Author: Dr. Avraham (Allan) Friedman, Psy. D., LMSW

September 7th, 2020

Happy by Choice – Parshat Ki Tavo We all want to be happy. You know how I know? From all the ads for programs on how to be happy. And many of them are quite successful. Even the American Declaration of Independence, proclaims the right to pursue happiness as an inalienable right of all humanity. I know I want to be happy. In a negative sense, the Torah describes the importance of happiness. This week's parsha, seems to say that "The Rebuke" …
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Author: Rabbi Yitzchak Shmuel Ackerman, LMHC

August 31st, 2020

Tovim ha-shnayim min-ha'echod, two are better than one.  (Koheles 4:9) What about more than two? According to the Vilna Gaon’s understanding of a Mishna in Avos, the more, the better.  This includes children together with adults.   The Mishna says: Marbeh Yeshiva, Marbeh Chachma (Avos 2:7),   The Gra on this Mishna says it alludes to this statement in the Gemara: Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi says: Much Torah have I learned from m …
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Author: Rabbi Yitzchak Shmuel Ackerman, LMHC

August 24th, 2020

The Gemara (Yevamos 79a) tells us that Yidden have three characteristics: we are rachamanim, merciful; baishanim; and gomlei chasadim, kind to others. The Mishna (Avos 2:5) tells us that a baishan cannot learn. This leads us to the following syllogism: Yidden are baishanim. Baishanim cannot learn. Therefore Yidden cannot learn. We seem to have a problem here.  Our syllogism has brought us to a false conclusion.  Obviously, BH, Yidden c …
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Author: Dr. Avraham (Allan) Friedman, Psy. D., LMSW

August 26th, 2020

Faithful to Yourself – Parshat Shofetim   I love reviewing the parsha. I would like to believe that even if there were no requirement to read it every week, I would still do it, but I can't believe that I would. So, I am thankful that Chazal expects us to review the parsha weekly. It also gives me a chance to notice new ways of looking at the content, some of which have quite opened my eyes. A few years back, I wrote about this verse f …
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Author: Yehuda Lieberman, LCSW, QCSW, DCSW

August 13th, 2020

Dear Therapist: I am a 15-year-old bochur in what many consider a choshuve mesivta. I consider myself a nice person. Perhaps I am a bit shy. I am often the subject of “sharfe” lines by the bochurim in yeshiva. There is a mehalech in the yeshiva of everyone trying to show how sharf and quick and smart they are, and for whatever reason I am the punching bag. Maybe cuz I’m an out of town …
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Author: Yehuda Lieberman, LCSW, QCSW, DCSW

August 13th, 2020

Dear Therapist: A year ago, my 20-year-old daughter told me she wants to speak to psychologist because she’s feeling anxiety. She insisted on speaking only to the top and most expensive ones. My husband is in chinuch and we don’t have an extra dollar but I don’t let money get in the way of necessities and over the past year and a half shelled out over 10 grand. My daughter never had any trauma and she doesn’t dis …
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Author: Yehuda Lieberman, LCSW, QCSW, DCSW

August 13th, 2020

Dear Therapist: A friend of mine who recently sat shiva made a comment to me about how some people were so helpful and supportive and others not so much. As professionals I was wondering if you could give your suggestions on how to properly be menachem avel and be supportive of those who have suffered a loss?   Response: Every person mourns differently. According to the Kübler-Ross model, there are off …
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Author: Yehuda Lieberman, LCSW, QCSW, DCSW

August 13th, 2020

Dear Therapist: I’m wondering if therapy can help a person who is in a difficult situation that can’t be changed. I understand if someone is depressed with life therapy can help them feel better but if someone is dealing with a reality that is bad is there a point of going to therapy? I understand the question is broad but I would prefer not to go into my own personal details. Either way there are many such examples, financial, famili …
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Author: Yehuda Lieberman, LCSW, QCSW, DCSW

August 13th, 2020

Dear Therapist: I have a younger sister (age 24) who I care about very much. She had a rough childhood as far as being picked on in school and since she is a nonconformist got in a lot of trouble. Her relationship with my parents has also been very up and down with a lot of negativity and hurt feelings. She has a small part-time job that she gets no satisfaction from. To me she is clearly depressed and she admits as much. She is very smart and no …
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Author: Yehuda Lieberman, LCSW, QCSW, DCSW

August 13th, 2020

Dear Therapist: We had been having some difficulties with our 7 year old son through the beginning of the school year. He had just been very angry and chutpahdik. In general he seems to have trouble expressing what is bothering him and seems to act out instead. Over the 3 months in which he was not going to school there was a noticeable change in his behavior for the better. My husband and I looked at each other one day and it hit us how wel …
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Author: Yehuda Lieberman, LCSW, QCSW, DCSW

August 13th, 2020

Dear Therapist: One of my teenagers is busy with "streaks." It seems that that is the only way he feels he shteigs. He will be very occupied, lemoshol, that he hasn't missed davening in “x” amount of days. Then when he misses he will completely fall apart and miss minyan for days at a time. It seems to be all or nothing for him. It is unclear to me exactly how much, but this mehalech does seem t …
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Author: Yehuda Lieberman, LCSW, QCSW, DCSW

August 13th, 2020

Dear Therapist: We have just been informed that my daughter's (13) sleep-away camp will not be opening this summer. She had a miserable few months because of the quarantine and lock-down and was so hoping for camp. Our family is in the city and there may be day-camps open, but the experience is not close to comparable.  She is now devastated. What can we tell her? How will she get past this?    Response: I know that your concerns a …
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Author: Yehuda Lieberman, LCSW, QCSW, DCSW

August 13th, 2020

Dear Therapist: I have gone through a lot the past few months and after reading this column thought that it would be a good idea to see a therapist to help me deal with my issues. I thought it would be a simple process but when I contacted a respected local therapist, she told me that I would need to see her twice a week and she also recommended that my family go through a regimen of weekly therapy sessions. That’s quite a lot, not to menti …
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Author: Yehuda Lieberman, LCSW, QCSW, DCSW

August 13th, 2020

Dear Therapist: Friends of mine have often commented that I don’t trust anyone. I never really took it seriously but since I got married and my husband has also mentioned it I have started to see it may be a pattern. He pointed out that even with my so called friends I don’t really get close to them and trust them. How would I know if this is an issue and how would it be addressed?   Response: To respond, I think that we can look …
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Author: Yehuda Lieberman, LCSW, QCSW, DCSW

August 13th, 2020

Dear Therapist: I am a 17 year old girl in a mainstream school, who has been through "tons" of therapy in my life. Language/speech therapy, O.T., P.T., Social skills—you name it. I have never gotten a clear diagnosis, but upon reading your article (January 25,2019) and then recently reading a book by Yated columnist Rivka Schonfeld, it appears to my parents and I that I really fall under the category of Non Verbal Learning Disability, being …
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Author: Yehuda Lieberman, LCSW, QCSW, DCSW

August 13th, 2020

Dear Therapist: I have been estranged from my brother for 8 years. This happened as a result of a financial issue where I felt he had cheated me. I got some bad advice at the time regarding how I should deal with it and that led to all the issues. There were mistakes made on both sides and we have been locked in. I’m not going to kid myself; there was a lot of nasty lashon horah and machlokes on my part but also on his. …
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Author: Yehuda Lieberman, LCSW, QCSW, DCSW

August 13th, 2020

Dear Therapist: There has been a lot of talk on the risk/reward of opening the economy vs continuing the quarantine. There has been a lot of mention of the significant mental health issues that could arise both directly from extended quarantine as well as from the economic impact that maintaining the shutdown has on people’s finances. While you may not be public health experts or epidemiologists, I was hoping you could share your educated o …
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Author: Yehuda Lieberman, LCSW, QCSW, DCSW

August 13th, 2020

Dear Therapist: My wife works as a nurse in a local New Jersey hospital. Needless to say she has been working very hard and endured a lot over the last 6 weeks. She has seen a lot off suffering and death unfortunately. She has worked tirelessly as an advocate for hospitalized patients and their families but has not always been successful. She acknowledges that she might need some counseling when this is all over but says now is not the time &ldqu …
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Author: Yehuda Lieberman, LCSW, QCSW, DCSW

August 13th, 2020

Dear Therapist: I am writing to see if you have any suggestions regarding our 17-year-old son. In general, he hasn’t been doing awesome over the last year. He has a particularly tenuous relationship with his mother while he does a little better with me. This period of quarantine has been particularly difficult. I guess I can break down the issue into a couple different questions. He is not really functioning on a normal schedule, waking up …
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Author: Yehuda Lieberman, LCSW, QCSW, DCSW

August 13th, 2020

Dear Therapist: I am a 24 year old married man. Since I remember I've been an extremely chilled and settled person. However, since the world turned upside down, I have been experiencing severe anxiety; I don't have an appetite, I am extremely weak and have many other symptoms of a person going through panic attacks. There is a lot for me to worry about unfortunately, primarily financially, but I have always dealt with stress well. What is happeni …
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Author: Yehuda Lieberman, LCSW, QCSW, DCSW

August 13th, 2020

Dear Therapist: On a regular week, in normal times, I have so much on my plate. Now I am expected to care for my infant (no babysitter), keep house (no cleaning help), work from home, entertain my kids, and be in charge of their homeschooling. This while my husband is also expected to work full time from home. When I hear people talk about how this time offers us opportunities to learn with our children, quality time, etc., I wonder what I a …
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Author: Dr. Avraham (Allan) Friedman, Psy. D., LMSW

August 7th, 2020

Potential – Parshat Ekev Some people notice everything that goes on around them. Others have a tendency to be so wrapped up in what's going on, they notice less about what is going on. I am somewhere in the middle though with a tendency to notice more than less. So, when I see the following idea expressed by the Netziv, I wonder how come I never saw it before.  The Torah has three mitzvot that include loving - loving God, loving your …
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Author: Rabbi Yitzchak Shmuel Ackerman, LMHC

August 2nd, 2020

A thing which you have enjoyed and used as your own for a long time, whether property or an opinion, takes root in your being and cannot be torn away without your resenting the act and trying to defend yourself, however you came by it. The law can ask no better justification than the deepest instincts of man.  (The Path of the Law, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., #10 Harvard Law Review 457, 1897)   Justice Holmes may not have realized it, b …
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Author: Dr. Avraham (Allan) Friedman, Psy. D., LMSW

July 31st, 2020

Frustration – Parshat Vaetchanan We all want to feel good all the time. We also know that stuff happens and our sense of stability is threatened. We often try to ignore this knowledge and live our lives "as if". We make plans, we invest time, energy and money based on dreams of how we wish to see our future. There are business plans and personal development programs that encourage us to see a few years down the line and build our present l …
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Author: Dr. Avraham (Allan) Friedman, Psy. D., LMSW

July 24th, 2020

Untitled – Parshat Devarim Just a short idea and can't decide on a title. What I've come up with so far, just isn’t quite right. (if you get any ideas, please let me know) The judges, whose appointment is discussed in this week's parsha, are reminded that they should be good, honest and fair judges for, after all, the judgment belongs to God.1 Well, isn’t that kind of obvious? If these judges are dealing with Jewish law, do they …
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Author: Rabbi Yitzchak Shmuel Ackerman, LMHC

July 19th, 2020

He [Rabban Yohanan ben Zakai] said [to his disciples]: go out [of the bais hamedrash] and see which is the good way to which a man should cleave?  (Avos 2:13 in the The Lehmann-Prins edition) Why did Rabban Yohanan ben Zakai ask his talmidim to identify one middah to which one should adhere?  Why didn’t he urge them to work on all of their middos? This question comes into sharp focus when we learn from the hakdama of Orchos Tzadik …
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Author: Dr. Avraham (Allan) Friedman, Psy. D., LMSW

July 18th, 2020

42 – Parshat Matot-Masei No, this is not a blog on "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy".1 Imagine - there are other times that the number 42 appears. For instance, the only uniform number that is permanently retired in Major League Baseball is the number 42, the number that Jackie Robinson wore. It is also the atomic number of the element Molybdenum. Even so, with a tip of the hat to all Douglas Adams fans, I would like to touch on t …
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Author: Dr. Avraham (Allan) Friedman, Psy. D., LMSW

July 10th, 2020

Dilemmas – Parshat Pinchas Sometimes I just hate dilemmas. They force me to choose between different options. And some of them aren’t so pleasant. You must have heard of the phrase 'between a rock and a hard place'. Some options are really unpleasant. And when you have two unpleasant options, then you're really going to suffer the choice. Rashi in this week's parsha, Parshat Pinchas alludes to this. Back when the sun and moon were cr …
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Author: Rabbi Yitzchak Shmuel Ackerman, LMHC

June 28th, 2020

He [Rabban Yohanan ben Zakai] said to [his disciples]: go out [of the bais hamedrash] and see which is the good way to which a man should cleave?  (Avos 2:9)   Two questions come to mind:   First, why go out of the bais hamedrash?  Isn’t the bais hamedrash the best place to think about one’s middos and to choose the one that is most important to you?   The Magid Rabi Yisrael m’Koznitz answered this quest …
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Author: Dr. Avraham (Allan) Friedman, Psy. D., LMSW

June 26th, 2020

Search for Simple Answers – Parshat Chukat Wouldn’t it be great if life had simple answers to even the most complex questions? It would be easier to bear the burdens of suffering and anguish. After all, if Despair is, according to Doctor Viktor Frankl, Suffering without Meaning (D=S-M), then if we could assign meaning to our suffering, we would be spared all that despair and anguish.1 We know that stuff happens. Our question is always …
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Author: Rabbi Yitzchak Shmuel Ackerman, LMHC

June 22nd, 2020

Vayomer Hashem Elokim, lo tov heyos ho'odom l’vado; e'eseh lo ezer k’negdo.   It is not good for man to be alone.  I will make a compatible helper for him. (Braishis 2:18, translation from The Living Torah, Rav Aryeh Kaplan, Z”L)   The verb l’nagad means “to oppose, to contradict.”  This implies that the preposition neged means “opposite” in the sense of “in opposition to.& …
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Author: Batya Yaniger, PsyD

June 17th, 2020

Sit upright in a chair with your feet flat on the floor. Close your eyes. Take a few deep breaths. Relax your whole body and do a body scan starting from your feet and slowly going up focusing on being present in each part of your body. Release any remaining tension. Now slowly rise up in your mind to a view from above your body. Look at the world and everything in it in detail, observing the high mountains and the seas, the wildlife and domesti …
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Author: Rabbi Yitzchak Shmuel Ackerman, LMHC

June 14th, 2020

Father to crying child: I understand that you are feeling really sad and disappointed, but think about what you’re so upset about!  That’s peanuts compared to what happened to me when I was your age! This dad began by validating his child’s feelings.  He then proceeded to invalidate her feelings.  He probably didn’t realize it.  You can be sure his child realized it.   Mother to sulking child:  …
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Author: Batya Yaniger, PsyD

June 11th, 2020

Sometimes I go outside to sit on my chair in my yard and eat lunch. It’s the same flowers, the same ground underneath my feet, the same as yesterday and the day before and the day before that. Or I’ll play piano and say so what? So I can play this piece a little bit better than yesterday. Is that what life is all about? What is the point? Those are the times I have lost my consciousness. Then I wake up to a higher consciousness. No! …
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Author: Rabbi Yitzchak Shmuel Ackerman, LMHC

June 7th, 2020

Everyone of us has a role in building self-esteem, in ourselves and in others.  Parents can do this continuously and, I hope, consciously.  Every one of us plays this role in the lives of many people whether we mean to or not. What is this nebulous yet essential quality we call self-esteem? In academia, self-esteem is defined as a global self-evaluation on a positive to negative continuum. Simply stated, self-esteem is the belief that y …
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Author: Dr. Avraham (Allan) Friedman, Psy. D., LMSW

June 5th, 2020

Feeling Ignored – Parshat Behaalotecha We all want to feel part. Even as a kid, I remember when we were choosing teams, I always wanted to be chosen. I also remember what it was like NOT to be on the team – either team. My parents tried to make sure that my needs weren’t ignored either. But sometimes certain groups are chosen. And others are left behind. Or it could even be being passed over for a promotion at work. It can be a …
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Author: Batya Yaniger, PsyD

June 3rd, 2020

Logos is deeper than logic. We have within us a deep, intuitive grasp of meaning. This inner guide is more reliable than rational explanations and it is in our best interest to trust it.   The logotherapeutic goal is to identify the meaning crisis and uncover the client’s intuitive sense that will allow them to make meaningful choices. To this end, the logotherapist does not sit with a pen and paper to carefully gather lots of informa …
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Author: Rabbi Yitzchak Shmuel Ackerman, LMHC

May 31st, 2020

Let us imagine that there is such a thing as an Immovable Object, and there is such a thing as an Irresistible Force, as described in this story: Once there was a man who was trying to sell a spear and a shield. When asked how good his spear was, he said that his spear could pierce any shield in the world. When asked how good his shield was, he said that it could resist being pierced by any sword in the world. One day, someone asked him what woul …
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Author: Dr. Avraham (Allan) Friedman, Psy. D., LMSW

May 28th, 2020

Mindfulness and Mindful – Parshat Naso* Mindfulness is one of the big buzz words nowadays. Learning to hear our own selves and our own voices, emotions and wishes is an important part of growth. But has this direction pushed out the concept of being mindful? Has being aware of one's self cancelled the ability to be mindful of others and their needs? How sensitive do we need to be to others in the face of our own needs? The reading of t …
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Author: Batya Yaniger, PsyD

May 28th, 2020

People who have had near death experiences report that they learned they we were sent to this world in order to learn certain things and in order to love. Viktor Frankl wrote that salvation is in and through love. In the words of rabbi Akiva, love is the ‘great principle’ of Torah (i.e the written and oral Jewish tradition). Another Torah giant, Hillel the elder commented that ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’ sums up the e …
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