In Mishlei, King Solomon tells us, “Daaga b’lev ish, yashchena;” If a person has worry in his heart, he should quash it. The Gemara1 teaches that R’ Ami and R’ Asi offered different explanations on this. One said, “He should forcefully push it from his mind,” and the other said, “He should tell it to others.”
Presumably, the other person will offer him comforting words and thereby reduce his anxiety. As far as the first approach, I think it would be hard to do, but if one distracts himself with Torah, the end of the pasuk relates, it will enable him to transform the worry to happiness.
Could This Really Help With My Fear?
Recently though, I saw something on the internet that would help explain this, but which I was skeptical of. It said a trick used by people in high-stress professions, like surgeons and special forces operatives, is to verbalize and articulate the anxious thoughts from their minds. For example, saying out loud, “I am fearful but continuing on,” does more for your body than merely thinking those thoughts. Articulation activates the left hemisphere of your brain, the same region that keeps your amygdala – your fear center – under control.
I wasn’t sure whether to believe this or not, so I asked a professional therapist, who told me this is absolutely a technique he uses with his clients to combat anxiety. I was pretty impressed that something online was legitimate, and I started to think about the concept.
Speak Your Heart
If this is so, that speaking the words you’re thinking in your heart can help calm you, then both those opinions in the Gemara make perfect sense. One on hand, speaking to others means you have to articulate your feelings, thereby already calming yourself. Merely telling your problems or worries to someone is helpful, regardless of what they respond. Unless of course, they aren’t sympathetic, in which case you might feel worse, but choose your listener wisely and you’ll be fine.
According to the other opinion, now, perhaps we can suggest that the way you “push it out of your heart,” is to not keep it inside, but rather to verbalize it and literally think it out loud. It’s amazing how insightful Chazal are and how they were able to provide this deep psychological and physiological understanding!
It also made me realize something else; something very personal to me. A major turning point in my personal bitachon (faith in God) growth was a lecture I heard from R’ Bentzion Bamberger Shlit”a.
Talk It Out With Him
He quoted the Chazon Ish that a person should speak to Hashem. When you’re going to buy a pair of shoes, say, “Hashem, please help me find a pair that is comfortable and supportive, that looks nice, and that is a good price.” By including Hashem in your speech, you come closer to Him (much as we find by Yosef in Egypt, where the name of Hashem was frequently in his mouth.)
When I started doing this, I found my faith was strengthened, and I worried less. Would I get a parking space on the busy street? I asked Hashem, and put it out of my mind. Now it was His problem. Would my interview go well? I asked Hashem to put the right words in my mouth, and now I just have to wait and see. The anxiety melted away.
Now, we can understand why this works. It’s because in speaking to Hashem – actually verbalizing instead of just thinking it – we are activating the calm and fear-reducing parts of our brains and literally quashing the worry. The Chazon Ish’s advice works on actual medical knowledge of how people are made, and enables us to be more confident and avoid worry.
He Always Listens
Some will say that the conversations with Hashem, then, are merely a nice façade for the REAL reason we’re calmer, being that our left hemisphere is excited by the expressed speech. And those people are missing the boat. Yes, speaking to yourself calms you physically. But why is that? Why does our physiology contain this quirk that we can quash our worries merely by talking them out?
To me, it’s clear the intent is for us to not just speak things out to ourselves, but to share them with our greatest friend, Hashem. He loves us more than anyone else in the world; always has and always will. He wants us to talk to Him, and to feel we can turn to Him at any time and any place. This closeness is why He created us this way. Hashem is giving us the incentive to reach out and connect.
Science can tell you how things work, and why the people who use this “trick” feel better. But what we, who look at the world as something created from the blueprint of Torah, know is that there’s no trick involved, and we can understand WHY it’s better to talk things out. It’s to get us into conversation with Hashem.
It’s The Best Way
In the words of R’ Yitzchok Hutner z”l, “Prayer isn’t to get you out of trouble. Trouble is to get you into prayer.” Please, don’t just think about what you’ve just read. Share it with others; discuss it. You’ve got no idea how much more powerful it is to think things out loud.
By Rabbi Jonathan Gewirtz
2025 – All Rights Reserved
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Sources:
1 Yoma, Sanhedrin, and Sota
