
behavior, but the people who are ultimately successful in
their pursuit of change do not become discouraged from
falling. Often, people will cycle through these stages of
change many times before stabilizing the new behavior.
Prochaska asserts that the most important part of getting up
again when one falls is to not revert all the way back to the
pre-contemplation or contemplation stage, but rather to re-
start the process at the preparation stage.
In the course of one day, a person can go through all these
stages of change and back again. However, even if we are
working on the same traits year after year, it is clear that
through each cycle, we are coming closer to our ideal. Often,
like a spiral, we think we are in the same exact place we
were last year, but really we are a whole level higher for
having invested ourselves in the growth process. When we
examine the impact of external transitions in our lives, we
can see that change itself challenges us to re- evaluate our
identities and our goals.
When we speak of internal transitions, the discomfort level
is infinitely greater. However, external and internal
transitions seem to share this critical point: in order to
successfully navigate changes in our lives, we must prepare
for them. Research, learn, plan. You want to be more patient?
What does that mean? What does it entail, practically? And
then take out your planner, where does it fit in? When is it
harder? When is it easier?
Break the goal down into smaller steps and outline them, one
at a time. Let us take the beauty and depth of our
teshuvah and integrate it into our lives. Change is
uncomfortable, but it is a precious gift.
May Hashem help us to use it well.
