B eing angry doesn’t really get you anywhere. Rabbi Naftoly Bier the rosh kollel of Greater Boston who I still call my rebbi always says “A person becomes furious because he wants to be in control but now that he’s angry he’s completely lost control.”
So Rabbi Bier encourages his students to learn Iggeres HaRamban. The letter the Ramban wrote to his son nearly a thousand years ago is still relevant as an essential plan for living a successful life: speak calmly avoid anger be humble think about what you want to say before you say it.
Armed with the Ramban’s wisdom I entered into my training as a psychiatrist — where I found myself constantly tested by various frustrating situations. Working overnight in the emergency room was often a serious challenge to the policy of remaining impartial and objective. There’s little more humbling than having someone spit at me after threatening to sue me at four in the morning before I even had the chance to introduce myself. I remember the first time I heard “you’re a criminal and psychiatrists are just in it for the money.” It hurt a bit. If I was in it for the money wouldn’t I have been a dermatologist or an ophthalmologist instead? But now after years of being insulted and threatened I’ve gotten pretty good at maintaining my composure at work. After all most of those insults might be true: I am bald Jewish and getting older.
I prided myself on never being angry in front of a patient and certainly didn’t expect the first time to be in front of a yeshivah bochur. Heshy was a bochur from Australia who had experienced his first manic episode right after Shavuos. There were several risk factors — including a family history of bipolar disorder in an uncle — but it was only after all the other bochurim took a nap after their cheesecake and Heshy continued to delve into the Zohar long into the following night that people started to get nervous. By the time I met Heshy I recommended he go to the nearest emergency room and seek inpatient psychiatric hospitalization. He certainly wasn’t dangerous but he hadn’t slept in days and was convinced that he needed to head to the Temple Mount to make a vow of nezirus.
