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Falling Into Your Thoughts - Cognitive Distortion Part 1 | Daily Reminders
While the Coronavirus may cause stress and anxiety during this time, it's important for us to be mindful of our thoughts and not fall into common cognitive distortions. Sh. Omar Husain describes three cognitive distortions and offers perspectives from the Qur'an and Sunnah.
Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings. Bismillahir Rahmanir Rahim. Alhamdulillahi Rabbil Alameen. Wasalatu wasalam ala rasoolil kareem wa ba'a. In this mini little series, I'm going to talk about what's known as cognitive distortions. So these are basically flawed thinking patterns that we may have during this time of the coronavirus. And it's a great time for us to reflect and see if any of these distortions are affecting our daily lives. So basically we are going to be thinking about thinking. What are some cognitive distortions or ways of thinking which are not positive or healthy for us to have? The first one I want to cover is something known as all or nothing thinking. So an example of this is that, let's say you're on a diet and you have a little cheat meal, you have a few chips which you weren't supposed to eat, and let's say you were on this diet for six months. Now you feel like, oh, I didn't accomplish anything. It's like either I'm 100% on the diet or I get nothing. And then what happens? We get discouraged and we start to not want to continue our goal. I work with a lot of clients in substance abuse and I had a client one time, he had a relapse, which is not uncommon in recovery. It was a small amount, but what we try to do is say, look, that happened, but for the last six months or eight months or nine months you've been sober. Let's not just discount that and just say, no, it's either all or nothing. I'm never going to make a mistake. And this is crucial with our relationship to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. You know, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala said, or the Prophet ﷺ said, والذي نفس بيده لو لم تذنبوا لذهب الله بكم ولجاء بقوم يذنبون فيستغفرون الله فيغفر لهم
A very powerful hadith, the Prophet ﷺ said that, by Him in whose hand my soul is, which is a statement that was used to basically swear an oath, he said, Allah is saying that if we did not commit sins, Allah would remove us and come with a group of people who did make mistakes, and they would seek forgiveness and Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala would forgive them. Why would Allah remove a group that's not making any mistakes? Because those are angels, right? لا يعصون الله ما أمرهم ويفعلون ما يؤمرون Allah says that the angels, they do what they're told, and they don't disobey Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. We are not angels, so we should not have just all or nothing thinking. Islam is a process, it didn't come for perfect people, it came for imperfect people. So when we mess up or make a mistake, we make istighfar, but if we've really been going good on something for a while, we don't want to fall into all or nothing thinking, and just completely disregard any good that may have come before. The second is what's known as overgeneralization. So we will use words like always or never, and especially during this time, someone may say, you know what, I never get a good job, or I'm always second best in anything I do. Or people, and this is really, especially as we're spending time together as a family, people may start to get a little annoyed with each other, and say things like, you never do this when I ask you to do it. Think about this. Never? That's a very strong word. Has this person really never done anything for you, or you've never had something that was positive in your life? This is flawed thinking, and when we'll look at it, and analyze it as we're doing now, we'll see that it simply is not true.
And really it is a sign of not being grateful to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, it's just discounting the blessings He's given us. And that can lead to a bad opinion of Allah. And that's why the Prophet ﷺ said in a hadith Qudsi, that, اَنَا عِنْدَهُ ظَنِّي عَبْدِي بِي That Allah is saying, I am in the opinion of My servant. So if we have a positive opinion of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, that's how we're going to find Him. And if we have a negative opinion, then that's what we're going to find. So we want to distance ourselves from this over-generalization, using words like always or never, and think about it to remove these distortions. The last one I'll cover in this video is what's known as a mental filter. A mental filter is when we take an incident that happened, and we disregard any positive that came from it, and only focus on a negative thing. So, for example, let's say you had a presentation, and there's ten people watching. Nine of them said you did a wonderful job. Maybe one of them said you didn't do as wonderful a job as the other nine said. We will sit and we will focus on that one negative comment, and we will ignore all of the other positive things. This is unhealthy, this makes us anxious, this is very stressful. When the vast majority are telling you you're doing something good, then focus on that. Take the constructive criticism, but that's not the dominant factor. We can also flip it. If we have nine out of ten telling us we did a terrible job, and one is telling us we did good, we want to use that to grow. There's a du'a that I encourage all of us to read, which is رَبِّي هَبْلِي حُكْمًا وَأَلْحِقْنِي بِالصَّالِحِينَ A du'a in the Qur'an where the du'a is saying, Oh Allah, grant me wisdom and literally attach me with righteous people.
Attach me with people who are close to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. How does that relate to having a mental filter? You see, righteous people do a lot of things for us. They make us closer to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, they make us love our religion, they make us want to do good deeds, but they also are uplifting people, they're optimistic people. They're not always bringing us down. You know what we call toxic people. Toxic people take this mental filter and they always focus on the negative. So they will tell you negative things about your friends or your job, and they won't look at the whole picture because of this distorted way of thinking. So these are three of the distortions that I wanted to cover. In sha Allah, this will get us thinking about thinking, and we'll continue in the next video. JazakumAllahu Khayran wa sallallahu ala sayyidina Muhammad
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