Elul calls us to reflection, responsibility, and teshuvah. For some, this creates healthy seriousness and a desire to grow. For others, it awakens anxiety, shame, perfectionism, and a harsh inner critic: "You wasted another year." "You are not good enough." "You will never really change." "HaShem must be disappointed in you."

The danger is not simply that Elul can make us anxious. The deeper danger is that we may mistake anxiety for yirat Shamayim, fear of heaven. We may assume that the more frightened, pressured, or ashamed we feel, the more seriously we must be taking teshuvah.

This is especially true for young adults suffering from Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD), one of the most common and disruptive mental health conditions affecting people between the ages of 18 and 25. This period is full of transition (leaving home, yeshivah or university, work, new relationships) and enormous uncertainty. For some, that uncertainty develops into persistent, overwhelming anxiety. GAD is not simply worrying too much. It is long-lasting, excessive anxiety that can begin to control a person's life: emotionally, physically, relationally, and practically.

When Attempts to Help Make Anxiety Stronger

As a family therapist, I often see how loving attempts to remove anxiety can unintentionally reinforce it. A young adult says, "I feel anxious." A parent immediately reassures: "There is nothing to worry about." Another family member begins solving: "Tell me exactly what happened and we will fix it." Someone else suggests avoidance: "Stay home until you feel better." Each response comes from care, but the anxious young adult may receive a different message: "My anxiety is dangerous." "My family cannot tolerate seeing me distressed." "I cannot manage this feeling without somebody rescuing me."

Over time, the family can become organized around the anxiety. Parents walk on eggshells. Decisions are made according to what will prevent distress. Siblings may feel overlooked. Everyone is trying to help, but anxiety becomes the center of the family's emotional life.

A similar process can happen within our own internal family. An anxious part becomes activated. A critical part attacks it: "Stop being so weak." A controlling part rushes in: "We need a perfect plan immediately." An avoidant part says: "This is unbearable. Do not think about Rosh Hashanah at all." One group of parts tries to force change while another tries to escape the pressure. The result is often more anxiety, not less.

How Is This Anxiety Trying to Help?

Many people with anxiety have benefited from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, which helps identify anxious thoughts and develop healthier coping strategies. But for some, anxiety is not only a thinking problem. It may be connected to deeper emotional pain, unresolved trauma, perfectionism, shame, or a long-standing need to stay in control. When this is the case, the goal may need to shift. Instead of asking, "How do we eliminate anxiety?" we might ask, "How is this anxiety trying to help?"

We may mistake anxiety for yirat Shamayim, assuming that the more frightened we feel, the more seriously we must be taking teshuvah.

This is where Internal Family Systems (IFS), developed by Richard Schwartz, offers a valuable perspective. IFS views the mind as composed of different parts: not signs of illness or weakness, but natural aspects of the personality. Some parts carry pain, fear, or old wounds. Others try to protect us through perfectionism, avoidance, self-criticism, control, or emotional shutdown. From this perspective, anxiety is often a protective part that is working very hard. An anxious part may believe: "If I stop worrying, you will become careless." "If I do not anticipate every possible problem, you will fail." "If I do not frighten you before Rosh Hashanah, you will not take teshuvah seriously."

These parts are not trying to destroy us. Their strategies once seemed necessary: worry created a sense of preparedness, perfectionism protected against criticism, self-attack felt safer than being attacked by somebody else. The problem is that a strategy that once tried to help can become extreme. Anxiety may begin as protection, but over time it can dominate the entire internal system. The person no longer feels that they have an anxious part; they feel that anxiety is who they are.

During Elul, this can take on religious language: "If my teshuvah is not complete, it does not count." "If I am not frightened, I am not taking Rosh Hashanah seriously." "If I treat myself with compassion, I will become complacent." "HaShem only wants me when I am doing everything correctly." The language may sound spiritual, but the inner experience is dominated by fear rather than by a genuine desire to come close to HaShem.

IFS therefore shifts the question. Instead of asking only, "How can I eliminate this anxiety?" we ask: "What does this part believe would happen if it stopped worrying?" "What is it protecting me from feeling?" This does not mean we obey the anxious part. It means we approach it with curiosity rather than hostility.

For families, this changes the conversation too. Rather than rushing to fix, reassure, or remove the anxiety, family members can become curious: What does the anxiety seem to be worried would happen? What helps you feel supported without feeling controlled? When families move from fixing to understanding and from panic to presence, they become part of the healing process.

Teshuvah Is Close

The Torah presents teshuvah not as an impossible spiritual project, but as something accessible. Moshe Rabbeinu says: "For this commandment that I command you today is not hidden from you, nor is it distant… Rather, the matter is very close to you, in your mouth and in your heart, to perform it" (Devarim 30:11–14).

The Rambam understands these verses as referring to teshuvah. Return to HaShem is not in the heavens or across the sea. It is karov eilecha, close to us. The Rambam writes: "Great is teshuvah, for it brings a person close to the Shechinah… Teshuvah brings close those who are distant" (Hilchot Teshuvah 7:6).

Teshuvah does not crush the person who has become distant. It brings that person closer. This distinction is essential. Anxiety says: "You must become an entirely different person immediately." Teshuvah says: "Turn toward HaShem from where you are." Anxiety says: "Your failures prove who you are." Teshuvah says: "Your failures matter, but they do not have to define your future."

Anxiety says: "Change, or you will be rejected." Teshuvah says: "You can take responsibility and return."

The Pressure to Repair Everything

One of the greatest sources of anxiety during Elul is the feeling that everything must be repaired at once. The anxious part surveys our entire spiritual life, our davening, our learning, our relationships, our anger, our speech, our use of time, and declares: "You have only a few weeks. Fix everything before Rosh Hashanah."

When everything feels urgent, the result may be paralysis rather than teshuvah. The protective part attempts to create safety by scanning for every possible threat, believing that if it can solve every weakness, uncertainty will disappear. But the task is impossible; there will always be another mistake to remember, and the system becomes exhausted.

Rebbe Nachman of Breslov strongly warned against excessive religious stringencies that leave a person confused, depleted, and convinced that nothing they do is sufficient. His application for Elul: choose one mitzvah or one area of avodah to invest particular care in, one paragraph of davening, one aspect of speech, kibbud av va'em, one honest step toward repairing a relationship. This is not avoiding responsibility. It is regulating the internal system enough to make genuine responsibility possible. One small step taken with presence may create more change than a long list created in panic.

Finding the Good Point

Rebbe Nachman develops this further in his teaching of Azamra. A person must search for a nekudah tovah, a genuine point of goodness, within another person and within themselves. Even when we see many failures, we must ask whether there is still some mitzvah, some kindness, some sincere point of connection. Finding that point does not deny wrongdoing. It prevents wrongdoing from becoming our entire identity.

From an IFS perspective, this is extremely important. IFS distinguishes between the person and the parts that carry burdens. A person may have an anxious part, a critical part, or a part that has acted destructively, but no single part represents the totality of the person. We can take responsibility for what a part has done without defining the entire self by that behavior. When the inner critic says, "Nothing about you is good," we can respond: "Can you allow me to notice one sincere mitzvah? What does it reveal about what my neshamah still longs for?"

Finding a good point is not denial or positive thinking. It is a more complete assessment of reality: "Part of me acted wrongly, and I also have goodness within me." "I am more than the part of me that failed."

Unblending from Anxiety

A central goal in IFS is not to remove parts, but to help them unblend so they no longer lead the entire system. Instead of saying, "I am anxious," the person begins to say, "There is a part of me that is anxious." This may appear to be a small change in language, but it creates important space: the person can observe the anxiety, listen to it, and relate to it rather than being it.

During Elul, we might say: "There is a part of me that is terrified of Rosh Hashanah." "There is a part of me that fears compassion will make me irresponsible." We can then ask that part: "What are you afraid would happen if you relaxed?" "What experience taught you that shame is necessary for change?"

Sometimes the anxiety protects an even more vulnerable part beneath it: a younger part that fears: "I am not good enough." "I will be rejected." "I am alone with my failures." The anxious protector believes that if it worries, plans, and criticizes enough, that vulnerable part will never again experience humiliation or rejection. In this sense, anxiety is often not the deepest problem. It is a protective response to pain.

Self-Leadership and Teshuvah

IFS teaches that every person has access to a deeper core presence called Self, characterized by calm, curiosity, compassion, clarity, courage, and connection. We should not simply equate the IFS concept of Self with the neshamah or with any specific Torah concept. Nevertheless, Self-leadership offers a useful model for the internal stance healthy teshuvah requires: courage to face what we have done, clarity to distinguish responsibility from shame, compassion to remain present rather than defensive, and confidence that change is possible.

When we approach anxiety from Self, we do not attack it or obey it. We might say: "I understand why you are afraid. But you do not have to carry the entire burden of my teshuvah. I can take responsibility without hating myself. I can listen to you without allowing you to lead."

This is the difference between suppression and Self-leadership. Suppression says: "Go away. I should not feel anxious." Self-leadership says: "You are welcome to tell me what you fear, but you do not have to run the entire system." The goal is not to get rid of anxiety. It is to change our relationship with it.

Returning to a Beloved

The word teshuvah means return. It does not mean creating an entirely new human being from nothing. Beneath our mistakes, fears, and burdens, there remains a capacity for relationship with HaShem. This is reflected in the verse associated with Elul: "Ani ledodi vedodi li": "I am my Beloved's, and my Beloved is mine" (Shir HaShirim 6:3).

Elul is not only about standing before a Judge. It is also about returning to a Beloved. Sometimes our anxious parts carry a painful image of HaShem: constantly disappointed, easily angered, interested only in perfection. But David HaMelech says in the chapter of Tehillim recited during Elul: "HaShem is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?" (Tehillim 27:1). David does not deny fear, yet fear is not the center of his relationship with HaShem.

He continues: "One thing I ask of HaShem, that I seek: that I may dwell in the house of HaShem all the days of my life, to behold the pleasantness of HaShem" (Tehillim 27:4). David does not say: "One thing I ask: that I become perfect." He asks to encounter the pleasantness of HaShem. The avodah of Elul is therefore not to eliminate fear. It is to ensure that fear does not become our spiritual leader.

Yirah Is Not Anxiety

Healthy yirah reminds us that our choices matter, that our lives have purpose, and that we stand before HaShem. Anxiety tells us that we are defective, unsafe, and one mistake away from rejection. Healthy yirah says: "My actions matter." Anxiety says: "I am nothing more than my failures." Healthy yirah draws us toward HaShem; anxiety may cause us to hide from Him.

The thirteen attributes of mercy begin: "HaShem, HaShem, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abundant in kindness and truth" (Shemot 34:6). Mercy does not remove responsibility. It creates the emotional conditions in which responsibility becomes possible. A person who feels completely condemned will often hide, deny, or give up. A person who feels held within a relationship is more able to face the truth.

Perhaps this Elul we can turn toward our anxious and critical parts and say: "I understand why you are afraid. I know you are trying to protect me. But I do not need to be terrified in order to return. I do not need to repair everything today. I can begin with one mitzvah, one good point, one honest step. HaShem is not asking me to destroy myself. He is inviting me to return."

May this Elul be a time when we can look honestly at what requires repair without reducing ourselves to our failures. May we move from panic to presence and from shame to responsibility. May we help our anxious parts trust that they do not need to carry the entire burden of our spiritual lives. And may we find one mitzvah, one good point, and one place of genuine connection from which to begin.