Why does anxiety feel so overwhelming, and where can I find relief from it?

Rabbi Landau teaches that “anxiety has two addresses: the past and the future. It has never once lived in the present.” Every fear you carry is either a memory you keep reliving or something that hasn't happened yet that you keep rehearsing.

So he asks: “right now, this exact moment, what is there to be afraid of?” The past is gone and you can't touch it. The future hasn't arrived and you can't live in it. There is only “this moment, and then this moment, and then this moment again.” In his words, there is “only one long continuous now. And anxiety cannot survive in it. Because anxiety needs yesterday or tomorrow.”

He anchors this in the verse zeh hayom asah Hashem, nagilah v'nismechah vo: “This is the day, rejoice in it. Not tomorrow. Not when things get better. This one.” His conclusion: “The present moment is the only place anxiety cannot follow you. Go there.”

Going deeper: Rabbi Landau's teaching, level by level

Surface claim

Anxiety lives only in the past and the future, never in the present.

Fear, vulnerability, or tension

Every fear is either a memory you keep reliving or a future you keep rehearsing.

Underlying need or longing

Where can a person actually find calm?

In this exact moment, where, as Rabbi Landau asks, there is nothing to be afraid of. In A Soul at Peace he writes that worry lives in only two places, memory and imagination.

Deepest human truth

“This is the day,” not tomorrow and not when things get better. The present moment is the only place anxiety cannot follow you.

More questions from this teaching

• What does “This is the day Hashem made” teach about worry?