Trauma: Your Lord Has Not Forsaken You
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How Can I Ever Get Past This? | Trauma Ep. 8
When we go through difficult situations, it can be easy to fall into feeling helpless and worthless. Licensed therapist Sarah Sultan describes the cognitive distortion of labeling and suggests a practical tip to overcome it.
Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings. This is Sara Sultan here with Yaqeen Institute and today I wanted to speak with you a little bit about one of the thoughts that tend to come up for us when we've been through particularly difficult times in our lives and we feel like our self-esteem, our sense of self-worth, our identities are shaken. And that thought is, how can I ever get past this? Some people might consider this thought to be a victim mentality kind of thought and I think that that's a little bit of a very strong statement to hold it under that. But when we do think along the lines of how can I ever get past this when we've been through a difficult situation, we set ourselves up for labeling ourselves as hopeless and helpless and we don't want to do that. Labeling is a cognitive distortion and cognitive distortions are negative thought patterns that tend to impact us in harmful ways. Labeling is where we take one quality of a person and we generalize it to the whole person and we identify the entire person based on that one quality. And so we often do that to ourselves but we also often do that to other people in our lives. So for example, somebody might see that her husband is becoming, seems a little bit distant from her and so she says to herself, I must be unlovable, right? She labels herself as unlovable or somebody's child doesn't do well in their math class and so they start to be very self-critical and say, if only I had spent more time with my child, then I'm a bad mother or I'm a bad father. Labeling themselves under this negative label as a whole person. When we can differentiate between a problematic area in our life or
a behavior versus generalizing that to our entire being, then that's going to be a much healthier way of approaching the conversation. This also really applies to our spiritual health as well. In our relationship with Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la, a lot of times people will say things like, I'm just a bad Muslim, I'm beyond hope, I'm a sinner, right? Labeling themselves as a bad Muslim or as a sinner rather than labeling themselves as somebody who is struggling in the way of Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la or somebody who is a repenter who makes mistakes but yet still repents to Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la and tries to become closer to him. That label is something that would be positive. A negative label like, I'm just a sinner, that leaves us with the idea that we are powerless to change because what we believe is that the problem isn't in what we're doing. The problem is fundamentally within us as a person because we've labeled ourselves in that way. And that's why this particular cognitive distortion can be really detrimental. So one thing to be self-aware of when it comes to the cognitive distortion of labeling is that no matter how much evidence or how many external factors you find in your life that prove against whatever label you've labeled yourself with, it's never going to make any sense to you because it's embedded deep within you that you have this negative belief about yourself. If you believe yourself to be a bad Muslim, then no matter how many pages of Quran you're reading or how many prayers you're praying, you're never going to believe yourself to be getting closer to Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la because you don't believe that's feasible for you. You feel powerless to change who you feel like you are. And so one thing to be careful of is that within us, we have the capability of empowering either our inner critic, meaning that voice in our minds that tries to push us to be better, but does it in a very cruel way that actually prevents us from getting better, or the nurturing coach that also we
have the power of giving a voice to, which tries to push us forward to become better, but does it in a gentler way. So the practical tip to keep in mind about this is how do I activate my nurturing coach versus my inner critic is if you're asking yourself questions like, am I a good Muslim or a bad Muslim? Am I a good father or a bad father? Good mother, bad mother, good or bad? Like these very, very strong terms. If you're using these very strong terms, then transforming them to realize that nobody ever completely falls under a label constantly, right? So asking yourself instead, what are my strengths and weaknesses? What are the areas that I'm really good at in terms of raising my children? And what are the areas that could use some improvement? What are the areas that I'm really struggling to fulfill in terms of my worship with Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la? And what are the areas that I'm doing well in and that I can build upon? That's the difference between giving a voice to the critical voice in your head and using harsh words with yourself and the gentler voice in your head that's going to try to propel you to be the best person that you can be. If you'd like to learn more about the cognitive distortion of labeling, then make sure to check out Yaqeen Institute's new installment of the series, Your Lord Has Not Forsaken You.
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