Assalamu Alaikum. Najwa here from Yaqeen Institute. Episode
1 from our series, "Your Lord has not forsaken you," The impact of trauma on
faith. Today we're going to be talking about filtering. When bad things seem to
be happening back to back and it's just one trial after another you might be
bogged down with pain and feeling like you're in a big storm and just can't
seem to get out. As one bad thing happens after another you might start to wonder,
"Is there something wrong with me? Why do bad things only happen to me? How is it
possible that so many trials can happen to me and not other people?" When you
begin to have these questions then in your mind you start to build up these
assumptions or unhealthy ways of thinking and then eventually biases
about how the world works. When you are internalizing these negative things that
happen to you then you begin to look at the world in the same light. So for
example, when you start to get caught into negative thinking and thinking that
everything around you is not good you'll begin to overlook some of the positives
in your life. So for example say you were thinking, Why is everyone out to get me?
Why does everyone hate me?" If someone buys you coffee in the morning and your child
hugs you on the way out, you will actually overlook those things. But when
you are crossing the street and someone says something really mean to you you'll
hone in on those things. Filtering is like, it's like a coffee filter. All the
things go inside but only the negative comes out. And over time it really begins
to impact mood, it begins to impact productivity because
everything around you just seems to be negative. So one of the really
destructive things that filtering does is it builds up these self-fulfilling
prophecies. And self-fulfilling prophecies they not only can be done to
us by other people but we can also do them too to others. So say, for example
you are a woman who has low self-esteem. So you built in this filter that I'm not,
I'm worthless. There's nothing good about me. What happens over time is that
you might start to act in that way. And so what happens is other people around
you will begin to act on you in that way. And then you say to yourself, ah well, I'm
just not worth it, I was worthless this whole time. So it becomes this whole
self-fulfilling prophecy in which your thoughts and your feelings actually
turn out to be what's going to happen to you. So it can, this can be done in a good
way, but it also can be done in a negative way. Where was a landmark study
done in the 1960s in which teachers were told that certain students in the class
were ready to bloom. They did IQ tests in the beginning of year and at the end of the
year they did the same test as well. And they found that those people who were
ready to bloom, which actually were just randomly picked. The students that were
randomly selected as ready to bloom actually significantly did higher on
their IQ test and that's all because the teacher had a different perception of
them and nurtured them in a way which helped them bloom. So one way to gain
insight into filtering is to take a step back and reflect. Instead of looking at
how is the world imposing itself on me, how am I imposing my view, my feelings on
to the world. And when you take yourself out of being a more passive participant
and more of an active person in your life you'll find that you have more
power than you think. And although bad things can happen over
and over, when you start to come from a place of empowerment and say I do have
power over my environment. I do have the ability to make my own decisions. And
even if things are not good, I can change them. I can turn good things, bad things
into good things. When you do that, then it doesn't feel like why are all these
bad things happening to me. It's more like how can I take these events in my
life that are neutral and how can I turn them into something
better. How can I impose myself on the world and make it a better place. One
tool that you can find in our article is something called, 'Through the Prophet
(sallalahu alaihi wasalam)'s eyes.' When you're feeling negative and that everything around you
just feels really terrible, one exercise to do in your head is close your eyes and
reflect, if he, sallalahu alaihi wasallam, was sitting in front of me, what blessings would he say
that I had that he doesn't. If you think about it, he had so many traumatic events
in his life. He was in poverty, he didn't have food to eat, he was persecuted. So
when you look at it from that framework, what blessing, even through small
blessings, do you have that that he doesn't? And when you look at it from
that perspective you will reflect and you will see that maybe there are more
positive things in your life than you would have thought. For more insights,
tools, and tips on the cognitive distortion filtering check out the
chapter, "Why do bad things only happen to me."