How Stress, Media, and Free Will Shape Mental Resilience in Judaism

As part of a person’s trials throughout life, he will occasionally find himself in situations that bring tension and psychological stress, requiring him to confront and withstand them. The human soul was designed in such a way that it can endure pressures without collapsing, but only up to a certain limit.

Indeed, the stresses and pressures that every individual faces at various times in life come in a way that does not exceed that person’s ability to withstand them. For God does not place a trial upon a person unless he is capable of bearing it. As our sages said: “God does not deal unfairly with His creatures, and He only demands according to their strength”. (Shemot Rabbah 34:1)

Just as man has the power of free choice, to choose good or evil, to keep God’s commandments or to transgress them, to preserve his health or to harm it, and ultimately to live with the results of those choices, so too does he have the power to protect his soul from unnecessary stress and tension, or conversely, to expose himself to them. In the end, he must bear the consequences of his choice.

A person who chooses to feed his mind and consciousness with unnecessary, stress-inducing material — on top of life’s natural pressures, by watching thrillers or horror films, weakens his natural capacity to cope with pressure. Even worse, he ends up living under a false impression that the world is frightening and doomed to disaster far more than it truly is. The images he has implanted in his mind create a distorted picture of a world filled with violence, calamity, fear, and terror.

Thus, when he eventually experiences intense emotional strain from a real-life crisis, his subconscious dredges up all those negative images he has absorbed, combining them into a massive imaginary threat, until he collapses emotionally.

It is based on this same principle that the Torah commands us: “Do not stray after your hearts and after your eyes, which you follow.” (Numbers 15:39)

Without effort and inner work, a person tends to follow what his eyes see and what his heart desires. The drive of curiosity makes the eyes and the heart roam, like a tourist seeking sights, while the drive of desire urges him to pursue what he sees and imagines, leading him into sin — whose beginning is lust but whose end is suffering.

Just as in matters of modesty and holiness, curiosity leads a person to look at what is forbidden, staining his pure soul and dulling his sensitivity to genuine pleasure in his own life, so too he is drawn — out of the same curiosity, to negative content such as what is presented online, on television, or in violent films. He excites himself with them, but in the end he is harmed: his pure soul is tainted by the filth of cruelty and other negative traits, and his natural resilience against the stresses of life is eroded.