pressure? what pressure?
I've gotten so much better about my obsessive/compulsive relationship with taharat hamishpacha. Partly thanks to my therapist, who convinced me that Gd would actually approve of my becoming less afraid of making a mistake. Partly thanks to our (second) rabbi, who finally - when all else failed - told me, "once you get home to your husband, don't ask any questions NO MATTER WHAT you notice." It still takes some effort on my part, though, to get through mikvah day without a knot of tension in my stomach.
I give myself twice as much time to get ready as it should normally take, both so that I'm not rushing around (because that physically feels like I'm nervous, even if I'm not), and so that later I won't be as likely to say to myself "How do you know you didn't miss that? After all, you were rushing around." I used to even put on soothing music during my bath, but I've gotten so I don't need to do that anymore. I still spend a long, long, long time on my nails, because ragged cuticles are the one thing I can't convince myself that I don't care about... and not surprisingly, they were almost always the thing I used to find after I got home. Or on the way home. Or even, agonizingly, on the way from the mikvah room back to my prep room. So if I know I've been completely thorough with them, I can more easily tell myself that anything I notice as I'm getting dressed must be new. I couldn't have missed it before.
But although I'm better able to sit through the anxiety when it does hit me, I'm still susceptible to it hitting in the first place. Friday nights and Yom Tov, as you can imagine, are the worst. What if I notice something tiny after candle lighting, when I can no longer do anything about it? Will I ask a shayla, with all the stress that would entail, or will I attempt to ignore it - tell myself I'm just obsessing - and instead be eaten up by guilt later? This last time, I davened Kabbalat Shabbat almost primarily as a way to keep myself from checking my hands. I figured Gd wouldn't mind me using Him a little. For a good cause.
All's well that ends well, I thought as I headed for the mikvah, or it's about to anyway. Only to find (as almost never happens, in my tiny neighborhood) that there was a line of people ahead of me. OK, maybe it does happen, but if it's a weeknight I can do something while I wait: I just keep going over my nails, or if even *I* get sick of that, I can read something from my backpack. This was Shabbos. There was nothing I was allowed to do; there was nothing I had brought with me. I sat in my robe, trying not to look at anything or touch anything, trying not to let even a stirring of nervousness begin.
Add that to the fact that - as much as I love and miss my husband - mikvah night has by now become synonymous, for me, with Yet Another Futile Effort to Conceive. And suddenly for a second I was Angela from My So Called Life, forced to wait for a room so she could reluctantly lose her virginity to Jordan Catalano.
"It was *exactly* like when I was waiting to get my flu shot, only I didn't even have a magazine to read."
Comments
I have the opposite problem-- I feel all this guilt that I am not obsessive enough about mikvah. Sure I make make sure everything is cut and cleaned, but my preparation time always seems really short (except for the requisite time for sitting in the bath.)
You know, I think this is a real difference between mikvahs! A friend called me about a year after I got married, saying that a new mikvah had opened in town and she was going to complain that they poke and prod at your nails too much. I was like, you mean your old mikvah doesn't?
My understanding is that my mikvah does this only because their posek asked them to. When I told my own rabbi that they re-file my nails if something feels rough, he had no idea what I was talking about. His approach is closer to the Yoatzot - make sure nails short and clean, and remove anything that's about to come off anyway.
In my case it doesn't help me entirely, because as I said, I am the type of person who is bothered by even the tiniest jagged bits of skin or nail - even if it weren't for mikvah I would probably chew it off as soon as I noticed it. So I try to get rid of all that stuff, even though I know for someone else it wouldn't be required. But once I've gone over everything carefully, I do try to tell myself that I probably did more than necessary anyway, and if I missed something I can relax.
Part of my reason for posting this entry was that I know T'H anxiety is a more common problem than one might think. I hope others will share what works for them, in the hopes that it might help someone else. But most of all I hope people will realize they're not alone in this, and it's NOT the way mikvah preparation is meant to feel. It's very, very worth asking for help.
My anxiety is trying to relax, bathe and get ready often after a full day at the office, long commute, kids, chores. I'm sure my schedule is no different from others out there though.
I get stressed and ponder: am I in the right mindset to perform this mitzvah? I am devoting enough time to preparing myself physically and mentally? Can I tune out the demands of my day to even prepare with the right kavana? Am I soaking long enough? Once I immerse, though, I have faith that the attendant will have checked everything. I guess I have more trust in her than in myself.
And the final anxiety: when I come home, will the spouse even be awake?
I consider myself lucky in some ways - I work from home, and have a husband is very sensitive to prep time. When I say it's time for me to prepare, he ensures I have no interruptions, so I'm able to always take the same amount of time to prep each month. This enables me to relax and concentrate on my checklist and make sure I take care of each item.
It also helps that our attendants are not so intense about checking. They check, but I've never been told to re-do anything, although I do have a little stress each time that I will have to.
Personally, I have more stress because I have to call to make an appointment. I've had some trying situations, which, bli neder, I'll post about at some point, which makes scheduling mikvah appointments stressful for me. I guess that stress also helps make the actual prep seem less stressful.
I heard a story at a T"H shiur once -- a woman went to mikvah Friday night with clear nailpolish on... and noticed afterwards! The attendant made her go to a certain Rabbi's house and wait for him to come home from shul and ask him about it! She was mortified, but she went to wait for him. As it turned out, he said the tevilah was kosher because she hadn't intended to remove it immediately after Shabbos... she'd forgotten all about it and would have just left it until it wore off if it hadn't been for needing to go to mikvah.
So bidieved (after the fact) I think we're all a bit paranoid and do more than we have to. Not that I'm advocating purposely wearing nailpolish into the mikvah!
"because ragged cuticles are the one thing I can't convince myself that I don't care about... and not surprisingly, they were almost always the thing I used to find after I got home. Or on the way home. Or even, agonizingly, on the way from the mikvah room back to my prep room."
One thing you can do, and probably should do, is IMMEDIATELY after you are tovel, run your hands up and down the wall tiles - and/or on anything a little rough. After that, you can presume anything you found is from that activity. If you checked right before the mikva plunge and everything was ok, and immediately after you leave, you run your hands on something rough, you'll know that what you did afterwards is the source of the trouble. the water is probably softening your cuticles, and it's very easy to get more ragged cuticles after the dunk. Just check before you go in, and run your fingers on something rough RIGHT after you come out.
And on the same note, if you have a problem with hairs sticking to you, immediately upon leaving the water, shake your hair out. Then any hairs on you are from that, and you were fine going in.
Last time I went to the mikvah, I was unable to completely remove a little dot of pink highlighter that I got on my finger during the day. The mikvah attendant suggested that I clean my hands with bleach. I was appalled at the suggestion, and quickly declined her offer of the bleach bottle. After scrubbing with soap, water, and later rubbing alcohol, the mikvah attendant called a local rabbi, who confirmed my suspicion that it was fine to immerse once I had tried to remove the dot, even if some color remained. I think suggestions like dousing myself in bleach add to my compulsive preparation habits.
but you know, the bleach often works! gets dark spots under nails out too, if the whites on nails start too low down to trim completely.
I hope I'm not offending anyone with this comment and if I am, please forgive me. But I come to mikva from the perspective of a Conservative Jew who has come to it on my own (in other words, no one, not even my community norms, "make me."). And seeing all this worry and stress some of my sisters are having about a ragged nail here or a dot of pink marker there makes me wonder if perhaps we sometimes put so many fences around the Torah that we forget how beautiful it is? Shouldn't we be using our prep and immersion time to reflect and to pray, rather than spend it worrying about the micro-details? Does anyone really think HaShem would consider it a violation when the intent and every effort is made to fulfill the mitzvah? Thank heavens for the sensible rabbis who have been cited as saying, essentially, that we are to follow the simple, straightforward rules for preparation and if there is some little issue that comes up -- clear nail polish etc...-- that this is secondary to our intent and doesn't invalidate the immersion. I find so much spiritual power in going to the mikvah, so much physical and spiritual refreshment. Shouldn't that be what we aim for, instead of fretting about the details' details?
"I find so much spiritual power in going to the mikvah, so much physical and spiritual refreshment."
I don't know, that flips on me. After all, T"H is a chok, a law with no clear reason. On good days, I think if it's meaningful based on secondary reasons, that just shows how very meaningful it must really be, but mostly I am skeptical and think that we can't really access the spiritual power apart from knowing that this is an important mitzva. I'm not trying to be snarky. I'm curious how others feel about this.
isn't bleach a hazardous chemical? Doesn't the bottle always say to avoid contact with skin? So how can it possibly be ok to use bleach for this purpose when halachically you're not allowed to harm yourself?
Jewish Daughter - I also believe in trying hard not to get so caught up in the details that you lose sight of the bigger picture. I wish I could say that I really take the time to "reflect and pray", but the truth is that I'm always rushing around and thinking about how long it's taking. I guess I should try to stop that as well now!
One of the reasons I like to take private time after my 3rd immersions is so that I can access that spiritual power and take time to reflect. Beforehand, I am too busy making sure all the hairs are off me, all my hangnails are gone, my feet are clean, how long it's taking, etc., etc. And I'm not overly obsessive.
I sometimes compare mikvah to shatnez (the prohibition against mixing wool and linen). It's prohibited, but we don't know why. Immersing is a mitzvah, and we can (and do) come up with all sorts of reasons why we have to immerse, but the bottom line is, we immerse because we HAVE to. The only real spiritual part of it is that G-d told us to. We can either imbue it with spirituality or not. Because I happen to love this mitzvah (most of the time!), I choose to imbue it with spirituality. If a woman can make mivkah a spiritual event, that's wonderful, but there's nothing wrong with it being merely a fulfillment of a mitzvah.
At the mikva that I usually use, the shomrot ask first if you want to be checked. I always answer "Please!" because I'm always nervous about having done it all right. I also haven't ever been able to get through the seven clean days without at least one shaila...and I'm married more than 15 years. I think mikva is like Pesach, an outlet for the obsessive/compulsive who lives within each of us.
I have a tendency to be just as nervous during mikvah preparation. I used to make my cuticles bleed and my belly button hurt because I was so nervous I was missing something. However, the following FAQ from www.yoatzot.org (run by Nishmat) really helped:
http://www.yoatzot.org/question/1441
In addition, I had the following helpful e-mail exchange with a yoetzet at Nishmat:
QUESTION:
I am writing to follow up on the following question and answer (pasted below). I tried to follow this advice when I last went to the mikvah. I carefully cleaned and checked everything once. I then asked the shomeret to check my fingers and toes, and she spent about 15 minutes with a pair of scissors and nail file fixing little things. Now I feel like I was not careful enough during my preparation. Any advice? Thank you.
QUESTION:
I get very stressed when preparing for mikvah. I worry that I am missing loose skin on my feet or not cleaning my belly button well enough, etc. I recently spoke to a friend who said she was taught that you only need to clean more carefully than you would normally, taking extra care with any easily removable skin. She said preparation does not require stressful re-checking over and over again. Any advice?
ANSWER:
Preparing for mikveh should be approached as a serious mitzvah. However, it should not get out of control to the point that you are getting very stressed. Therefore, I agree with what you were told by your friend. It might help if you prepared a list of things to check (these are often posted in the mikveh), pay careful attention ONCE to each item and then trust yourself to have done a good job.
ANSWER:
You probably were careful enough. If your nails are clean, that is sufficient. Perhaps, ask the shomeret if she would just check your back for hairs and rely on yourself for the rest of the exam. If she is not sensitive to your concern, is this only mikveh in town? Is there only one shomeret that work at the mikveh?