I’ve been watching my husband’s anxiety build. He needs to leave the house. The escape hatch is that way. It’s the only way out. I know it’s hard, but that’s how it gets better.

I want to give him advice. I want to help. My lips are screaming at me for keeping them locked.

“Ariel ... ,” I pause.

How many times have I offered advice on how to get rid of anxiety? I know my advice helps. Well, sometimes; other times, it makes it worse. But either way, he resents it. It makes him cold to me. His one safe person has turned on him, and I lose that feeling of connection with the most important person in my life.

I need a new way.

Giving unasked-for advice appears innocent, but it sends a harsh message to the person receiving it. It sounds like: “You can’t do this.” “This challenge is bigger than you.” “My advice (i.e., “I know better than you”) is more important than your process and learning on yourown.” “I don’t trust you.”

I justify it in the name of being helpful. But is it really?

If I overcome the challenge for him while killing our connection, is that what G‑d had in mind? Does G‑d really want me to interfere, uninvited, on their process together?

The nervous system is always learning; it is known officially as neuroplasticity. The preciousness of the process cannot be undermined, creating new neural pathways of change, growth and progress. But it is so hard to just be here and watch. Free choice and our own learning are so important that G‑d Himself lets us make mistakes and learn from them, fall down and get up again.

I know the one thing I can do that is always genuinely helpful and welcome. But it is so hard for me to do: to see him the way he wants to be seen. Seeing him beyond the overwhelming panic, the freeze, the total shutdown, the heavy thoughts revving up the nervous system again.

Seeing him as free, as light, as a soul on a mission that only he can achieve.1 I need to speak to him from this place of genuine encouragement of who I know him to be—the most resilient person I have ever met.

“Ariel, I love how you always know what you need.” The words feel right. Easing my own anxiety. My pursed lips let on a small smile.

He does have clarity on what he needs, and his clarity right now is to be at home. He doesn’t directly acknowledge my words, but the energy is lighter, purer; the intimacy has been restored.

Ariel picks up a clean white sheet of paper, and his handwriting floats across the page. I grab a paper, too, and put my stream of consciousness down.


I am learning that more valuable than the advice I can offer is the connection2 —the genuine bond to another person that sees your soul, light, confidence and power.

Most of us see our advice as more precious than our presence. How could just being there and seeing them in a positive light be more helpful than our words? we wonder.

This is a reaction to how we view ourselves. We value ourselves in an external way. And so, we value the externality of what we can offer: advice. We do the same to the person we wish to help, addressing the external symptomatic problem.

But we don’t value their inner world, their pnimiut. We don’t really trust them to figure it out. We don’t trust their soul’s whisper, their inner process. If we valued their inner world, then we could bring it out in a heartbeat. And they would have the answers they need, accessible to them from the Almighty, delivered directly to their soul.

As friends and loved ones, we are powerful. We can help. It is a different help than that offered by the therapists or professionals who provide the specific tools or therapeutic process. Our power is not what we think it is. It is not the power of offering unasked-for advice.

Our power is an invisible one, one that is so powerful it need not make noise. It is a power that G‑d has granted us, to bring out the soul’s strength—to nurture their light, to allow people to see their true reflection in our eyes.

You see, redemption is not a new creation. It is a revelation. The world has looked like a jungle for so long: wild, chaotic, random and fierce.

But our world is really a garden.3 There is purpose and order and care. We just need to reveal it.

Redemption is not something fantastical; it is a revelation of the essential reality.4 It is allowing what is beneath the surface to rise with absolute vision and clarity. The work is in trusting it is all here, nurturing all the good that is beneath the surface and allowing it to reveal itself.

Redemption is a revelation of who we really are. We need to welcome the greatness of the person who stands before us and watch in wonder as it appears, as if it was here the whole time. For it was.

You do not need to force someone’s potential into some jelly mold.5 You simply water, and it will grow into its true form, taking up all the space it needs. We can trust in the goodness—the pure powerful essential core G‑d has placed into those we love. Just focus on it and receive it.

Parents tell me their teens don’t want advice anymore. The youth appear allergic to it. Why don’t they want to be told what to do? Perhaps because they want our help but in a different way than we are used to. Our work is to help them reveal their soul.

The people in my life are asking to be trusted. To let them fall on their faces as they get to know their own internal guidance system. When do they learn on their own, and gain experience and confidence in their abilities? When they are given the respect of their own creative process as they dance through life, even when the stakes are high and we feel afraid.

I am being asked to trust the wellsprings that G‑d has placed within them.

And so, as I learn to trust my own inner resources, I am learning to trust that my husband has his own set.

And the kindest, most helpful thing I could do on a rainy day is not open an umbrella for him. It is to trust in him. And that means to really trust G‑d—not in an abstract way, but as He has placed himself within my husband.