Yakov Danishefsky: Religion and Mental Health: God and Us

David Bashevkin: 

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Hi, friends, and welcome to the 18Forty Podcast where each month we explore a different topic balancing modern sensibilities with traditional sensitivities to give you new approaches to timeless Jewish ideas. I’m your host, David Bashevkin, and this month we’re exploring mental health. Thank you so much to our series sponsors, Andrew and Terri Herenstein. 

I am so grateful for your support and friendship, and may all those listening find a commitment to HaKadosh Baruch Hu and Yiddishkeit to heal the broken hearts and bind up all of our collective wounds. Thank you so much, Andrew and Terri for your friendship, partnership, and support. 

This podcast is part of a larger exploration of those big juicy Jewish ideas, so be sure to check out 18forty.org. That’s 18forty.org, where you can also find videos, articles, recommended readings, and weekly emails. It’s hard to know where the beginnings are in the world of mental health in many ways, my mind, it’s another obvious example of when you can tell that you have ingested a little bit too much pop culture. 

But the first place where my mind actually went, it’s a little bit of a meme, but it is a dialogue from the show, The Office, one of the great classics that has been embraced by the Jewish community. It’s a custom of mine that I always tell my students when they get married, try to find some time on a Saturday night on a Motzei Shabbos to watch the entire series of The Office with your spouse while having some pizza and wine. That, of course, is your choice. That’s just my advice. 

But there is this one scene. I think it’s from those early years when it was really, really good between Michael Scott, played by Steve Carell, who’s the boss of The Office and his nemesis on the show, our beloved character Toby, played by Paul Lieberstein, who is actually also a writer and executive producer on the show, and he plays this insufferable HR director. 

They are planning this casino night for the office staff, and Michael’s idea, who is this lovable oaf on the show, is to invite not only the staff members but their children as well, and they have the following exchange. 

Toby Flenderson: 

Actually, I didn’t think it was appropriate to invite children since there’s gambling and alcohol and it’s in our dangerous warehouse. It’s a school night, and Hooters is just catering. Is that enough? Should I keep going? 

Michael Scott: 

Why are you the way that you are? Honestly, every time I try to do something fun or exciting, you make it not that way. I hate so much about the things that you choose to be. 

David Bashevkin: 

There’s something very visceral and real about the way Michael asks, “Why are you the way that you are? Why is it that you choose to be the way that you are?” Kind of this visceral way and the tone of his response, which is so intense for comical purposes. But there’s a piece of me that sometimes looks at myself or looks at others and asks, “Why are you the way that you are?” 

Now, it’s sometimes easy to just chalk it up to our mental health problems. Sometimes I’m having a bad day, and things aren’t going right. I’m just fully overwhelmed, and I’m not responding well to people or whatever. I’m just like, “Look, I got mental health problems. You got to give me a break. Give me 20 minutes here.” But that’s not really so precise. I think so much of people’s journeys and people’s immersion to the world of mental health, aside from wanting to become healthy, people want to see why are we the way that we are. 

How do we figure that out? How do we, so to speak, go back to that beginning? I think any series on mental health needs to go back to that beginning to try to figure out why are we the way that we are. That doesn’t require you to hate your parents or to confront anybody who’s done everything that’s wrong. Sometimes that’s necessary, but that’s not what I mean by the beginning. 

I think the beginning, I mean almost in a cosmic sense that we have something in the very beginning of the creation of the world in the story of the Torah that I think is really instrumental in uncovering in our approach to mental health itself. That is the Mishnah in the fifth chapter of Avot says that the world was created with 10 utterances, 10 speakings. The world was created through speech itself. 

There is a really fascinating dispute between the Babylonian Talmud and one of the midrashim known as Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer about how to arrive, what are the 10 utterances that were spoken for the creation of the world. The Talmud in Tractate Rosh Hashanah counts the first act of creation, “in the beginning of God’s creating,” as the first utterance, so to speak. 

Now, there is no mention of the word, vayomer, which is the Hebrew term for speaking. So it’s almost an implicit utterance. It’s not one that is explicit. It is an implicit utterance, something that the Talmud calls an implicit utterance, a covered over, a hidden utterance. We don’t have the saying. We don’t say vayomer, and God spoke, and then He created the world. It’s an implicit act of speech. 

The midrash in Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer actually says something quite different, which is that it only counts explicit utterances. It only counts the first 10 times at the actual word, vayomer, “and He spoke,” referring to God’s acts of creation, those are the only 10 that are counted according to the midrash. So it does not count to the implicit utterance of that first act of creation, the opening verse of Bereishis bara Elokim. So it is only left with nine. 

It actually goes outside of the creation story, and the 10th utterance is, in fact, found in the second chapter of Bereishis, of Genesis … The 10th and final utterance, according to the midrash, is God speaking and saying, “It is not good for man to be alone. Let me create a companion beside him.” This is the beginning, so to speak, the final act of creation, which is that integral to creation itself is the human need for companionship. 

I think this is more than just a debate over whether or not we count implicit utterances or explicit utterances or which are the 10. I think this is debate about how we think about our own beginnings. Do we think about even and include the implicit uttering of our lives, the things that are almost impossible to uncover, impossible to clearly articulate, or no, those can’t really be counted as a part of the beginning, and therefore we are forced to count this 10th one, which is explicit? 

That is this almost rule inherent in nature that we do not thrive when we are alone. Relationships, the way that we interact and relate to the rest of society, our romantic relationships, our friendships are a part of our beginning creation story. 

I think for this series, and particularly for this guest, we are living in a world that presumes that a part of our beginnings, a part of really understanding our own sense of self and who we are, it’s sometimes impossible to find the implicit utterances of how we were brought into this world. Why are you the way that you are? 

A lot of those implicit utterances, the traumas, the challenges, the culture that we hold that are baked into us from our parents and grandparents, sometimes those are impossible to articulate. They remain implicit utterances. Instead, our beginning is going to be the explicit utterances, and that is the way that we relate to others. 

Looking at relationships, looking at our friendships, looking at the way that we interact with others is almost the starting point, the window to at least begin to uncover that great unknown about our sense of self, that maybe it’s through that explicit utterance, the impossibility of being alone and that knowing that the way that we interact with others is a very inherent and essential part of ourselves is the only way to even arrive at that mysterious implicit uttering, that implicit Bereishis bara Elokim. 

In order to uncover what that Bereishis, what that beginning is, we have to discover and walk through the entry point of the explicit utterance, that final 10th time when God explicitly uses the language of vayomer in the act of creation to tell mankind and to tell humanity that an essential part of who you are is the way that you interact with others. 

That is why I am so excited for the guest and conversation today. Aside from being an extraordinarily close friend, someone who we’ve developed in parallel with one another, I think we’ve discussed our challenges with one another, and that is my dearest friend, Yakov Danishefsky, who serves as both a rabbi and educator, and most importantly for our series, as a therapist. 

He is the author of the book Attached, published by Mosaica, which we will discuss. This isn’t really a book review, but a lot of the ideas which this book is based on is really an entry point for incredible self-discovery. The window that he really explores is the window of relationships, is that in order to understand yourself, we need to understand how we interact with others. How do we treat others? 

In many ways, it reminds me of the distinction that I actually discussed in a TED Talk that I gave before the Yeshiva University community about the difference between mission statements and actual culture of companies. Companies like spending a lot of time on their mission statements, on their vision. They might hang them on their walls. They may look at them aspirationally. These are the things that we’re trying to do. 

But there is something far more important than those mission statements, and that is the actual culture that is created. There is a fantastic book by Ben Horowitz, I think, from the venture capitalist firm, Andreessen Horowitz, called What You Do is Who You Are: How to Create Your Business Culture, which has affected the way that I think not only about businesses, but about people. 

Essentially what he says is, if you want to understand the culture of an organization, look at what they do. Who do they promote? Who do they demote? That speaks volumes more than whatever mission statement might be on their walls. I think a lot about the way we think about ourselves. Sometimes we like to assess ourselves based on our mission statement. What kind of person am I? 

Well, I have this mission statement. I’m a nice guy. I’m a funny guy. I’m a smart guy. I’m a caring guy. We have this mission statement, and that’s really important. Sometimes it serves as kind of an aspirational direction. But more important than a mission statement, as Peter Drucker once famously said, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” Culture is the greatest momentum force, I think, not only in companies but in actual individuals. 

Aside from the mission statement of your life, who I am, who I profess to be, there is the culture of who you are. Well, what would your friends say you are? How would your friends describe you? Who are the people who you make an active effort to form relationships with? Who are the kinds of people who the relationships always deteriorate and fall apart from? And what does that say about who you are, essentially? 

It is not enough to just look at the implicit utterances of our lives and say, “Well, this is my mission statement. When I’m alone in a room, when I look in a mirror, this is what I would like to see back.” Instead, I think what is even more important and definitional about our very sense of self is what you do is who you are, the way that we form relationships, the triggers in our relationships, what gives us anxiety, what shuts us down. Sometimes we’re not the only ones to write that story. 

It’s the people who are closest to us, our romantic relationships, our spouses, our children, our close friends who have known us, our colleagues. The way that we interact with all of these groups speaks volumes and sometimes can be the ultimate window to really understand the essence of who we are in ourselves. That is why I am so excited for today’s conversation with my dearest friend, Yakov Danishefsky. 

I wanted to begin by actually talking and going back to something I heard from you many years after our friendship started, and that was a presentation you gave to a group, including myself and a group of NCSY staff members, all involved in religious outreach. You gave a presentation about attachment theory, which also is literally the name of a book you wrote. You wrote a book called Attached, published by Mosaica Press. 

I wanted to begin with that presentation and outline the very basics of what is attachment theory, and then maybe we can get into why this theory really changed the way I think about religious growth, religious identity, why this theory is so foundational to our spiritual relationships. But why don’t you begin by outlining what exactly is attachment theory? 

Yakov Danishefsky: 

Yeah, great. Attachment theory is something that the father figure of attachment theory is someone named John Bowlby, but many, many people were contributors and really progressed this theory in a lot of ways. I think, personally, that the most helpful way to understand attachment theory is to give it a foil or a point of contrast using Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, which is a very popular idea and has a lot of truth to it. 

I love Abraham Maslow, so I always feel bad doing this. But I use him as the place that someone who got something wrong- 

David Bashevkin: 

To contrast it. 

Yakov Danishefsky: 

Yeah, to contrast it to what attachment theory. So in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, there’s this idea that there’s a pyramid or a ladder that humans function on, and we start at the bottom. When we have certain needs met at that bottom rung of the ladder or the first level of the pyramid, we can then move to the next, and then so on and so forth, sequentially from one rung to the next rung. 

David Bashevkin: 

What’s on that bottom rung in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, and what’s on the top rung? You don’t have to get every one right. But what’s the bottom? What’s the top? 

Yakov Danishefsky: 

The bottom is what we would typically think of as what we call our basic needs. The way most people think of that, and this is how Maslow portrays it, is food, shelter, warmth, physical safety, those kinds of body physiological needs. He then has in the middle that once you meet those needs, what you can then climb to is you can then focus on self-esteem, relationships, love, connection, et cetera, socialization. 

And then from there you can get to the top of the pyramid, which is what he looks at as being the ultimate goal that we’re trying to get to as we climb this ladder is self-actualization. So it’s the manifestation of a person’s ideas, their creativity. It’s the actualization of all the different things that a person brings into the world in terms of their talents and the uniqueness of their personality. That’s the progression in a basic form. 

David Bashevkin: 

Why is attachment theory a foil to that? Explain. 

Yakov Danishefsky: 

Attachment theory says he got that wrong in two fundamental ways. He got it wrong on the bottom, and he got it wrong on the top. He got it wrong on the bottom because actually our attachment needs, which is really just the way they refer to our need for love … They actually wanted to call attachment theory, love theory. They were just nervous they’d get laughed out of the psychological scientific world if they called it that. 

David Bashevkin: 

Is that historically true? 

Yakov Danishefsky: 

That is historically true. They wanted to call it love theory, but they didn’t because they thought they’d get laughed out. They got laughed out regardless. They got laughed out initially with attachment theory also. But at least attachment sounds a little bit more scientific than relationship and a heck of a lot more scientific than love. So they called it attachment theory. 

But really the idea being that at one of our basic needs, even on a physiological level, and there are a number of studies that illustrate this point, on a most basic physical level need, we need connection. We need to be in a state of being that we feel that our experience in this world is a shared experience, not an isolated experience. We need to live in a way that we feel our life is a shared experience, that there’s someone that we’re living with. 

There’s a sense of connectedness, a sense of belonging, a sense of togetherness, that there is some way in which I’m not just here in this world on my own. That need is actually at the same level of basic necessity as food and as physical safety. 

David Bashevkin: 

That is a basic starting point, meaning when we think of socialization, we’re thinking of fancy dinners out with friends, and those are usually associated with luxuries. It’s nice to have a lot of friends. It’s nice to be popular. You don’t need it to survive. What attachment theory is essentially suggesting is that there is a baseline level where we need basic connections. 

We need healthy attachments with other individuals in order to progress through this world, to have that sense of a shared experience. That’s on the bottom rung. Why is that also a foil for the top rung? 

Yakov Danishefsky: 

Maslow’s hierarchy also got it wrong on the top because the way he depicts it is that the ultimate satisfaction is the self-actualization, and relationships are just this in-between stage. It’s a means towards an end. But the ultimate goal and the ultimate satisfaction in life is when my creativity comes to life In this world. 

What attachment theory shows is that a person can have all the actualization of all their ideas and they can have all the output of invention and books and ideas and organizations and all of that can happen, but if they’re doing it in a way that’s alone, it’s meaningless to them, that people will be dissatisfied and miserable really, even if they have the actualization of all of their inner aspirations, if it’s not done in that shared experience. 

So that shared experience, that connection is both the bottom, the middle, and the top. The reworking of the human hierarchy of needs should be that we take whatever hierarchy you want to put and you put relationship at every single stage. 

David Bashevkin: 

That is very profound. But obviously, that is not where the theory ends. If the theory is just telling me you need a friend, you need somebody to talk to, it would put a lot of psychologists out of business. Meaning if the foundation of the theory is just you can’t live by yourself, you can’t be this hermit-esque Ted Kaczynski-like figure living in some isolated cabin in the woods of Montana. One would expect that most people are fairly happy. 

I’m obviously misunderstanding. I’m deliberately oversimplifying it. I go around. I belong to a shul. I belong to a community. I have a family. I have friends. Yet when I go around both in my own life and with others, I am still capable of being miserable. There’s still a capacity to feel some of those very basic needs. I agree with that foundational assumption that part of the basis of human experience is having relationship, that shared experience that’s so necessary. 

So there must be something about the way we form relationships that can go wrong. It’s not about do you live by yourself or do you live with others. How does attachment theory address the fact that people who have relationships in their lives can still experience deep, deep, mental unwellness, psychological unwellness? They are not yet happy. 

Yakov Danishefsky: 

It’s complicated because there’s obviously so many factors that could be involved in this. So someone could have a lot of socialization and still have perpetual or chronic dis-ease from so many other areas or experiences or different things like that. But to put it in the framework of what we’re talking about now in terms of attachment theory, the question is what’s the nature of the relationship? 

So in addition to prioritizing and centralizing the importance of relationships, attachment theory also puts the type of relationship, the quality or the nature of relationship in a specific way. So often we focus on relationships, so naturally we focus on relationships in utilitarian ways. What does the relationship provide for me? The easiest obvious example of this would be work or being served by someone in a serving position. 

But even in relationships that are not obviously utilitarian, we still relate to them in utilitarian ways very often. So just one example, Harry Harlow did one of the foremost or famous studies. It’s become controversial in different ways, but he did a very important study that was part of the development of attachment theory. He took a bunch of young monkeys and put them into a room and took them away from their actual biological mothers. 

He put in that environment two surrogate mothers. One of them was a wire-type monkey figure that provided them all their food. Another one was a cloth, warm, fuzzy type surrogate mother. It didn’t have any food. It didn’t have any kind of utilitarian purpose that they needed. The curiosity of the experiment was which mother would they end up spending most time with. 

What they found in the research was that they spent a highly disproportionate amount of time with the cloth, warm mother way more than the food-providing mother. 

David Bashevkin: 

Expand upon what he developed from that experiment, which are the archetypes of healthy and unhealthy styles of attachment. 

Yakov Danishefsky: 

What was interesting is what he did was he then studied what happens if we take these monkeys and we put them in what they call The Strange Situation. 

David Bashevkin: 

He called it The Strange Situation? 

Yakov Danishefsky: 

That’s the name of the experiment. That was actually from someone in Mary Ainsworth who did that with actual children, created something called The Strange Situation. But there was also a parallel with these monkeys. The question was so if we put these monkeys in a foreign environment, is there a difference between the way they explore that environment when each of the types of mothers are present or, in contrast, if there’s no mother present at all? 

So what they found is that the monkeys were the most willing to venture out and explore the new environment when the cloth mother was in the environment. They would go far away from her, so to speak, but they could come back to home base. They could touch base, and they can go out. Versus if it was just the food-providing mother, they wouldn’t be as willing to explore. If there was no mother figure there, then they would be very reluctant. They would just crash and burn on the spot. They would just sit and shake. 

David Bashevkin: 

Just huddle up together and not venture out at all. 

Yakov Danishefsky: 

Not venture out at all. They would kind of become debilitated. So what they ended up studying, not necessarily through that experiment, but in a variety of other ways, what they ended up finding is what they call attachment styles, which I think is where this gets really interesting. Attachment styles is the idea that just really anything in life, we can have a variety of different details and particulars depending on what’s going on in that specific instance, but we have an overarching type of style that runs consistent throughout. 

So take an artist. He might paint 100 different paintings, but you can tell when this is that artist’s painting. Or a sports player is going to play hundreds of games over the course of their career, but there’s still a way that this player play. Similarly, in relationships, the idea in attachment theory is that we have different attachment styles, which means that in every relationship that I’m going to be in, so it’s going to be slightly different. 

The way that I experience talking to you or having a friendship with you, David, is going to be one way, and the way that I experience a friendship with a different friend of mine is going to be different than with my wife is going to be different, with my kids is going to be different. But even though the particulars of all those relationships will be different, the overarching style of how Yakov engages in relationships will have a very similar pattern. That’s the idea of attachment styles. 

David Bashevkin: 

I love that analogy of an artistic style towards relationships. We have patterns. It doesn’t mean that you can’t draw differently, but there is an underlying style in the way that we formulate relationships. Certainly, I know my own style. It is absolutely insufferable. I don’t want to demonize myself. But especially in my younger years, what I would do is I immediately wanted to assert. 

I think I’ve matured over the years, I would like to think. But particularly in my younger years, in my 20s, and you probably remember me when I was like this because I was so insecure, I would want to assert my dominance. I would want to assert how smart I am and how wonderful I am. If I saw anybody else who was as smart as me, right away I’d have to be like, “I need a fact of why this person’s awful. You need to give me some piece of information or some experience about them to allow him to fit into my universe.” 

That’s very immature. It was nice that I was self-aware enough to at least realize that I was doing this. But right away, I would be overbearing in conversation at least initially to say, “I need everybody to affirm how wonderful,” specifically how intelligent I was. I remember that was always something that I still grapple with it, to be quite honest with you. But there was a style about how I engage with people. So tell me a little bit about the archetypes of the different styles of relationships. 

Yakov Danishefsky: 

Sure. So the idea in attachment theory is that in our earliest years, really zero to three, and they continue evolving, and it’s very complex. I don’t want to oversimplify anything. There’s obviously genetic components to all of this that’s not within attachment theory. There’s nature of ways people are born and personality types, and all these things make very complicating factors. Nothing is just one set of theory. 

But within the idea of attachment theory, so I’m talking now really in prototypes or typologies and through one lens, I’m taking out all the other lens, but through the lens of attachment theory- 

David Bashevkin: 

Build on your art analogy, we oversimplify anytime we call somebody, “This is a cubist. This is a modern art.” It includes so many other things that no artist wants to be reduced to a theory. Obviously, in a podcast, we’re not trying to diagnose anybody, not me, not you. We’re two good friends in conversation. So the disclaimer is appreciated. But still, I like the way that you present it because I find the thematics of the theory to be so useful and resonant. 

Yakov Danishefsky: 

Yeah. So the idea is that in the earliest years, zero to three, we develop our attachment style based on our primary caregivers. The attachment styles, they break into three or three and a half. I’ll explain in a minute, is the three attachment styles are secure, avoidant, and anxious. And then the fourth, which is kind of a hybrid is called disorganized. 

Secure attachment style means essentially that I have the ability to now engage relationships in a way that I have the belief that I am someone that is likable, that is acceptable in relationships. So I can lean into a relationship. I can take risk to enter a relationship, to show up to the relationship because I have enough confidence that I will be solid and that the person relating to me will accept me. 

it gets a little bit nuanced, but hand in hand with that is that I’m also confident enough that I’m okay that it might not go well. That’s really a very important part of it, that the confidence is not a confidence of everything’s perfect and that it’s all going to be good and that I’m always going to be loved and I’m always going to be wanted in every relationship. 

But the idea is really that I have enough independent sense of self that I know that I’m not independent, that I know that actually there is no such thing as being independent, that we need relationships. So I can have that vulnerability. I can move into relationships knowing that, at times, it will manifest and it will click and it will work, and I will be part of it, and at times, I will need to retreat or I’ll need to refocus or find a different relationship, et cetera. 

So I have that ability, what they would call sometimes interdependence. I can be in the relationship, and I can also take care of myself. I have enough belief in my own value, my own self in that way. 

David Bashevkin: 

The secure attachment style is always, especially the way you describe it, is so aspirational. Particularly what I grapple with mental health is so much of my own life, professional life in particular, is lived in tension with an audience. The aspirational, secure attachment style with my own content and with my own ideas and my own Torah that you put out to the world is, at its best, is I am confident that I have something unique to give. 

I know not everything resonates. I know some people hate some things. Some people don’t like it. You’re not always the best. You’re not always going to be great. But I have a core confidence. I’m saying this aspirationally because I think a lot of rabbis, a lot of educators, anybody who is living especially professionally in relationship to an audience grapples with this. Comedians all grapple with this, especially if you’re a comedian rabbi. Maybe I would characterize myself as that. 

Then you’re living in tension and aspirationally, this is what I’ve always looked towards to have that secure relationship. “Well, how did Shabbos go? How did that speech go?” It didn’t go great, but I’m fine. I wish it went better. But I know that I have this kernel self-defining part of my identity that remains intact. That is a secure relationship. 

Yakov Danishefsky: 

Just to highlight the other part of what you’re describing that I think does have a strong element of how I would characterize secure attachment style is that what you’re describing is an awareness of actually needing your audience. That’s a vulnerability to be able to admit, to be able to acknowledge that I have this desire to be heard. 

David Bashevkin: 

Yes, yes, yes. Both professionally and as a human being, I realize I have this, undoubtedly. 

Yakov Danishefsky: 

Which is essentially a description of my own limitation, my own weakness, my own need for others, and the ability to embrace that while also simultaneously being okay when it’s not there. That particular combination is really what we’re, as you’re saying, aspirationally is what we’re aspiring for in terms of a secure attachment. 

David Bashevkin: 

Yes. That is my white whale, knowing who I am, knowing what my needs are, and knowing that it’s not always going to be aligned. There are going to be moments. But to be able to remain intact, even when you don’t get the feedback or the reception or the … That is, I think in all relationships, but to me it resonates particularly. We’re on a podcast right now. We’re in the middle of creating content. It’s something that’s always on my mind. So that is a secure attachment. Take me through the other forms of attachment. 

Yakov Danishefsky: 

Just, by the way, the other way to frame the idea of it being aspirational is that all of this exists on a sliding scale. It’s all on a spectrum. So it’s not like there’s this exact this is secure and then this is avoidant. It’s all on a spectrum. So I don’t know that anybody is in what you would think of as some prototypical, archetypal, secure attachment style. Everyone’s going to fall even with insecure, but leaning towards avoidant or leaning towards anxious. 

So what are avoidant and anxious? That experience that I just described of secure attachment style, that nature of how to relate to others, that emerges from an experience in those early years and over the course of life in which a person was given the environment that they were able to feel that way. So there’s this concept called mentalization, which means my perception of how you perceive me. 

David Bashevkin: 

Whoa. Pause because I need to fully digest that. Mentalization, our perception of how we are perceived. 

Yakov Danishefsky: 

Yes. 

David Bashevkin: 

Wow. I’m so curious about how that’s measured. I’ve oftentimes, also not my best, wondered. I get a lot of feedback, so sometimes I actually know how I am perceived. But from my closest friends, it’s always something that It’s a curiosity I think a lot of people have. How am I seen in this world? Almost a step outside of yourself. Your perception of how you’re perceived, that really presses against some of my self-conscious pressure points. But that’s fascinating. 

Yakov Danishefsky: 

Going back to something you said earlier, it’s very possible that someone who grows up in an environment where they perceive that other people’s perception of them is that they have worth in as much as they are intellectual is going to then live the rest of their life always valuing themself in as much as they are intellectual. 

David Bashevkin: 

One of the formative experiences that continues to haunt me is that I was very good at certain academic things at a very young age, and it got me a lot of overt attention and affirmation. In first grade, I figured out what 16 times 25 is because I did the math of four quarters equals a dollar. So there are four times four is 16, $4, 400. I remember I would go around in first grade showing off that I figured out this long multiplication topic in my head. 

And then in fifth grade or whatever it was, I was reading big books at a very young age, John Grisham books, and I remember the attention I would get. I remember specifically where I was sitting when I received attention. My older sister’s friends would come in and say, “Wow, you’re already reading that.” I say I am haunted by a lot of those affirmations because it can of seep inside of you that the attention or the love that you crave or that you need, not crave. It’s not a sick thing. 

This is part of the theory. We need those relationships. But when it’s filtered at a young age through those prisms, very often you can convince yourself or get stuck in that contingency of love and that I need to earn my worth. I need to earn my love, my self-worth, my adequacy, et cetera, et cetera. 

The way that I learned to do that was being remarkable intellectually, which ended up metastasizing, I think it’s not so unique to me, into a paralyzing fear of standardized tests, paralyzing where I am being … Are you, in fact, special? Are you, in fact, unique? Everybody’s going around talking about their SAT score. It was paralyzing because I was like, “I’m finally sitting to figure out, have I earned my uniqueness? Have I earned my specialness?” 

But take me through the other two because it really does resonate a great deal with me. 

Yakov Danishefsky: 

Well, so let’s go with this. So the idea would be that what you’re describing, in a sense, is similar to an anxious attachment style because, see, what happens there is that in that mentalization experience, so my perception of other people’s perception of me, so as a young child, I perceive that other people perceive me as having worth. I perceive that other people only want me or like me in as much as I show up or perform in a certain way. 

So now what develops is a high level of anxiety around performing in that way to earn that attention, to earn that love. As attachment theory says, that’s our deepest need is that connection, is that love. My perception now is that the only way I can get that connection with others and the only way I can get that love from others is if I show up in this kind of a way. So for someone, it might be intellectually. For someone, it might be through athletics. For someone, it might be through- 

David Bashevkin: 

Being pretty, being good-looking. 

Yakov Danishefsky: 

Yeah, exactly. Through the way that they look, through the jokes they make, I mean it could be literally anything under the sun. So anxious attachment style is the person who is needing, and again, this exists on a sliding scale, so I’m describing it in its more extreme form just to bring out the concept. It’s the person who’s really needy, really clingy in their relationship. They’re always anxious about the relationship. Do you really love me? Do you really want me. 

You tell a person, “I like your shirt today.” And they respond, “Oh, really? You like it?” That kind of a response. So that anxious attachment style person also in fights is going … Let’s say they’re married or they’re in a relationship and they get into an argument or a fight. They’re going to have a very hard time disengaging and taking a break from the argument. 

So those people are oftentimes the arguments are going to escalate into a lot of trouble because they can’t step back into a place of, okay, I can separate from this and I can be okay because I know that I’m okay. There’s an anxiety in the need of constant reassurance about myself from others. That’s the lack of security. This loops back to the question you asked earlier, which is if we’re all living with connection, so according to attachment theory, why are we still oftentimes miserable? 

Because I might be living with a lot of connection, but if I’m only getting that connection through my anxiety about how good-looking I am, then even when I am getting the attention and the connection, it’s not actually nurturing what my attachment needs are because my attachment needs are to feel that the whole of me, which includes a lot of imperfections and a lot of problems … It’s not that I am the most amazing thing in the world. 

But it’s that the whole of me, that my being, my existence, not a particular thing that I do or a particular quality I have, like my brains or my looks or my skill, but my being- 

David Bashevkin: 

My existence is warranted. 

Yakov Danishefsky: 

Exactly. My existence is seen and wanted. Exactly. If it’s limited to a particular way that I show up and a particular anxiety that I can perform with, that’s not going to be fulfilling even when it’s fulfilled. 

David Bashevkin: 

That resonates with me completely of the emptiness while full. 

Yakov Danishefsky: 

Exactly. 

David Bashevkin: 

When everything is filtered through this, you could get … I’ve described sometimes compliments fall off of me like water on a seal. They don’t seep in. An insult, something critical, I carry it with me at all moments, like in Tommy Boy when he’s like, “My pretty little pet,” and I’m petting that insult and that criticism. I keep it with me. 

It’s like sometimes on an airplane, some people have comfort pets. I have my comfort insults. I have these beautiful warm reminders that I cozy up to that I’ve disappointed someone today. 

We did secure attachment. We did anxious. Tell me about that third, three and a half that you mentioned. 

Yakov Danishefsky: 

Before we get to the half, so the third is the avoidant, which is the parallel opposite to anxious. So again, if I don’t get the experience at that young age, if I don’t have the perception that other people accept my whole being, want my whole being, that it’s good, that it’s wanted in this universe, so then it’s extremely painful to exist in the universe. 

It’s extremely painful to just be because my being is not something that the universe wants. So either I’m going to go towards anxiety, which is, okay, if the universe doesn’t want me, I have to work harder to be wanted. 

David Bashevkin: 

So you because very needy. There are always people in the world who just they need a lot of affirmation and attention. They’re going out there. But there’s another reaction, which I actually don’t think I’ve ever really suffered from. 

Yakov Danishefsky: 

Because our system is always going to do what it needs to help us exist and survive in the world in the least painful way. So one way to avoid the pain of not being wanted is to become anxious about it. The other way is to turn off the system entirely, is to say, “You know what? I don’t need to be wanted anymore,” which we can never actually do, but we can, on some level, create that experience within ourself where we turn off our attachment needs. 

Because if the attachment needs are on and they’re being unfulfilled, it’s extremely painful. So I can just turn it off and not actually have those needs anymore. 

David Bashevkin: 

And what does that look like? 

Yakov Danishefsky: 

That’s avoidant attachment style. In its extreme, that will be people who are completely socially isolated. In less extreme versions, it’s people who are in relationships, but will often, let’s say in a much less extreme version, people will stonewall is the term people know about a lot. So let’s say somebody in a relationship where when they are upset about something or if there’s an argument, they will just shut down. They will just go off into their own world, and they will want to totally check out of the relationship, even just in a moment on a dime. 

The avoidant attachment style person, I gave the example before, if I like your shirt, so the anxious person says, “Really? You like it?” The avoidant attachment person, if you say, “I like your shirt,” they might say, “Yeah, of course. I always dress well. Everyone knows I have good taste.” So they’re not showing any of that need for relationship. 

They’re not allowing in the fact that your compliment could mean something to them. They don’t have the space or the capacity for acknowledging and feeling that what you think of me actually does matter to me. 

David Bashevkin: 

It’s so interesting because I’ve done this myself, and I love the example of highlighting the differences, not from trauma, but how they respond to compliments, how they respond to positive stimuli. You gave the example of getting a compliment on a shirt and saying, “Really?” Almost like, “Play it again, Sam. I want to hear it again. Really?” You’re fishing for compliments. What do you think? You want to know it. 

And then there’s somebody who’s like, “I know. I don’t care. Sure.” You’re like, “It’s meaningless to me.” That’s something that they’ve obviously had to convince … You had mentioned three and a half. I heard three. Tell me about that last half. 

Yakov Danishefsky: 

So the half is what they call disorganized. It’s when a person has a mixture or a cycle between anxious and avoidant, which logically you could understand makes a lot of sense. It’s almost like use an eating disorder binge/purge cycle as an example. A person, they binge eat, and now they feel gross. They really don’t like how they feel, so they say, “You know what? I’m going to fast. I’m just not going to eat again.”

So they now purge, and they’re holding off, holding off, holding off until you can’t do that forever. So now what happens when the dam breaks, now they’re going to go. But they’re not going to eat a regular amount now. They’re not going to eat a healthy, balanced meal. Now they’re going to binge again. By the end of that bingeing, they’re going to feel so upset about it that now they’re going to purge again. So it feeds off itself in this loop. 

Anxious and avoidant can actually do the exact same thing because if I go after a relationship in an anxious way and now I’m seeking the reassurance, I’m always clinging to the person, what ends up happening possibly is that the person rejects me because I was really just too suffocating for them. It was too claustrophobic for them to be in a relationship with me, and so now they reject me. 

What does that do? It reinforces to me the perception that people won’t want me. People won’t accept me in a relationship. So now I tell myself, “You know what? This is always how it goes. I’m done. I’m not doing relationships anymore.” 

David Bashevkin: 

Shut off. 

Yakov Danishefsky: 

So I go into the avoidance. But I can’t actually shut off forever. So the next time I have the opportunity of a relationship, eventually I’m going to give in and be like, “You know what? Maybe this time will be different. I’m going to go for it.” Now I go for it. But when I go for it, I don’t do it in a secure way. I do it in an anxious way. So what ends up happening is I become so anxious about that relationship that it ends badly again. 

David Bashevkin: 

And it becomes a negative feedback loop. 

Yakov Danishefsky: 

So it just turns into this cycle. 

David Bashevkin: 

That original presentation really moved me. Just you’re so gifted, and I get such nachas. There’s no other word. I’m giving you a compliment. Right after we spoke about it, we’ll see how you receive it. 

You are so gifted in the way that you articulate with great empathy and substance and knowledge. It really resonates. But what really caught my fascination at this presentation, you were talking to religious educators, was how attachment styles are manifest in our religious identities, in our religious relationships, in the way that we relate to Yiddishkeit, halacha, and God, Divinity, HaKadosh Baruch Hu Himself, so to speak. 

Yakov Danishefsky: 

Yeah. So something that occurred to me a number of years ago, and I’ve become really interested in it, is this idea that our attachment styles that we develop with our earliest caregivers, typically parents, and the attachment style we carry with other humans, will also play itself out in a very similar and parallel way in our attachment, our relationship with God and religion. 

Someone with a secure attachment style in their interpersonal human relationships will oftentimes have a parallel secure attachment style with God, and similarly with avoidant and with anxious. 

David Bashevkin: 

What does it mean to have a secure verse avoidant verse anxious relationship in your religious life? 

Yakov Danishefsky: 

Sure. Secure would mean that the way I relate to God in all the same characterizations I described before with humans. So I relate to God as someone, as a being who is interested in me, who cares about my being, who accepts my being in all its strengths and all its weaknesses. When I mess up, repair is possible. When I succeed and do something well, I can feel good about it. I can have successes. I can grow, and I can also have times that are not great. 

I can have parts of religion or parts of the relationship with God that come very naturally and easily and that I thrive in, and I can have aspects that I actually have big questions on or doubts about or uncertainty about, whether that’s different aspects of the relationship with God or different times in my relationship with God. All of that is possible in my secure attachment with God. 

But if I have an anxious attachment style with God, well then I feel that God is constantly judging me or that nothing I do is ever good enough for God. Or does God really love me? Is God okay with this flaw? After I mess up or I have a difficult time, can I ever come back to that relationship with God? Can I repair that? Will God accept me if I have this question on Him? Will it be okay if I get angry at God? 

Any of those things, I’m forming them as questions, but in the anxious attachment style, the point being that my perception is that the answer is no to all of those questions. The way that that can sometimes manifest can sometimes look like religious OCD. I’m constantly not sure if I said Shema correctly enough or if I have to do this better. I have to take on every chumra possible. 

My teshuva is never good enough, and my successes are never good enough. It can never be that God actually was happy with what I did or that my learning schedule or whatever it is that I’m machbid on, that I’m careful about in halacha or whatever. Nothing’s ever going to really be good enough. I’m always doubting it. In the avoidant side, it depends how extreme we go. I mean sometimes it might mean stonewalling on God. 

David Bashevkin: 

Stonewalling on Yiddishkeit, participation. 

Yakov Danishefsky: 

Yeah, exactly. I mean obviously, someone leaving the religious fold is a super complex topic, but sometimes you can really understand that through the lens of an avoidant attachment style at times and then obviously to differing degrees. It doesn’t have to be leaving completely, but to any extent of that. There’s an area of halacha or of Judaism that I can’t grapple with it. I can’t touch that. I have to kind of amputate that from my life or from the religion. 

David Bashevkin: 

Thinking about my own list. Everybody’s got a list of things where the click, you still feel … For me, I could feel childhood suffocation. It doesn’t click in the same way as other areas of Torah. I definitely relate, not personally, honestly, to an extent, but I definitely seen it with my own eyes disorganized personality. 

Yakov Danishefsky: 

I was just going to say, so in religion I see, I think there’s a lot of the disorganized because you go from one extreme to the other. So it’s somebody who goes really hardcore as they get inspired religiously, and they go to the extreme. They start, all of a sudden, going really ultra-Orthodox, Yeshivish, Haredi, whatever it is, and pushing themself to the max. 

It doesn’t even have to be in terms of hashkafa or outlook. It could even be in a more centrist camp or whatever camp it is. But they’re learning constantly. They’re taking on every stringency they possibly can. They’re pushing themself over the max. And then, all of a sudden, it hits a point where it’s now just turn the whole thing off. They burn out. I can’t do this anymore, and now they check out completely. But that cycle might repeat itself a whole bunch of times. 

And again, I’m giving the extreme. But in less extreme versions of that, I think that that’s actually pretty common for a lot of people. I’ve worked with a lot of clients that I’ve seen that, people who, let’s say maybe in Yeshiva, were able to learn many hours a day and hold themself to a certain religious standard. And then now that they’re working and living a more multifaceted lifestyle, they feel that the amount they learn or the way that they daven is never good enough. 

So they’re trying in little bits to get back to what it was, which is that anxious attachment style. But it doesn’t work. So then they get so depressed and into such despair about themself, they go into avoidance and they do nothing. And then that repeats itself a whole bunch of times. 

David Bashevkin: 

This is absolutely fascinating. I think the question that I have and continue to have, so much of this is shaped in your formative years. I’m a big believer that the first, I’m not a therapist or a trained psychologist, but the first, let’s call zero, I would even say zero to five, zero to seven, those formative years do not compare. They are so disproportionately influential on the rest of your life than any other seven-year period that you endure. 

You can’t compare zero to seven to 28 to 35. It’s the same seven years, but the trajectory of what it plays in your very sense of self and personality. So the question that I’m sure anybody asks, I’m curious about how you work on this in therapy. Somebody walks in, and they have an anxious attachment style. They have a avoidant. How do you move closer? Again, it is aspirational, and we’re talking very simplistically. 

But how do you move the needle? How do you cultivate? You can’t take a time machine. There are people who maybe is the only way, confront the parent and explain to them how terrible they’ve been and ruined your life. Every child will have that conversation with their parents, and that parent will blame it on the grandparents. We’ll go back to the cemeteries of our ancestors, trying to figure out who shot first. 

Yakov Danishefsky: 

You can blame it all on Hitler. Yeah. 

David Bashevkin: 

Yeah, exactly. Or is there a way through therapy? What are the mechanisms through which somebody could move the needle closer to developing a healthier, secure attachment style? 

Yakov Danishefsky: 

Let me try and maybe divide the question to two answers, if that’s okay? 

David Bashevkin: 

Sure. 

Yakov Danishefsky: 

One is to just give a tiny little window into some of the approach that could be taken in the therapy context, and then to try and answer it maybe a little bit more in a way that could speak to anybody, not necessarily going to therapy, but someone who just wants to try and take some of this practically into their life in a more of a self-development type of way. 

David Bashevkin: 

Please. 

Yakov Danishefsky: 

In both contexts, really, I guess the starting point, really the awareness is really such a big part of it, which I know is kind of cliche, but acknowledging, identifying, and being aware of your style and of your pattern. And again, depending on how severe or profound or moderate or minor the issue is, it’s going to be easier or more difficult to tell or more or less impactful and problematic in your life, but to notice what is my pattern? 

How do I respond when I get into a difficult situation with a spouse or in a relationship or at work? Do I retreat and ruminate on the issue and not speak up to anybody, which is more of an avoidant style? Or do I start checking with someone else at work of, well, what does this colleague actually think of me? And then trying to maybe more passively aggressively approaching them or whatever it is, which a little bit more of the anxious attachment style? 

So becoming aware of your pattern. When I get into an argument with someone, do I start coming up in my mind with reasons why I actually never liked them in the first place? Or do I start trying to appease them and bending over backwards to make it up with them, which again is the avoidant or the anxious? So really, the first step, regardless, is to identify ourselves. 

I think the most important thing there is accepting that we are fundamentally … What is man that he’s even acknowledged or remembered? We are all deeply, permanently, fundamentally, inescapably flawed and imperfect. If we can be okay with that, then we can start to look at the ways in which we are flawed. So we can start to look at, okay, I am actually anxious or I am avoidant. 

If we’re too scared of the possibility that there might actually be something really not perfect here, then we won’t be able to gain the self-awareness of the imperfections. So the very first thing is identifying and knowing ourselves in that kind of a way. Once we do, so if we now know what our style is and where we have those flaws and those challenges, then in the therapy context, the work, depending on what we’re doing, but the work can be pretty deep in that we actually want to go back to those original experiences, to some of those origins. 

We may or may not access zero to three years old. Sometimes you can, especially on a somatic level, meaning some of that memory can be stored in the body even without conscious memory. That’s a topic for a whole different time. But maybe some of the later experiences, even five, six, seven, 10, 12, 15, which are already a window into what was going on before then because it’s usually a pretty strong pattern. 

We want to go back into those experiences, and there’s different methodologies of doing that kind of trauma work, which doesn’t have to mean that there is some capital-T trauma of a major incident that happened in the way that we typically think of trauma, but that it’s a trauma-informed approach is the way I … People use the word, trauma, a lot now. I think the mistake is that we often call things traumatic or trauma versus what I think is good that we’re talking about trauma so much is that we have a trauma approach or a trauma lens. 

That doesn’t mean that this was traumatic in the sense of some terrible incident that happened. But the idea of a trauma lens means that I’m looking at what happened as something that had a real and important impact on my developmental progression in a way that it left something over because that’s the idea of trauma is that it wasn’t just something that happened and now it moved on. It’s that there was an imprint or there was a change in the system that got lodged in the system. 

It got stuck in the system even after the event is over. So even after I’m no longer a six-year-old, but my six-year-old experience is stuck in me, it’s still ongoing in my system in the way that I interface with the world. That’s a trauma approach. So there’s a variety of ways in which we would do that kind of trauma-informed work to go back to the earlier experiences. 

My guess is that just naming that, but not going into that is probably the best thing for this. 

David Bashevkin: 

Sure, yeah. 

Yakov Danishefsky: 

So now going into what a person can do for themself to just work on this. 

David Bashevkin: 

Practically. 

Yakov Danishefsky: 

Practically. 

David Bashevkin: 

Short of actually seeing a therapist, which we are very pro seeing a therapist and getting formal mental health, but just describing the path I think sometimes is healthy to help people walk down it in their own self-reconstruction. So tell me a little bit more on that practical level. 

Yakov Danishefsky: 

Yeah. In self-reconstruction, after that awareness and the knowledge of what is my pattern, the way I would think about it is starting where you’re at and moving yourself over a tiny inch at a time. So what I mean by that is, for example, if you’ve been able to identify that when you get into an argument with someone, your go-to is to now move away from the relationship. What would it be like to move one inch away from that towards secure? 

If you think about it as like a scale, a spectrum, and you have secure in the middle, avoidant on one side, and anxious on the other. Let’s just pretend secure is zero, and on either side you have a 10-point scale. So if you respond to an argument at a nine level of avoidance, what would it look like to respond at an eight? What’s the smallest movement I can make that’s actually safe for my system? Because that’s really where my avoidance comes from. 

It comes from a lack of safety in the relationship. That’s why I’m avoiding the relationship. So if I try to just put on a fully secure engagement, that’s not going to be something that’s able to actually resonate in my system because it’s not going to be safe for my system. So we can’t jump, but what we can do is say, “Where am I starting and what’s an inch over?” 

So again, just as a really practical example, if I would normally now start to move away from that person and not talk to them until they make the first move, I’m going to go into that victim mindset, sulking, drifting away, avoiding, until they contact me, forget it, I’m done. I’m out. So what would it be like to tell myself, “Okay, you know what? I’m not going to reach out to them for three days. But if I haven’t heard from them in four days, on the fourth day, I’m going to do something to reach out to them.” 

I can’t say, “Oh, I should just call them right now,” because that’s not going to work for me, but I can do that. Or on the other side, if my natural response would be anxious where I would start to pursue this person to— 

David Bashevkin: 

Call them 500 times, 20 missed calls. 

Yakov Danishefsky: 

… them 100 times. I’m going to reach out to their friend to say, “Hey, What are they saying about me?” 

David Bashevkin: 

10 text messages. 

Yakov Danishefsky: 

Whatever it is. So I can’t necessarily stop all of that cold turkey, but what if I say to myself, “You know what? What if I wait five minutes before reaching out? What will that be like? Can I do that?” Or, “What if I make two phone calls instead of three?” Or, “If I delete this one sentence of the very long text that I just drafted to try and make up with this person?” And then continually moving that one bit at a time. 

David Bashevkin: 

Where you’re able to preserve your own safety responses, those heuristics that are part of your formative development, preserve it, remain intact, but moving closer and closer to that aspirational, secure relationship. 

Yakov Danishefsky: 

What I would say is that I think that that’s a really helpful way of gauging whether or not I can do this in a self-reconstructing way or if I do need some more professional help in that because if a person can do that in a way that it feels okay to do that, then great. 100%, you should do that. If a person is trying to do that, but noticing that it really creates a lot of triggering responses, a lot of dis-ease, a lot of dysregulation, it’s very hard to do that. 

That really is the indication that, okay, there’s a deeper reason as to why my system feels so unsafe to do something an inch over from where I am. If it feels so deeply unsafe, that means there’s something lodged in the system that needs to be looked at. 

David Bashevkin: 

This is just such a simple, yet profound frame for really what animates so many of our interactions, and particularly the way I see in my own life and in my students and family, how the religious component really follows so much of the underlying theory is something incredibly profound. We’ve known each other for many, many years. One of the things that I always felt a kinship with you for is that we both received, I don’t know how much we both needed, we both received a lot of external validation about our religious potential, l’havdil. 

I’m not comparing the two, but the way somebody will look twice when they see somebody beautiful walk by, we were head turners in different ways because I never really felt that good or that remarkable in traditional Talmud learning. I was good. I’d much rather sought the quick fixes, like we both went to Yeshivat Sha’alvim. One of the biggest mistakes I ever made was insisting on going to a Shana Bet shiur, meaning instead of starting with my peers, I insisted and it was a huge disaster of a mistake. 

It was a classic religious mistake where I wanted that affirmation. It was almost like the standardized test score that was guaranteed that I’m a year ahead of everybody else. There were three other kids who did this with me. It worked for them. It did not work for me. It was a huge disaster of a mistake. I wonder if you could share a little bit about how the remarkable religious attention you received … 

I remember hearing from somebody who was currently a rabbi in Sha’alvim, our mutual friend, Rabbi Yehuda Turetsky, who we affectionately call Huey. We know him from before he was Rabbi Turetsky. I remember him telling me, he said, “The most gifted lomed I’ve ever met probably in the last year since I’ve been in Sha’alvim or YU is Yakov Danishefsky.” 

There were expectations that you were going to follow a track to become rosh yeshiva. Now, I am not posing this question because where you are currently stationed is any less valuable. It’s not. It is far more valuable. But I’m curious how you grappled with religious expectations, expectations of greatness on a personal level. How did you process them, and what toll did they have on you? Because undoubtedly for me, a lot of those expectations, it played a role. 

Sometimes I became avoidant to learning itself. I didn’t want to constantly step into a place that in my own mind felt was a daily standardized test, a daily is he actually the best? Is he actually so good at this? So I’m curious for you, what role did those expectations play in your religious personal development? 

Yakov Danishefsky: 

I think that they played the disorganized pattern, but for me, not so much in mini cycles but in time period cycles. So what I mean by that is at a time where I actually bought into that idea, that illusion, because it wasn’t illusion all along. I never could have become that. I don’t have a good enough memory to have become a rosh yeshiva. But when I actually believed in that illusion, so to speak, it was really an anxious experience. 

I was really focused on learning, but learning in a way of receiving that attention, not in a way that I think was overly unique. I think a lot of people, especially at a younger age in a yeshiva environment, are learning in that kind of a way to be good at learning, to be the best guy in the beis medrash or whatever it is. But that was in a lot of ways really the focus, and it carried through even beyond learning. 

So it carried through in terms of any accomplishment I had, any area that I was trying to accomplish anything. Nothing was ever good enough. Everything was always unsatisfying. It was always one accomplishment, but then chasing the next and then chasing the next, and nothing can ever deliver what I think it’s going to deliver because I wasn’t in a place of wholeness with my fullest self, which is wholeness with brokenness. 

I didn’t experience the world in that kind of way. I really experienced the world in this chase for accomplishing and for attention around that accomplishment, really in a way that was not anything like we’re talking about what attachment theory talks about. It was really more of that Maslow’s hierarchy of needs that we spoke about, that the apex of the pyramid is just that accomplishment. 

I think I was pretty unhappy at a lot of points. And then when I say that it was disorganized style is that then later in life at points where I couldn’t perform in my learning in that way, meaning I wasn’t in a life circumstance where I could learn on that level and get that kind of attention, so then it shut off to a certain degree. I mean it’s all relative. It didn’t shut off completely. So it depends on how we’re measuring it, but- 

David Bashevkin: 

To the track that you were on. 

Yakov Danishefsky: 

To the track I was on, I kind of fell off to a very large degree. Really, the work for me and the journey for me has been really moving more towards a way of trying to experience the world and myself and my experience in the world in a way of being as opposed to focusing on a goal or on accomplishment. It doesn’t preclude having goals. It doesn’t mean that I don’t have aspirations for certain things. 

But it’s really about being in the experience because when I look back on so many of those years. As Rav Kook talks about, forgiving ourselves. I have to forgive myself for the way that I see it is I missed out on so much because even the things I was engaged in, I wasn’t engaged in it because it was just for the output. That wasn’t in the experience. And then the output never actually delivers. I missed out on so much. I wasn’t in anything I was experiencing. 

David Bashevkin: 

Because you were after that- 

Yakov Danishefsky: 

I was chasing something. Yeah, I was after some attention. 

David Bashevkin: 

We met in my office when you were working on the book. It was a manuscript. You published a book, as I mentioned, called Attached. One of the things that we spoke about was the difficulty that personalities, and I’m not putting us in the same box, but personalities like ourselves who have struggled with having a healthy relationship with affirmation and with excellence. 

Part of the struggle of personalities like ourselves is how we receive the work that we do. I warned you almost. I don’t know if you remember this. This is a dangerous game that you are playing, publishing a book, because you are really opening yourself up, not just to the feedback, but let’s say it’s a flop. Let’s say it doesn’t fill up the needs that you hope that it would, it wasn’t a success. 

I’m curious if you would allow, self-reflect on how you managed that process, the process of nurturing an idea because it’s something I grapple with on literally a weekly basis, having an idea, having something you slave over and you’re putting so much work in the details and picking out the cover and we did all this stuff. We do this constantly in different areas of our life. 

And then you put it out to the masses, and it’s nearly impossible to avoid that sliver of hope that maybe if this is received in a very particular way, everything will be solved. I’m curious for you how the experience of putting something out into the public and the disappointments that inevitably come with it, how do you reflect on it? How do you think you did? How do you think you avoided? How do you conceive, not of the book itself, but your relationship to the process of publishing a book? 

Yakov Danishefsky: 

First off, just an opportunity to say thank you because you were incredibly helpful in the process of publishing the book, so just to use this opportunity to thank you. 

David Bashevkin: 

I appreciate that. I really appreciate that. We did a lot of really nice details. It always means a lot to be called upon from a friend who you respect and admire as I respect and admire you. So it really felt like a privilege, and I was very touched that you reached out at the time. Thank you for that. 

Yakov Danishefsky: 

Actually, the truth is that the experience of the book was really one of my prouder inner self moments, meaning prouder moments between me and myself, which I guess now I’m sharing publicly, but it was really between me and myself in that I know that so many things I had engaged in over the course of my life for a long time were always for the sake of when I get this, then I will be legit. 

So when I get into Semikhah Honors, I will be legit. And then I was in Semikhah Honors and not legit. When I write this article, then I’ll be the real deal. And then I write the article and I’m not the real deal. When I get this job, when I get this training, when I get this credential, when I get these letter … You keep getting these things, and you still feel like, “Hey, but I’m still not the real thing. This person’s the real thing. I’m not the real thing. I’m still just a pseudo version or whatever.” 

That was kind of a constant. I think that the idea of attachment theory is the medicine to that experience because the idea is that what I really want is the experience of being accepted, of being loved really. Go back to what I said before. It’s love theory. What we really want is we want to be loved. We don’t really want the attention for our book. We really want to be loved. 

It’s just that I had a perception that the way I’ll be loved is by having attention from my book. What I really want is to be loved. Now if I actually feel loved, then all the attention I get from my book will be amazing because it’s not filling a deep, dark void. I actually feel loved. I feel good. 

David Bashevkin: 

There’s a vehicle to accept it. 

Yakov Danishefsky: 

Exactly. 

David Bashevkin: 

There’s a container to accept it. If you don’t get the love- 

Yakov Danishefsky: 

If you don’t get the love, you’re okay because you’re already loved. It hurts. It’s challenging, of course, but you’re okay. When I came out with the book, it was a moment of feeling so good about my own growth because I didn’t feel like I was dependent on the book coming out. I was excited about it. I was looking forward to it, and I felt good about all the very positive feedback I was getting about all the things that were happening with it. 

I felt really good about it. But more than feeling good about the book, what I ended up feeling good about was the fact that I felt good about the book, was the fact that it wasn’t this need. It wasn’t this impulsive necessity, that I need the book to be real. That’s not how I related to it. 

David Bashevkin: 

That you depend on the book. 

Yakov Danishefsky: 

Right. I was living a life that I was happy with. Thank God I had a family and I had a lifestyle that I felt good with and I felt whole with in a simple way. The quiet parts of my life, the quiet simple parts of my life felt very whole and good, certainly not perfect, but whole and good. Because of that, what I ended up experiencing, and this is the counterintuitive part, is that because I didn’t need the book, the book ended up being so much more meaningful than if I had needed it. 

David Bashevkin: 

That is incredibly profound. I love that. It is something in my worst moments, and in any educator’s worst moments, you feel like you are being destroyed and recreated every time you step in front of an audience because if you don’t have wholeness without the reception, you almost taste nonexistence. You taste uselessness, worthlessness. But if you don’t need it, if you’re not dependent on it, then you can actually enjoy it even more. 

I cannot thank you enough for taking the time to speak today. Your journey, your story, your scholarship, your substance, and your voice really means a tremendous amount to me on a personal level, and I’m so happy that you were able to share it today. I always end my interviews with more rapid-fire questions. 

My first question, I’m always looking, we mentioned your book a few times, but I was wondering if there are other book recommendations to really understand … It doesn’t have to be Jewish, though I’m happy if you want to mention a Jewish book, but books that have informed your psychological outlook that can help people address the common problems that plague and haunt our mental health. 

Yakov Danishefsky: 

Well, just for kicks, I’m going to recommend the books that you recommended to me on that fateful Friday night. 

David Bashevkin: 

Is that true? 

Yakov Danishefsky: 

Do you remember what they are? 

David Bashevkin: 

I don’t remember. I could imagine, but I actually don’t remember. 

Yakov Danishefsky: 

Yeah. You want to know what they were? 

David Bashevkin: 

I very much do. I want to guess. Let’s do this for real. I’m going to write down three books, and I want to see. How many books was it? 

Yakov Danishefsky: 

There’s two that I remember. So write down three. We’ll see if you get any two. 

David Bashevkin: 

I’m so touched that you even remember. Okay, I finished my writing. My pen is down. The paper is here. I will turn it around once you mention. 

Yakov Danishefsky: 

As we do this, we have to give a shout out to Duvi who was there for that whole— 

David Bashevkin: 

Yes. Duvi our dearest friend was on the walk as well. 

Yakov Danishefsky: 

The two books were The Wisdom of No Escape– 

David Bashevkin: 

I love that. 

Yakov Danishefsky: 

… and The Drama of the Gifted Child. 

David Bashevkin: 

Neither. Shish kabob. In this series, we talk in-depth about both of those books. I love them. I’m 0 for 3. Ah, rats. I can’t believe I didn’t guess The Wisdom of No Escape. 

Yakov Danishefsky: 

Well, I’ll just stick with those. I don’t know that those would normally be my go-to recommendations, but just for kicks, we’ll stick with those. 

David Bashevkin: 

Okay. If somebody gave you a great deal of money and allowed you to take a sabbatical with no responsibilities whatsoever to go back to school, get a PhD as long as it takes, what do you think the title of your dissertation would be? 

Yakov Danishefsky: 

The title I think would probably be something about We Can’t Do It Alone, but it would be about the study of the concept of independence, self-sufficiency versus dependency and needing others in cultures, in religion, in psychology, et cetera. I think that the West has this idea of self-sufficiency, which is largely an illusion. It’s not even a matter of is it a good thing or not a good thing. It’s actually an illusion. 

I think that that’s something that’s really at the core of many of the relational and religious disintegration that we’re seeing societally. It’s a complex topic that I have a lot of thoughts on, but I don’t have enough time to actually study from the bottom up really thoroughly kind of a way. I’d love to do that and then write about it. 

David Bashevkin: 

Okay. Let’s hope you get that great deal of money. My final question, I’m always interested in people’s sleep patterns, one of my lifelong struggles. What time do you go to sleep at night, and what time do you wake up in the morning? 

Yakov Danishefsky: 

It shifts depending on a lot of different things going on, especially with little kids at home and things of that nature. But currently, I go to sleep probably around 12:00 and I wake up around 6:00. That’s kind of aspirational. It’s usually a little bit less than that, but around there. 

When I’ve gone through periods of a little bit more let’s call it creative output, I usually end up staying up a little bit later. When I was super anxious attachment style, like I was describing before, my sleep schedule would be horrible. But that’s another life regret. But now it’s pretty steady in that 12:00 to 6:00. 

David Bashevkin: 

My dear friend, Yakov Danishefsky, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today. This is a long time waiting. I love you. I miss you, and I cannot thank you enough for joining us today. 

Yakov Danishefsky: 

Thanks so much, David. Really enjoyed it. 

David Bashevkin: 

I heard Yakov speak about how attachment theory can be a window to understanding not only our relationships with one another, but really as a model for understanding our relationship with religion, with Yiddishkeit itself, and that different people have different relationships with religion itself. That is a window to understand the nature of how we form relationships. 

In many ways, this is a central premise of how Chassidus and Hasidic ideas have psychologized spirituality, I think, in a very important and holy way in understanding that our divinity and our relationship to spirituality is not just formed by the way that we pray or the way that we keep Shabbos or the way that we make blessings before food, but the way that we interact with others, our friendships, romantic relationship. 

These are the holiest litmus tests to assess our spiritual character, and this is something that the Baal Shem Tov says in so many different ways. I think most famously, he says, based on a Mishnah in the second chapter of Negaim, which is talking about the blemishes that somebody can find that may or may not make somebody impure. The Mishnah says, “A person can assess and look at to evaluate any blemish on the body to figure out whether or not it actually causes an impurity, except for from their own blemishes.” 

Now normally, if you were to conceptualize what this Mishnah is saying, simply I would assume that this is warning people about their own biases about the self. You can evaluate anybody else’s blemishes, but you cannot evaluate your own. The holy Baal Shem Tov takes a different approach, and I think this might be his most foundational Torah where he says, and kind of reinterprets this Mishnah to say something a little bit differently, “Any blemish a person can see and evaluate, except for their own.” 

The Baal Shem Tov says, the founder of the Hasidic movement says: Any blemish that a person sees outside themselves derives from the blemishes that we contain within us, the difficulties, the challenges that we have within our relationships, our windows to understanding our own essential sense of self. The frustrations, the embarrassment, the cringe that we see in so many others really derives from a place that is far more essential. 

Before we chalk up, it doesn’t mean that you can’t have an annoying person in your life. Sometimes there to blame. But what I think the Baal Shem Tov is saying, most essentially that if you really want to understand yourself, look at your relationships. Look at what triggers you in your friendships, in your romantic relationship, in your acquaintances, in your colleagues. Look at what triggers you, and pay attention to those triggers because each of them are windows and mirrors to your very essential soul. 

I’ll just point out, there’s a beautiful article. It is written in Hebrew, so it can be a little challenging for many of our listeners. But I’m sure we will have a link to it in the show notes because it is a little bit hard to find and it is so essential. There is an incredible article by Shlomo Kassierer, who I believe wrote his PhD on Rav Hutner, and he wrote a beautiful article called Souls as Mirrors. 

It is an entire essay that interprets the dialogue and the dispute between Rabbi Yochanan and Resh Lakish, who are these close friends who had very different lives. Rabbi Yochanan grew up as this righteous Torah scholar, and Resh Lakish was this former bank robber. The Talmud has this incredible story about their dialogue in the 84th page of Bava Metzia. And Rav Tzadok has an incredible psychological approach to this dialogue where he talks about the way that we interact with others being a window to our essential soul. 

If you have the time and you have the capability to read an article, it’s in fairly modern Hebrew. It’s not too academic. At the heart of this story is this central idea of the Baal Shem Tov that if you want to understand yourself, look at the relationships you form. Look at the way you treat the people around you. Pay less attention to your own personal mission statement that you may have tacked to the walls of your mind, and instead, pay a little bit more attention to the culture that you build around you. 

What kind of people, what kind of ideas do you promote in your life? What kind of people, what kind of ideas do you demote and do you distance from your life? What are the nature of the relationships that you’re able to form? Instead of just thinking about them as triggers that need to be fixed, I think each of these challenges, which I have no doubt everyone has to some degree in their lives, they’re not just challenges. But as the Baal Shem Tov and Rav Tzadok all remind us, each of our relationships can be windows into our souls. 

So thank you so much for listening. This episode, like so many of our episodes, was edited by our dearest friend, Denah Emerson. If you enjoyed this episode or any of our episodes, please subscribe, rate, review, tell your friends about it. You can also donate 18forty.org/donate. It really helps us reach new listeners and continue putting out great content. 

Thank you once again to my dearest friends. I am so, so grateful for their help and support, Terri and Andrew Herenstein. They are so kind. I know this issue is something they have worked so hard to bring to light, to help uplift all those struggling in all the corners of our communities and our homes. Thank you so much to Andrew and Terri. 

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