“We all know that anxiety is connected to bitachon or lack thereof. But we may not always know how to immediately respond to people who argue that they are not connected.Or sometimes, in our anxiety, even we may think that they are not connected, even though we are morons. So this thread is to help y’all out, by showing you succintly, how they are connected.”
I would like to comment on the above:
Anxiety is very real to those who are experiencing it. They are plagued with anxious and intrusive thoughts that don’t seem to subside. With the help of therapy and medication (if needed), someone suffering from anxiety can be helped. With this said, Bitachon is extremely important but has NOTHING to do with those suffering from Anxiety. Imagine telling someone who suffers from severe anxiety to just have Emunah in Hashem. If that worked, that would be great and all the mussar seforim would be sold out. It DOESN’T WORK. How do i know, because I have seen people suffer from anxiety and various other things. They don’t want to hear “Just have more Emunah in Hashem and your anxiety will go away.” Emotions are very complex and are much different than things that we intellectually know. For example, someone who has a phobia of dogs when on a leash knows intellectually that the dog will not hurt him. However, they don’t know this emotionally and therefore have a tremendous fear of dogs.
Although they are very close physically, the heart and mind are very far. As it says, “V’yadata Hayom V’hashavosa L’vavecha.” We know, but the greatest work is to get the heart to know. Again, if someone can overcome anxiety with learning about Emunah, that’s great. But that’s rare. There are mental health professionals that are skilled with the various modalities of therapy. There’s CBT, DBT and much more. They are trained to help the individual connect the emotions with the intellect. They may do exposure therapy on the client that has a fear of dogs. My point is that learning Mussar seforim has almost no connection to solving psychological issues. Psychological issues are very real as i said and the client has to learn skills to rewire the neural pathways and to disassociate the fear from dogs. It’s a learnt thing which Bitachon cannot do. It can help as an aside, but it’s not the full or only answer.