Transforming Anxiety in Times of Crisis

Feeling overwhelmed by anxiety and low self-esteem in these turbulent times? You're not alone. On this episode of the Living and Clarity podcast, I, Coach Ratner, candidly share my own struggles with these feelings, and most importantly, how we can harness these emotions to navigate through the current crisis. It's okay not to be okay, and it's absolutely alright to acknowledge that. From feeling hostage remorse - the guilt of being safe when others aren't, to finding hope amidst despair, this episode is a raw, honest exploration of mental health during a crisis.

But it's not all about acknowledging the darkness, it's also about inviting light into our lives. I share practical strategies and personal experiences on how to practice self-care, cultivate happiness, and maintain a resilient spirit even in the face of adversity. Think of yourself as a diamond in the rough, requiring precise cuts to allow light to enter and reflect off you. This episode is about transforming our struggles into strength, and it's about resilience, growth, and hope. Remember, even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise. Tune in to find out how we can illuminate our path forward.

Transcript

Coach Ratner: 0:00

This is the Living and Clarity podcast. I'm Coach Ratner and today we're going to talk about anxiety and self-esteem during a crisis. Because I don't know about you, but I'm not okay. I mean, I wake up every single morning with a bit in my stomach and all I'm hoping for, all I'm praying to see, is I wake up in the morning and I see that the IDF has rescued some hostess. I mean, even if they've rescued 10 or 20, at least I feel like okay, there's hope. And right now we're all struggling and it's okay not to be okay. People normally say, hey, how are you doing? I'm okay, I'm not okay, I'm not. I don't think anyone else in the Jewish world is okay. I don't think if you're living in Israel or living in California, I think you're not okay. I don't say you're okay. We're all going through anxiety. We're all going through low self-esteem. We feel bad about it.

Coach Ratner: 0:56

There's an idea called hostage remorse, the fact of why am I not a hostage? Why didn't I get killed? Why I feel guilty about it. What can we do? So today we're going to talk about some ideas to help you through having high anxiety, having low self-esteem. What you can do to make yourself feel better what you can do to make yourself a happier person. My wife says God did not intend us to be a hostage and I can't feel guilty about it. I can't feel guilty about the fact that I wasn't taking the hostage. I can't feel guilty the fact that I didn't have any loved ones who were killed, although everyone in my community. There's shivers everywhere in my neighborhood for people that had relatives or close ones that were killed. But I can't feel. I mean I have to move with my life, I have to live and I can't wake up every single morning with this heart. You were going to feel bad for a while, but with the do things and to make ourselves feel better, I'm a mess and I want to turn my mess into my message. We're in this emotional prison right now and we want to get out, and we will. We will get better someday. It's going to happen. This war is going to end, we will get the hostage back and we'll feel better about ourselves.

Coach Ratner: 2:17

But this darkness doesn't really exist. When Guy created the world, he said there was darkness upon the depths of the waters. Darkness was there before creation. Which means how can something be exist before creation? Because darkness doesn't exist. Darkness is just an absence of light. We're just missing light in our life. You can take a dark room, completely black, pitch black in light. One little small match or one little candle and the whole room lights up, which means that we just have to bring some light into our lives. We have to do something that makes us happy as people, and it really takes work. It doesn't happen naturally. You have to bring happiness into your life. We're in a dark place right now. It's like a diamond that comes out of the ground that's black and it's got carbon all over it. You have to take the diamond and take it to a diamond cutter and you've got to slice it and cut it and cut it in such a right way for the fastest to allow light into this diamond. When that diamond is cut the right way, it allows an amazing amount of light in and that light reflects back out through the world. And right now we need to reflect light back out through the world. We have to shape ourselves into a diamond. We're a perfect diamond, but one that can bring light in. We're just, you know, right now we're like that black diamond. We got to bring light into our lives. So I'm going to give you a few ideas today that can help to bring light back into your life.

Coach Ratner: 3:46

You know, one of the things that really is hard for many people, including myself, is watching the videos of the massacre. Now it's funny. You know, when I was younger, my 20s and 30s I'd watch, you know, war afflicts, or you know movies that weren't so kosher, maybe they were violent. I can't watch them anymore, like I can't watch any violent movies now that I'm much older. But that's going to make you feel bad. You shouldn't watch it. I remember I saw, by accident, just a video of some Hamas terrorists coming through a southern neighborhood in South Israel and they just they. The dog, this little cute doggy, walks up to them and they shoot them. I couldn't even watch that, let alone killing babies and mothers. I just can't imagine it. So I have to control my exposure. If it's going to make you feel bad, don't watch it.

Coach Ratner: 4:38

You'll scoot the step on the news, but only so much you can sit. I mean, like the first two weeks in the first week Nothing was happening in this country because ever, just non-stop on the times of Israel, just some post, all right, whatever they're watching, cnn, whatever, whatever news source you're watching and it kills you. I 24 news. It just kills you. It eats away at your soul. So you gotta stay away from that. I remember I Would. I would try to find online some of my favorite scenes from movies that made me laugh or made me smile. I just watch them over and over again. That's one thing you could do to make yourself feel better. You have to do what you have to do in order to not have this anxiety.

Coach Ratner: 5:24

This is the living clarity podcast and I'm here at faces international here in Jerusalem. We're taking orders from soldiers, the families of soldiers and displaced families here in Israel who need lots of supplies, leading, lots of help. Please donate today to face international dot co I L and thank you so much for your support. Tell my wife all the time yeah, I gotta do things to make me happy. I you know I like cooking. I like good food. Actually, I'm not really like cooking. I like good food, so I cook. So every day in my house I've been planning dinner. Like that's one of the things I do to get through this. I say to the kids and the four-way over dinner of our night they want tacos. One salad bar we went. You know curry. My kids are really good eaters. I mean, how many kids asked for curry indexibles? Not many. How many kids asked for a salad bar?

Coach Ratner: 6:18

One of our favorite dinners is like a salad bar, like I make. I make my own croutons. I take all the leftover. Okay, now we're to a cooking class. But this makes me feel good. I take the little ends of those. You know that you buy this bread here in Israel great bread and you take those little end pieces are too small for sandwiches and I freeze them. And when I get a big bag, I make my own croutons. I Take them and I come to, I toast them and I come to those small squares. I, you know, chop a lot of garlic and I just put a ton of olive oil and garlic and eat them up for a minute and I'm delicious and that's one of the staples of my salad bar.

Coach Ratner: 6:53

I make salmon, arts of palm, avocados, carrots, cucumbers, lettuce, whatever we got in the fridge. My kids love that and it's healthy. So I plan that in advance. I do, you know, I plan that before Tonight I'm making curry. I went, I got vegetables last night. We use squash and peppers. Whose bar, which is cilantro, which is funny. Cilantro is a funny thing, you know. Love it, you hate it. I love cilantro, basil and so I make food that makes me happy, that makes my kids happy.

Coach Ratner: 7:24

I'm struggling. I gotta do things that make me. Don't struggle. You know, I bet I was. I still am in the middle of writing a book which will be out in 2024. I'm actually gonna make it free to download on my, my Web website, coach ranner calm, the books called unloved, the 12 strategies the 12 strategies to cure low self-esteem, because everyone goes through low self-esteem, but now, with this war, it's self-esteem and anxiety and depression, almost depression. We got up, we got a, we got a battle. It Excuse me, control my exposure. I don't. I don't watch the news that much. I just read the headlines once or twice a day. I Do things that make me happy.

Coach Ratner: 8:13

Praying is very important. I Pray. I go to million three times a day. I come to the hotel every day. I teach here at Asia Torah and I go to the hotel. That, micha, I say to him sometimes I have time I'll read a bunch of to him which are praises to God. You know I'm trying to connect and Praying is a very important thing, you know, like meditation and prayer or whatever you do. Meditations, like you know, thinking to yourself, thinking your own thoughts, talking to yourself as meditation. But praying is talking to God and Praying does help. We all need to pray and then exercise.

Coach Ratner: 8:51

Exercise is such an important part of our life. People don't realize that a lot of our happiness comes from exercise because, you know, we're not in the olden times. We had to go out and fetch water from the river and we had to cut down chopped wood to make a fire and go kill an animal and kill it and roast it, like we had to work in order to eat, just survive. You had to build your own houses and nowadays you just call 1-800-DOOR-DASH and you get a pizza. You want to deliver your door. So we got exercise, we got brain produces serotonin, dopamine, melaton, all these different things that our brain produces, these happy drugs that we have in our life that if we're not producing them, if we're not exercising, they're not going to get produced.

Coach Ratner: 9:32

God wants us to be happy, he wants us to have, take pleasure in the world, and the first place God put man was a place called God-Aden. If I ask people, okay, what does God-Aden mean in English? The Garden of Eden. But Eden is just a transliteration of Eden. It's not really what it means. God-aden, the Garden of Eden, it means the Garden of Pleasure. God put us in for pleasure. We're supposed to take pleasure in the world.

Coach Ratner: 9:57

I mean, you're going through anxiety and depression and low self-esteem. It's hard to take pleasure in the world. It's hard to take pleasure in anything. So you got to find what makes you happy and do it. Get rid of things, control your exposure. Don't walk things that make you feel bad, create a God exercise. I mean sometimes you have to get out of your comfort zone to do things and make you happy. It's not so easy if there's tough times, but eating food that makes you know. For me, food makes me happy. So eating food that I like a lot makes me happy. Exercising eventually makes you happy because your brain produces those drugs and you want to deal with anxiety and self-esteem that are going through it.

Coach Ratner: 10:36

We're going through a crisis. This is a crisis. It's a crisis of survival. You know, people like jokingly said last week when America had to change their clocks back one hour, they said let's change our clocks back to the journey, 1948, 1938, excuse me, there's some truth to that. I mean, normally you wouldn't be nervous walking around New York or Washington or Miami or LA or Chicago or Denver with a yamak on your head, but nowadays, man, you've got to be nervous. I mean, it's crazy, what's going on. The world is upside down. The world has gone nuts. That's all I can say. So I want you to help your self-esteem, I want you to get rid of this anxiety. I want you to get out of this dark place. Remember, darkness does not exist. It's just basically our view of the world. We've got to change our goggles and we do that by getting rid of things that make us feel bad. Praying to God, exercising. Do things that make you happy, and you'll do that. You'll be a lot happier person. Thank you very much.

Coach Ratner: 11:47

Also, I want to give a shout out to Faces International, because I'm using their studio here today. Faces International is an organization here in Jerusalem that is helping helping displaced families here in Israel with needs, because not all of them are getting paid by the government. They're helping with families whose husbands or sons have gone to war and they're helping the soldiers themselves. They're helping taking orders here at this facility here in Jerusalem, where they're taking orders for what people need, not what they think they want. Because everyone wants to send them brownies and cookies, no offense, but, like soldiers, can only eat so many brownies and cookies. But they take orders for what they need and they pay for them and they, through funding, through donations, through the FacesInternationalcoil. We can donate and they need your donations. Please donate today and thank you for listening to the Living Clarity podcast and thank you for your support today. Thank you so much.