Naima B. Robert – Advice to Muslim Women on Marriage and Attachment
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AI: Transcript ©
Okay. Bismillah.
So we normally go live a few seconds
before it tells me so I'm going to
say Bismillah, Wa Salaam, Wa Salaam Ala Rasuulillah.
Welcome everyone to day 2 of the Secrets
of Successful Marriage Conference.
With no more ado, we're going to get
started with sister Khadija Al Khadur, who is
going to be presenting
a talk on how
to develop secure adult attachments.
The floor is all yours.
Assalamu alaikum everyone. My name is Hamarija Akkadol.
I am a motherhood
expert. I've been a parenting,
mentor for many years now, and I've worked
exclusively with Muslim mothers and Muslim women, especially
the last 5 years in coaching, mentoring,
and teaching programs.
And one of the biggest areas I'm very
passionate about and I've been teaching and learning
about for over 20 years is secure attachment.
So this is the area that I'm passionate
about because
your attachment style, the way that you interact,
your interpersonal skills, the way that you interact
with the people around you, especially the close
relationship that you have, are largely,
affected by your childhood upbringing.
So basically, we just kinda look at what
secure attachment is
and your how it affects your attachment style,
so how does it affect your marriage, how
it affects your relationship with your child. In
particular, we're looking at the dynamic between,
husband and wife and how that impacts
and how your impact of your childhood wounds
impact your attachment style.
One thing that's really, really important that,
when I teach programs around attachment and that,
one of the biggest things that mothers always
said to me afterwards, and Muslim women will
say to me afterwards is, like, wow, I
didn't realize how much my childhood
impacts my adult relationships.
And this is so important because sometimes we
can get very stuck in
blaming and criticism
and feeling like the other person is responsible
for my happiness or they're responsible for the
right way that I feel triggered around things.
And in actual fact, a lot of this
is actually to do with your childhood conditioning,
with the way that you were brought up.
So our childhood conditioning
impacts
our interpersonal relationship. It impacts our adult relationships,
and the way that we get, have reactions
around things,
the choices that we make.
And one of the areas, like, building the
trust that we have within ourselves.
And
the when you have a better understanding around
your attachment,
one of the beautiful things is that it
can actually change over time. You can build
that secure attachment,
a secure safe attachment. I'll explain what that
is in a second.
But it really helps you to understand
that when you understand your attachment style, you
understand that you can operate in a different
way and build a more safer,
loving, thriving
relationship with the people around you.
So our attachment styles are basically establishing our
childhood very much so in the first two
years of life
And most important in that first 7 years
of life, you know, that first 7 years
where, you know, I think it was
or
let your children play in that first 7
years of life. Because that first 7 years
is very, very crucial
to, children's development. It's crucial to how the
long term impacts
of how they operate as an adult.
So
attachment affects your learned behavior.
You were you, there's certain behaviors that you've
actually inherited, you've taken on because of the
dynamic that you experienced in your family in
your family structure growing up.
It sometimes has a good identity
around it,
and it does definitely primarily affect
your emotional response, how you regulate or coregulate,
meaning
how you show up emotionally in your adult
relationships. So it's a very, very important part
of understanding,
interpersonal
skills.
Because at the end of the day, our
early childhood, you know,
and this is why,
in our deen, you think about Ummah as
a thriving Ummah. To have a thriving Ummah,
an Ummah that is
able to be healthy and thriving, we're all
made made up of micro
micro families. Right? We're made up of all
these houses and all these places, whether you're
in Canada right now, whether in Australia, or
whether you're in Zambia or South Africa, wherever
you are in the world right now,
every family is impacted by their cultural conditioning,
that, you know, that the way that they
were brought up as a child,
whether they were brought up as healthy functioning
adults. Now Ollie's mother created us that when
we were born, we had this, our Pitcher
state. You know? This the Pitcher state is
in its natural form.
And then we pick up conditioning. We pick
up certain things.
We
unconsciously are conditioned to believe certain things. That's
how racism starts, for example. A child doesn't
have any any they're not born with any
belief of,
disgust or dislike for another person's skin color.
That's that's culture condition that's taught them consciously
or unconsciously.
So all these things impact us, and they
impact us much more than we think. But
as we become an adult,
it affects us because some of us will
have childhood wounds. We will have things where
the attachment wasn't as strong as we was
meant to be, or that it's as secure
as meant to be. And so it's really
important to understand your attachment style because then
you then could take responsibility
for your life and say, okay. I'm showing
up like this in a relationship,
and and I need to work on that.
And and why do I not feel worthy
or felt loved enough or not feel heard
enough
or I'm not feel seen enough? I'm not
listening to he doesn't listen to me. You
know, all these things that we we sometimes
say, a lot of it can do with
your back childhood, your past experiences that kind
of play up and show up in the
mouth.
So what is attachment? Why do we talk
about attachment? And before we go into what
is attachment,
the basic most basic fundamental needs of every
child
is to have a sense of belonging,
a sense of being, some some sense of
security in being seen so that they say
their emotional needs are met.
The beautiful thing about attachment is that we
want young children
to be,
attached or dependent on their primary caregiver.
In majority of the cases, the mother,
and they need to have that closeness and
that connection. And there's not not no, there's
no
too much attachment or too much hugs or
too much affection.
If anything,
the paradox is when a child has that,
they have their emotional needs met and their
physical needs met as a young
baby. Then when they're older,
they
they become more independent. It's almost like a
kite. You know? You meet the needs of
that child when they're quite young. It's almost
like a kite that goes out, and they
actually become more independent. They come in. They
check-in with you. They go up. If you
ever watch young children a young child play,
you'll see that when they have good secure
attachment with their parents, they go off, they
pay a vehicle, come back. They get that
reassurance, they check-in. They might cry, something's happened,
they'll come back, get the reassurance, and off
they go.
And if you haven't been brought up with
secure attachment,
and I'm going to some of what that
looks like,
the long term impact is it can really
impact your adult relationship. It should be impacts
the way that you show up emotionally or
not emotionally in your in your relationship.
It shows up in how you're triggered by
other people's,
things that they do. So it's a really,
really important thing.
If you grew up in a home where
that safety and security wasn't there, if there
wasn't, like, a sense of belonging and a
sense of a lot of love and,
freedom to you about. If you grew up
with childhood trauma, you grew up in a
dysfunctional home,
if you grew up where there was
a lot of
tension, fighting,
and,
like, there was
divorce or separation from a parent,
you know, all those things that kind of
cause,
rupture
or cause a break, then that that's going
to impact
your
ability to kind of bounce back. It's gonna
impact your ability as an adult if you
have, like, a a secure base. Secure so
basically, the parent is like the secure base
that the child is supposed to be. But
we live in the world. We live in
the world where people go through wars, and
they go through divorces, and they go through,
so many different things. And a lot of
people don't are not brought up in a
home where they get the,
the feeling that they were heard and the
attention that they needed
and, for many, many reasons.
Many caregivers tried to do the best that
they could with what they had or what
they
only knew until they knew better.
So a lot of the time when you've
grown up in a dysfunctional home, you've grown
up where you may not have received the
basic emotional needs that you needed, or there
was some neglect, or there was some trauma
that you went through, or some abuse that
you went through, or you witnessed
family violence in any way, or you lived
in a place that felt unsafe,
your brain is wired in a way to
kind of be a little bit more hypervigilant,
a little bit more like look for threats,
a little bit more almost like you grew
up in a bit more of a survival
mode.
And so the the thing about,
attachment is that
it's so important because when you grow up
in a setting where you've got a sense
of belonging, you've got safe,
your nervous system is more in a grounded
state. You're more in a more relaxed grounded
state.
But when you grew up where
there was turmoil around you, a bit of
chaos, or things were up and down or
ruching, but maybe your parents experienced
it gets harder to regulate yourself because you're
in an environment that felt unsafe.
And,
a lot of times, it has a long
term impact on adults.
In a secure home,
parents
in a secure home,
the child will have aspects where the parent
can leave
and the child,
can be visibly upset when a child parent
leaves.
And that is actually a good sign because
that means the child feels a sense of
separation from that parent. The child wants that
parent to come back.
One thing to worry about is when the
child comes if you come back to that
child and then there is no reaction
from that child.
So these are the little things we wanna
look at that build children's
attachment. Why do we talk about building children's
attachment?
It's that if you didn't have these certain
things in your life, then you have to,
as an adult, kind of work to build
that trust within yourself, to build that safety
within yourself, to learn
to regulate,
to be able to handle your anger, your
rage, your upset.
When you get triggered a lot or you
get really reactional a lot or get upset
a lot, a lot of that is to
do with that you haven't been taught,
self regulation.
And self regulation
comes after coregulation.
Coregulation is that a parent in a normal
healthy relationship came in, and with your pride,
if you were upset,
they securely supported you. They held you. They
didn't dismiss how you felt. They didn't,
have
emotional state. They were able to to hold
that base for you, and most people haven't
had that experience in the anyway in my
work that I've I've realized.
So creating a home with you, your sense
of belonging and significance,
this is makes up the ummah. If each
of us work on our home, that's going
to have a,
a, a, a positive effect. People always talk
about what can I change? Where's my circle
of influence?
The most incredible and most important circle of
influence is in our homes. If we get
our homes fired, if we get our homes
where our children feel a sense of belonging
and security, if we are able to communicate
in a way that we don't feel threatened
by each other,
this is going to be the important
blueprint that our children go up with. You
know, I was talking to I was listening
to a brother last night, a sheikh, and
he's talking about that he grew up in
a foster home.
And, you know,
one of the things that even though it
was hard being because he grew up in
a foster home, he said one of the
best things that he was given was he
was given a a stepfather
whose blueprint was very honorable.
He'd go, he was responsible, get up every
morning, go to work, he'd come back, he
listened to him, he felt hurt. That wasn't
his biological father, but he had that,
connection to him and he had grew up
with his blueprint even when he grew up
in a foster home. So basically, the first
set of years of his life, he felt
some safety and security.
And he said because he saw a healthy
father,
because he saw and he witnessed
being raised by a healthy man,
he finds with his own sons now, he's
got a bit of a blueprint. He kinda
knows how do I how do I show
up? How do I, interact with them? And
so it's really important that
if you were not given
an emotional bond that really, sends a message
to you that you were loved and a
sense of belonging and security or because your
parents were dealing with other things, but that
you have to take responsibility now as an
adult, as not as a powerless little child.
And so what can I do now in
my relationships?
How do I wanna show up in my
relationships now, and how do I make them
secure and thriving and healthy?
Or maybe I've learned things that may not
be that healthy.
Some are the signs of a secure child.
And remember, this is very much the first
step in you. Whenever I have a mother
that comes to me when their children are
quite young, I get so happy. It's like
they're gonna learn the tools
to be that intergenerational
changer, to take what they have taken from
their culture and upbringing and bring the healthy
things forward, inshallah, moving forward.
So one big aspect as a child is
being able to seek comfort from from an
adult.
The adult is not so, is able to
hold that space with a secure base and
hold support that child.
Are able to prefer the parent over strangers.
You know?
When they have a problem, they're able to
come to the parent. They will communicate
that and come to the parent.
They're able to explore the environment. They feel
comfortable with exploring the environment. They're brought up
in such a way that they don't have
to
stress that,
my parents are going to lose it at
them every time I have an opinion or
or want to do something. They're allowed to
have some autonomy. They have that while they
respect their parent, they're allowed to have an
opinion, allowed to be seen and heard.
And the caregivers are able to self regulate.
They're able to,
really build that
relationship with them.
Children that have secure attachment, they grow up
to be less anxious. They grow up to
have less in general, they have, more secure
base. They trust in themselves.
They have less self doubt. They're less critical.
They're,
and this is this is a study that
has been done over and over again. These
studies have been done over and over again
about children that are brought up in secure
homes or in with a secure attachment
and how it impacts them.
And the beautiful thing is that your attachment
style can change. So if you're someone that
has looked at attachment
and you thought, oh, no. I don't have
a very secure attachment.
One of the beautiful things is that you
can actually build. You can then build a
secure attachment by first building yourself, building your
worthiness up,
working through, your co
regulation or your, self regulation. There are certain
things you can do so that you can
show up differently in your relationships that has
a very mirroring effect to humble love.
One of the big aspects of secure attachment
is a lot of children will go off
into adults that have more higher self esteem,
have more self worthiness.
They usually have an ability
to be more confident,
and higher interpersonal trust. Interpersonal trust is a
really important skill
because a lot of our children aren't learning
the proper interpersonal skills because they're stuck on
screen times. They're not you know, this is
not really connection. To a point, this is.
But the real connection is the face to
face interaction.
We we communicate 80% through body language.
And so we send messages to others. So
one important aspect of secure attachment is what
is the emotional message I'm sending over to
other people, to people around me?
And, you know, that could be so simple
as how do you look at your spouse
when they walk through the door?
What's the emotional message that you're sending to
them?
You know? What's the tension? I can remember
as a child, I knew my father was
angry because I knew just from the footsteps
of walking down the hallway.
It's like I knew because I was I
had to be hypervigilant around him. It's like,
yep. Bob is angry. Because I knew I
didn't have to see him. I could sense
it through his walk.
So certain things would pick up. And this
is really important because emotional safety
predesceives connection. If you don't have emotional safety,
you don't wanna connect. Your brain is wired
to protect yourself.
If you don't have emotional safety, you're gonna
take step back and say, you know what?
I'm not sure if I'm gonna be safe
and vulnerable with this person. I'm not sure
if I'm going to trust this person. I'm
not sure if I feel comfortable enough to
open up the parts of me that other
people don't see.
And so
and remembering that secure adult relationships
are built on trust and built on understanding
each other and appreciation.
So much aspects. I'm gonna go into what
are the key aspects of building a secure
adult relationship.
Please remember,
if you don't feel that you have certain
I go into them and you feel like,
Richard, I don't have some of these. I
don't have these aspects of my relationship. Know
that you have the ability now to take
responsibility
for your life
and to choose
your own happiness
because your partner is not there to give
you happiness. Your happiness comes from your own
thoughts and feelings and how you perceive things.
Remember,
one of the biggest aspects
of healing and growth and and building a
secure attachment
is,
your own self perception because you project with
your own self perception of all this stuff
behind you, your own emotional baggage, your own
beliefs that you grew up, the the
things that you were taught about other people,
other cultures,
the assumptions that you make up. You know?
All these things,
impact your perception. So a lot of the
time, you could be perceiving something, and it's
based on it's not actually based on the
truth. So example, you might get upset when
your,
husband doesn't wash the dishes,
or anyone whose husband washing the dishes,
Or your wife doesn't wash the dishes. Say
you ask them to wash the dishes. We
all the time, you've asked them to wash
the dishes, and they didn't do it. Right?
If you get you may have been triggered
not by the dishes not being washed, but
you may be triggered by the feeling or
the perception that you created about the dishes
not being washed, where it could be your
backstory is, I'll see. This is another example
when I'm not heard or not appreciated.
So we create stories back on our childhood
wounds because it may remind you when you
were a child and you experienced
a core emotional wound, such as abandonment
or or pain or betrayal or,
what's that about? Rejection. And then you and
then that comes up and shows up in
your adult relationships.
I had one sister I was working with,
and she'd always say, my husband would listen
to me. My husband would listen to me.
And what's really interesting when we unpacked her
story
about her husband listening to her, it was
actually when we unpacked it and I said,
explain to me how your husband listens
to how he is and what he does.
And she goes, he puts his face straight
and he looks at me and he really,
listens to me and even paraphrases back what
I'm trying to say, but I still don't
feel hurt.
And I said, you're projecting
your your wound onto him because he's showing
up, and he's saying I'm listening to you.
And he even clarifies me back to the
point he started saying, I don't feel safe
when I start to listen to you because
I know you're gonna attack me and say
that I'm not listening to you, but I
am listening to you. And it was coming
from her childhood trauma of her belief as
a child that she was,
she was not heard, that she didn't have
that sense of belonging and feeling. And we
worked on that. We worked on that so
she could understand, to stop projecting that onto
her husband, projecting that belief that he wasn't
listening to her when, in actual fact, he
was. It was just her emotional baggage from
her childhood that was coming into play. Now,
a lot of people don't like to hear
that, that I have to take
tango.
And so even
even in situations where there is abuse, where
there's manipulation,
where there is lying,
you are taking a role to teach that
person how they treat you.
And this is coming from a person that
was in a toxic relationship. This is coming
from a person that was in childhood trauma
because we send messages to people about our
worthiness,
about our boundary setting.
We we sit in victim victim
a victim place at times. And when you're
able to set and learn better healthy boundaries
to how to deal with something, then, of
course, some situations
are, you are no one's emotional punching bag.
You are no one's emotional punching bag. Let
me remind you that. When you learn the
value and the worthiness of who you are,
you can build better secure relationships. Could you
first and foremost
build a secure relationship better with yourself. And
second, and this is the most important, you
build your relationship and attachment to Allah
first and foremost.
Because Allah will never
ever leave you.
Allah will never abandon you. Allah will never
forsake them.
These relationships are also grotesque.
They are part of this.
They are part of the the scene that
Allah has created for us to get to
the ultimate goal.
And we live in a very individualistic
society.
We live in a society
that deems our mind, nafs, and my desires
come first.
But what Allah
has put in the Quran in Sunnah is
that our homes
are a place to raise up our children
in a healthy way.
Yet, unfortunately,
many of our homes are not healthy.
And so part of this is going through,
how do I create better
communication with my the people around me, particularly
husband and wife.
And for those of you who are single
mothers, those of you who have had divorcee,
this is great because you can build up
what you need to go into a better
situation.
And those of you who are in the
situation, if you're already in a family
and there are things not going right, this
is important
for you to address every avenue that you
can
relationship, to build that,
that that more marakaba, the build back the
marakaba for yourself, but build back that
balance of intimacy
and forgiveness and love and take responsibility
for how you impact that relationship.
Because the number one the number one aspect
that,
destroys or really threatens a relationship, and this
is one that is,
particularly
those who have a,
how do you call it? Those who have
a insecure attachment.
A lot of those who have, like, an
anxious insecure attachment, they're almost, like, always looking
for reassurance. They always want that validation from
their partner. They always want their partner to
make them feel happy. And it doesn't work.
That formula doesn't work. You have to build
your own security and happiness within you. So
for those that are experiencing
a,
one way or experiencing
and this happens a lot of anxious attachment
It's one way that you can destroy the
security of the relationship
is,
criticizing,
and that's very common. That's very common when
someone has an anxious attachment. They'll kind of
be critical
because
that they they become critical because they can't
clearly ask for their needs. It's hard for
them to ask for their needs, so sometimes
they can start to criticism
to to in a in a negative way
of trying to receive back the attention or
the need that they want.
And so
criticism, it comes with a defense ego. The
the ego wants to to protect itself. It
withdraws. It doesn't wanna be connected. Right? It
doesn't wanna feel connection. So a lot of
the time, it's knowing,
being able when you build a secure relationship
with security within yourself, You are being able
to
articulate,
this is my need.
Be clear. Clear is kind.
Clear is kind.
Instead of criticism,
silent treatment,
stonewalling,
oh, he should she or he should think,
think my mind, Or he or
she has I'm making bad assumptions about them.
So it's really important. And the other thing
that person's a relationship,
secure a relationship,
and and can really destroy talking about security
here. You don't have emotional security in your
relationship.
This is this is a really big red
flag. If your wife does not want to
sleep with you,
if you are in a situation where you
are both having silent treatment to each other,
one's going to the other,
or you're you're destroying the actual emotional vulnerability
and security that you have in that relationship.
And the biggest one, the way to do
it, is to is be straightaway going to
catastrophic thinking. Catastrophic extreme thinking is divorce thinking.
Sitting in divorce thinking over and over. Every
time you have because even securely secure
attached
couples
have arguments. They were human beings. There's no
perfect couple out there. Believe me, I've coached
800 women in the last 5 years,
and most a majority are going through something.
They're going through some struggle. When women come
to me,
90% of the time, when they come to
me with a problem with their child,
their child has anxiety. Their child has off
track behavior. Their child is playing up. Their
child is doing this. Their child's disrespectful.
When they come to me to work through
that as a parenting coach,
90% of the time, when we unearth and
we go deeper,
it's the relationship between husband and wife that's
impacting that child the most.
Because the child is a barometer
of the home.
The child is a thermometer
of what the home, the home environment,
the attention of the home, the experience of
the home.
And the biggest way that you can break
the emotional security
is by using threats of divorce. You know?
Oh, that's it. Or maybe we'll call it.
Or, you know,
I just can't stay like this anymore. Just
constantly going straight to that instead of having
the conflict resolution skills
and the communication
skills to work through. I truly believe this
is something that has not been taught at
school, yet it's so crucial.
It's so crucial that we have a healthy
way of learning how to express my needs
and to express myself without attack, without criticism,
without putting down.
This is one of the signs, you know,
of a hypocrite, is the person, he puts
the other person down when he's trying to
tell them how they feel or think. That's
not part of our deen. Our deen can
have very separate opinions about each other, but
we still maintain some level of respect because
this is another Muslim.
This soul of us is another Muslim. This
is another human being.
And this is so important because this is
the most important framework for our children, and
that's why so many of our children are
growing up into adults. And we hear this
from the kids. I work with children a
lot. And many don't wanna get mad
because they've witnessed what they've experienced in their
home.
And this sad reality has to change,
because then we have girls that will get
married later and later and avoid it.
And then we have boys
that don't have the skills, that haven't been
brought up as men to understand their position
and who they are in that family.
And also, many of them go up not
having that respect
towards women because they've seen their mother disrespect
it.
So with connection,
safety without safety, there's no connection.
You have to feel emotionally safe with someone
to connect to them. And without connection,
that's gonna cause,
a lack of hope.
It's gonna create a a an environment where
there's lack of hope.
So what's the sign for secure attachment?
What are the things that you wanna build
in you and your relationships to have a
more secure relationship?
Number 1 is having trust in relationships.
You have to trust yourself and trust the
other person.
You can't trust the other person and how
you're supposed to love them.
But, also, you have to trust yourself. So
many people, women I meet, are stuck in
self doubt.
They've lost the ability
to trust in their intuition. Allah
gave you a picture, an intuitive state, an
intuition, your GPS,
to guide you in situation.
To tell you, wait a minute. I'm being
in an emotional punching bag right here. That's
not really acceptable for me.
To really check-in with that, this is the
intuition to guide him. Allah gives you to
that. He gives you that to guide you.
The person with secure attachment is their honest
to each other. They're honest and straightforward and
good. There's no deception.
There's no lying, and there's definitely no manipulation.
This is so important.
Honest. Honest with myself
and honest with those around me. And this
is this is huge, because what happens is
and especially those of you who,
grew up with childhood trauma or childhood wounds
or childhood,
not the most ideal upbringing. Right?
And those of you who've gone into maybe
a marriage where it hasn't been, it's been
toxic
toxic elements or not healthy ways of communicating
and being with each other.
Then
we we create an emotional baggage, and it
has to be dealt with. It has to
be dealt with. Because if not, you're gonna
be holding on to all the the pitter
patter of the mean talk of other people's
opinions and beliefs, and you're you're living for
other people's validation,
and you're not building the worthiness of yourself.
Building a secure, worthy self is the number
one key,
and building your, worthiness as connection,
your first attachment,
these 2 together are the number one keys.
That's going to transform a relationship.
If the other person doesn't change over time,
then, alhamdulillah, you've done what you have done
in your capacity to show up with ihsan,
to show up with taqwa,
to show up in a more healthy way.
You've taken responsibility for your reaction. You've taken
responsibility
in how you how you show up in
that relationship.
So when you when you don't do the
the internal work, then if and say you're
in an abusive relationship or you're in a
relationship which is not ideal, you're gonna be
sitting in a place as a victim,
and you're gonna be blaming and staying in
shame
and and just staying in a place that
I'm not good enough and starting to default.
The number one thing that children default to
when they're in a home where they grew
up, where there is
dysfunctional elements around them, where things are not
healthy for them?
As an undeveloped brain, what do they do?
Does anyone know what they do?
What is the one thing the child does
when they're in a home
where they're going up and they're seeing that
chaos around them or seeing the parents fight?
What should they do? Can anyone
anyone say to me?
I can't see the q and a area.
Disappear in their mind.
Try to bring peace. Sometimes they go into
people pleasing.
There's one thing that a child will do.
This is shown over and over and over
again when they see that their parents are
fighting or their parents are upset with them.
They do act out. That's a behavior.
There's one particular thing that's shown over and
over that children will do to themselves
that comes into adults.
It comes into their interactions and their dynamics
as an adult.
Exactly. They blame themselves.
Yeah. They self blame.
This is the number one thing that a
child will do when they see. So example,
their their father. The father comes home, and
he's he's just been told off by his
boss. And he comes back into the house,
and he shouts at his son, his 4
year old son who wants to go up
to him and give Mahaba, and he shouts
at him. The brain of the 4 year
old doesn't understand
the dynamic of the father. He's angry because
the boss told him off, and he's come
back into the house. And now he's that
he's displaced anger in the wrong place on
his his sub audience, his family members.
That displays anger, which happens a lot, onto
the people that love and care for him.
The child only thinks there's something bad. I
did something bad. There's something wrong with me.
The child defaults back. There's one research done
here in Australia. It should be about 5
years ago with kindergarten children. That's about, like,
4 or 5. And they asked the children
if it's studied by Andrew,
I can't remember his last name, doctor Andrew.
But he took he basically did a study
with 1200,
kindergarten students. And he asked them, are they
good or are they bad?
And the 45 year olds, 75%
of them said, I'm bad.
They had already created a belief
from their home environment. Remember, these are the
first children coming out into the kindy, into
the into the school environment. So you can't
play to school. They come they're the product
of the home.
And they basically already established this building very
young that I was that.
And yet, subhanallah, our dean teaches us, let
them play.
Do not reprimand them. Be loving and merciful
to our young.
That first set of myths. Because if you're
not merciful to your young, they grow up
into adults that are emotionally unavailable.
They grow up into adults that are not
very nice. They grow up to adults that
don't have the interpersonal skills to handle other
people's emotional states.
They go up into adults that push away
and create distance and disconnection
when the other person really wants connection,
2 two two backs to each other when
actually it wants to be like this. Because
isn't that what it is, a garment?
Isn't that what it's meant to be, a
connection of love?
And the thing is, you could sit here
and you could say, this is not working
in my marriage.
But what about if I said to you,
have you exhausted every avenue? Have you really
looked at what can I do
to change with the for the pleasure of
Allah's father,
to change the dynamic in this relationship?
And believe me, you may do everything possible
for all its pleasure,
and you may have to decide that's it
and walk away.
But I'm saying to you, what can you
do still if you're in that marriage and
you have children, you're raising those children?
And I won't even go about the long
term repercussions of divorce then, because that's the
tomorrow. That's another talk.
But really looking at how can I look
for win win solutions in here? One of
the number of things that destroys secure attachment,
secure relationships is the labels we assign and
put onto others.
It's the labels that we go and put
onto other people. My husband's this.
My wife's this. My ex husband's this.
My son is this.
These labels
will create a self perception where you will
only see the negative label that you have
put onto that childlike person,
and you won't see who they are,
all the goodness in them. It's almost like
a narrow view where you'll just look at
things that you're unhappy about them or you're
ungrateful about them or things that you see
that they're doing wrong, you're not also seeing.
And I'm not condoning you to be condoning
you to accept abuse. Abuse is abuse. It's
not part of that thing. You are no
one's emotional punching bag. Love is not meant
to be harmful.
But, you know, said,
going back to that criticism,
said I think he was giving,
he was giving advice to a person about
who wanted to divorce, and he asked him
why do you want a divorce. And he
said,
because I don't love her.
And he said, does every home have to
have love? What about
appreciation
and loyalty?
Appreciation
and loyalty.
Think about how much you show appreciation to
your partner.
How many times do you show it actively
in front of your children appreciation
for the food that's cooked
or for the work that he's done?
Well, how often have you shown that appreciation,
that gratefulness, that gratitude, that,
I have someone here that does come into
my home,
that that Allah has put us together for
some reason, and show see they see they're
good.
Or how many times you're stuck in
unappreciation.
I was talking to her sister 2 weeks
ago. She was being back divorced
and and started talking about why she wanted
a divorce, and I couldn't pinpoint something. At
the end, I said to her, since I
can't find something that he's done, but do
you feel you really have a reason for
divorce? She's like, not really. I said, do
you have something to go to check? I
said that, you know, I I can go
for divorce.
And she said, no. Not really. I said,
he sounds like a good guy. And she's
like, yeah. She's I said, you're saying you're
upsetting him you're upsetting him because he is
not giving you compliments, but when's the last
time you showed appreciation to him? In fact,
I haven't. I'm waiting for him.
I'm waiting for him.
Stop waiting for the other person.
Step up and look for something. You got
this list. Those of you who have this
beautiful list of, like, 10, 20 things that's
wrong with him or wrong with her,
Look for her for his
good.
Look for his or her good. Because guess
what?
It may look like that watering the grass,
is green on the other side. But I
tell you
that watering your own grass is gonna get
nice and green and lush and thriving
if you focus on that.
Our biggest
pandemic in Western Sydney right now is divorce
because everyone thinks that the grass is green
on the other side. I know because they're
coming and talking to me. I I coach
these women.
And I'm telling you how many times when
they realize that it's actually when I I
blow that bubble. No. It's actually harder for
your children.
If you are in a relationship
where there is
some signs of secure attachment or you have
the ability to create more secure attachment, secure
thriving home, then that is obligatory on you
to do that.
That's Amana on you. That's entrust on you,
Not to avoid and run away,
but to come back. And what can I
do to repair?
Repair is incredible.
The important in any secure attachment.
The ability
to be able to
ask for repair and to repair when you've
done wrong. So basically, if you've got repair,
think about it as a bridge, and then
there's a break in the bridge.
You're repairing. You have to do repair.
You have to apologize when you've done something
wrong. You have to acknowledge, not allow the
ego
to sit there and kind of hold back
and say, no. I'm not I'm not it's
not my fault. I don't go through all.
I don't do anything wrong.
Like, we have to also acknowledge when we've
done something that may not be
healthy or not or might not be right
and and and really hold ourselves accountable to
that to build that. We don't trigger that
abandonment
wound in our partner or that rejection wound
in our partner
is building the repair,
building that that connection to each other.
Repair is so important because repair builds that
secure attachment.
Securely
attached adults apologize to each other when they've
done something wrong. They they they make a
real effort to grow and change.
They take responsibility.
If you're someone that keeps hearing your partner
saying, I want you to step up in
this area, you start to listen.
Women want men that step up and
and and and lead them.
They want men that have a vision for
the family.
They want men that make mature with them,
that talk to them, that open up to
them, that are vulnerable to them, that cry
with them.
This is this is this is creating that
feeling of safety within the home.
Your children need that. They your children need
to see that my parents
are on the same plate, that they work
together, not against each other. Your home isn't
Tom and Jerry.
No Tom and Jerry, the cartoon?
Your home isn't Tom and Jerry. Your home
is a place that you can create.
With everything that's going on, you can create
that tranquility, that inner sanctuary, but it's not
going to happen until you create that within
here.
You have to feel the tranquility
and the sanctuary within yourself.
If not, you're going to end up resentful.
You're going to end up holding scores on
each other. You're gonna be creating silent treatment.
Silent treatment is an inability
to have good conflict resolution skills
to deal with a situation.
A feeling of safety, building that safety
and creating,
trusting healthy people.
For you to build a healthy relationship, you
have to
trust in yourself and trust in others.
I just wanna gauge right now.
I'm almost finished, but I wanna gauge what
is coming up for people. What's what's
what's the
I'll have a look at questions in a
second. But what's coming up for you? What's
your I have a quick takeaway when you
think about, you know, secure attachment.
And I haven't talked about signs of insecure
attachment because that's a whole I teach that
a whole program, how to fix insecure attention,
how to build that. But I'm just making
more aware of what are the things that
you're doing that could cause a threat to
your own relationship.
And most of this comes from childhood conditioning,
but also comes from not being consciously aware,
being aware of yourself, how the impact of
your words and actions impact others. That's probably
one of the biggest skills I teach my
boys, is how does your action
impact the people around you when you say
what you do? That's the groundwork.
How
does one move from avoidance attachment to secure
attachment? Ah, there's there's so much in avoidance
attachment
of how to move from avoidance attachment to
secure attachment. But the biggest aspects of which
you have an avoidance attachment, which is basically,
you're more emotionally unavailable or you create connect
disconnect
emotionally. You learn. That's a pattern of behavior
you've learned. It's a humbler. You can build
a more secure attachment.
And and that,
what do you call it?
It's important to acknowledge
that you you have to work on being
feeling safe within your own emotional needs. Because
a lot of time, avoidance attachment,
you learned as a child that my emotions
are ignored or I need to be myself
or emotions were too much. Maybe you're in
a very chaotic environment or very emotionally charged
or you got a message in young that
you weren't allowed to cry. You weren't allowed
to have feelings. You had to man up.
And so you learn to suppress that part
of you. Yeah. Controlling environment. Yes. So it's
learning. Now as an adult, you're relearning. Subhanallah,
alaikhanallah, gave us the ability, neuroplasticity,
to rewire the brain, to teach, to learn.
As you learn more of these things, you
become more aware. Now I have women that
work with me for 6 months. By the
time they finish, they're like they were very
avoidant attachment or very especially with their children,
particularly with their children. And then they've become
more securely attached. They've learned that connection of
vulnerability
is safe.
And that takes time. It takes some time
to find out people to learn it straight
away. They're able to change that. Just but
you first have to be consciously aware that
I have learned that
dismissing my emotions, distancing other people's emotions, not
being emotionally connected, distancing myself is the best
way to deal with things, and it isn't.
So keeping your avoidance attachment is slowly learning
to engage.
And when you start to feel heightened emotionally
or wanna distance yourself, acknowledge that to your
partner. So I'm not feeling so comfortable right
now to have this conversation. I'm trying to
feel betrayed. Can we do this when I
feel I feel better or I feel able
to, because your your voucher will be polite.
We're kinda like, I don't wanna deal with
this. I'm pushing this emotion emotion away. And
avoids the attachment
creates a lot of,
a lot of for the other person, it
creates this feeling of, like, I'm being rejected
because they don't feel comfortable to sit in
the emotions. Not comfortable
to to,
not very in tune to what your body
needs.
So instead what you'll you'll go to will
be that this is flight response. I just
wanna get out of here. I'm not dealing
with this emotional thing. So part of it
is you learning
how to learning the skills of regulation,
regulating your own emotional
state,
being doing those check ins with your body,
checking in with your body. Okay. So what's
going on for me?
Am I in a grounded state? Am I
feeling grounded? Am I feeling more relaxed?
Am I starting to be more discomfort and
feel like I need to be able to
fight or fight or freeze, like, to shut
down and not deal with this? Or am
I in,
like, a,
really triggered where I just need to run
or I need to attack
or I need to just shut this person
away? When you're here, that's gonna cause emotional
disconnect.
And building secure attachment is also learning,
I can change my attachment style and be
more secure. Slowly allowing yourself
to accept
and be safe in that discussion.
Because we send off signs thinking this isn't
correct or this is unsafe.
So it's it's it's many things. A lot
of the time, it's also
working to set your boundary of when you
normally cut that person off
and when you would instead
learn that I don't wanna cut this person
off to sit and walk away. What can
I do to be allow myself a bit
more safe space here?
So I'm quickly looking at chat. Is there
a mix of action for void and insecure
attachment? So, basically, we have we're brought up
with, 4 attachment styles.
The sorry. We're not brought up. We have
4 attachment styles. So we have the,
secure attachment,
and then we have 3 types of insecure
attachment. So most people understand that they have
if they've researched a little bit, as babies,
you basically, in the 1st 2 years of
life, either had a very secure attachment with
your parent or you felt very, loved and
connected and a lot of trust, or you
had an insecure avoidance attachment,
or you had an,
insecure disorganized
attachment, this is where a lot of abuse
would have happened, or you had a disorganized
resistant,
which is more anxious attachment.
So we we you can have elements, but
you're more likely see, remember,
your relationship with different people may have a
different attachment style. Example, I have a very
secure attachment with my mother. I have a
very, disinsecure attachment with my father
till this day because of my childhood upbringing.
So we can have secure attachment to certain
people and insecure attachment to other people.
The key thing is is don't get too
stuck in the label. This is really, really
important.
Don't get too stuck. Oh, no. I'm avoidance
attachment. I criticize a lot. I do this.
I do that. Oh my god. I'm I'm
avoidant.
And that's why I specifically don't wanna go
too into the attachment
itself, because, people then get preoccupied
with that. So example, anxious attachment are very
preoccupied with their relationships. They want constant check
ins. They get anxious
if the person didn't call them back by
a certain time. They're they're in a more
anxious state. They want lots of reassurance.
And it's
they find it hard to tell their needs
directly. These are just some assumptions that they
made around attachment.
The thing is, don't get so stuck in
the label.
Because when you just understand, okay. I understand
I have an insecure attachment. Whether that's avoidance,
whether that's insecure, whether that's disorganized,
what can I do now to create emotional
safety
and security for myself
and the person that I'm with and the
people around me, my children and my partner?
And and the second part, which is the
most beautiful part about our deen. Remember, when
they teach resilience in short term this is
coming from me as a child psychology background,
right, and Islamic psychology. You know the number
one thing they say is the most resilient
factor for any child? Remember, for those of
you who have trouble, trauma, or dysfunctional families,
this this is the most beautiful gift that
Ola Sangala gave you that created you to
bounce back, to jump up, to have that
psychological grit,
is resilience.
Allah gave you resilience, and the number one
factor in all the studies, whether it's non
Muslim studies or Muslim studies, is faith.
Faith, our kawakkal, our reliance, our trust in
Allah is the most resilient
protective factor
in any relationship, in ourselves.
The building forget about insecure relationships.
Building your secure base back here, your connection
back to our fine color, and learning that
certain tools that bring back security to yourself,
you'll see then you'll show up in your
relationships
differently.
You'll show up in a more secure base
in your relationships.
I've got 2 questions here. I'm just gonna
quickly answer them. I feel like I have
a fear of men. I'm in my late
twenties, and I've recently started to think about
marriage. I had one marriage meeting. I intentionally
ruined the meeting because I thought it will
be better for me to let myself down
than another man. Regret it now because I
think he was a good man. Any advice?
You so have to read my book. I've
done a whole chapter
on coming from a place of fearing men
and going to,
a place of,
how do you call it?
Going from a place of fearing men and
going up fearing men and going to a
place of more secure,
understanding
of men. This is an excellent question, Sis,
and so many people so many women have
this fear around men. Definitely, you are gonna
subconsciously
self sabotage that relationship
because you are,
already you're coming from a place of fear.
So I really advise you to start the
internal healing work. Get a mentor. Get a
coach.
A program that's actually gonna meet your need
to learn,
how to perceive things differently. You need to
unpack some of the beliefs that you may
have carried around men.
And because you're going to show up in
a way that you're just gonna be sharing
showing up in the place of fear, but
you're also gonna show up in a place
where you attract men who kind of pick
up that kind of victim side of you,
that fear side. You wanna build up your
feminine
confidence.
And so there are certain things that you
need to do to do to do that.
So I really encourage you to start doing
the internal work, the inner work that's gonna
help you to thrive and feel confident inside
and have a different perception of them.
This is such an important topic that you
just mentioned.
I just looked in the chat.
Question.
Comment. I've learned that most of our feelings
are based on our thinking. I'm learning to
manage my expectations
and ask about everything, feeling love, feeling, correction.
Definitely, we feel our thoughts.
We feel our thoughts. So that this this
is a huge aspect of when you're learning
to deal with relationships, is understanding, what am
I feeling and thinking right now? What am
I because a lot of times, it's a
story that we create in our head that
we're projecting onto the other person, that we're
perceiving
them in a negative light. So being very
aware of your thoughts is very important in
relationships. It's being aware, what am I
criticizing or thinking bad or negatively
or assuming here that may not be actually
correct? And that's why checking in, communicating,
not making those assumptions and sitting in that
place of you could create a whole
train road of of of negative thinking that
actually impacts the relationship
with your thoughts, your mindset, and huge impact
on on feeling your thoughts and understanding the
psychology of how you think, it's only impact
everything that you perceive in life.
I just got one more question here.
Is it when is it okay to get
out of a relationship with a man? When
is it okay to get out of a
relationship with a man? Generally, women is advised
to live in relationships physically abusive.
Okay. This is, an interesting
question.
Okay. So one of the key aspects when
you know, I talked a bit of what
builds a secure attachment, a sense of belonging,
trusting each other,
looking after each other, you know, having that
security,
feeling emotionally secure.
If you don't feel emotionally secure in your
relationship, if there is psychological abuse,
if there is emotional abuse,
if there's manipulation, if there's put downs,
And a lot of men experience that. They
get even
alienated
from other women in their lives because
their wife has insecurities
and so she needs to hold him in
a certain place or to make herself feel
better because she or she needs to take
on a bit of a leadership or control.
And I'm sorry to say this is this,
too many women I see in my coaching
are trying to take the control,
and it doesn't work. There is a reason
that we are given certain roles
in the relationship, letting the husband be,
the Kiama, the leader,
and the woman be in a situation
where she she,
seeks advice from him and she gives advice
to him, and there is that. But remembering,
he still has. Allah has given him
some honor. And I'm not talking about abusive
relationships here.
I'm not talking about abusive relationships. I'm talking
about relationships that have some elements of health.
But as to your question, yes, fathers do
experience it. Others do experience it. Sisters have
said that to me.
My husband's a good man. I really I'm
really critical of it. I always put him
down.
So I'm saying this is for both of
us. We have to work on both of
this because that's definitely gonna cause an insecure
relationship.
I would really encourage
in a situation where
there is,
abuse in a relationship. It's
are you 2 things, and I wanna end
off here because we're almost at the end.
Yes.
2 things.
Does the person have the perception taking skills
to understand your separate reality, your opinion, your
your
need in the marriage, or they're gonna dismiss
it and overlook it?
That's number 1. If that person is not
willing to see your side, to be open
to change, to understand the impact of their
actions on the other person
Because people can change. People can learn to
stop doing certain habits. They may have learned
from their childhood. Many many women learnt to
see their fathers criticise their mother, so they
sort of went into their muscular and thought
that's what they need to do.
So definitely, there is hope and that things
can change and opening that discussion and talking
about that.
And the second thing is,
you seeking support.
You getting the support to get the clarity.
Is this something that I I still wanna
be here for my children, but what can
I do to make this emotional more safer
in child?
I've tried to encapsulate a little bit of
what secure attachment is. It's hard to do
in such a short time.
But I hope
that knowing that building that secure yourself
and your relationship with Allah and building your
own secure yourself, your own self acceptance,
your own worthiness,
your own repair, your own regulation. Each 2
are gonna be important ingredients, inshallah, to build
that secure relationship, inshallah.
Inshallah. Any benefit that comes from a lot
of time of color? If you wanna catch
me, I am Khadija Alcatel. You can get
me on Instagram. And I do have a
free,
I'm not sure if it's been put into
the link, a free, PDF
about building a secure relationship in a to
build a secure,
sorry, building a secure self in a secure
relationship in.
Okay, everyone?
That was brilliant. Masha'Allah.
Really, really
thought provoking,
informative,
and
the, comments in YouTube have been really great.
For
your time. Guys, the link will be sent
to your email for the VIPs. And for
those of you listening, the link is in
the description. Okay? So download sister Khadija's free
ebook from the link in the description, bi
idhnillah,
and follow her on social media and continue
to benefit from her knowledge.
We will see you in the next session
which is in about an hour's time. Assalamu
alaikum