Sarah Sultan – Trauma 06 Everything Is Fallling Apart

			Bismillah wa Salatu was Salam ala Rasulillah, Juana Ali, he was heavy on Manuela, and my bad Santa
Monica Monica was all over again to this a surah assault. I'm here with European Institute. And
today I'd like to speak with you a little bit about a thought that commonly plagues us when we go
through difficult situations in our lives, especially during a sudden type of catastrophe. And that
thought is, everything in my life is falling apart, it just seems like there's just nothing good
left in my life. When we go through situations that are sudden, and propose a sudden change in our
lives when especially when it's a negative change, then being able to go with that and move forward
		

			from that is really difficult because our life seems on unrealistic, unmanageable, on,
unrecognizable, not familiar anymore. And we ourselves also feel like we've changed tremendously
from it. So we can almost not even recognize ourselves in this process. And what often happens is
that when things change, so suddenly, things seems so far out of our control. And there are certain
situations in our lives that we know we can't control. And when those kinds of things happen, we can
really feel powerless, helpless, or hopeless. And these are all really natural responses in
situations like that. And what happens is that our thoughts then start to take a negative negative
		

			turn, where we might start to see scary things on every corner, right? And we start to look for all
of the negatives, and all of the potential shortcomings in our lives and within ourselves. And this
is a cognitive distortion called magnification and minimization. And cognitive cognitive distortions
are simply unhealthy thought patterns that we tend to experience. And magnification minimization, is
one of the most common ones and even people in healthy times of their lives. And even people with
pretty healthy thinking patterns tend to experience this magnification is basically where it's like
you put on glasses, that start to make that kind of putting a zoom button in your life for all of
		

			the negative things, right? So you zoom into, and you magnify all of the bad or negative things in
your life. And minimization is opposite, where it's like you're putting on glasses that minimize all
of the positives in your life and in yourself, right and in your relationships in general. And so
what happens with these with this particular thought pattern is it leads us to a negative emotional
impact, even our physical health can suffer from this, and also our spiritual health in terms of our
relationship with ls Pat data, when we magnify all of the things that are lacking in our lives, or
all of the negative situations that are in our lives, and we minimize all of the blessings in our
		

			lives, then that's naturally going to impact the way that we think about all this data. So you might
be experiencing thoughts like, I just can't handle this. It's just too much to deal with. Or Allah
Subhana. Allah promised me It promised me ease but all I see is hardship after hardship. What am I
supposed to do with this? Right? One of the things to be aware of when it comes to the cognitive
distortion of magnification and minimization, is that it leads to something called a self defeating
cycle, where when our thoughts are negative, it impacts our emotions negatively, which then impacts
our actions and our behaviors negatively which has negative consequences across the board. So for
		

			example, if we're thinking why has Allah's pancetta denied me blessings, why has he decided to put
me through all of these hardships, and I have nothing good in left in my life, right? That negative
thought process will lead to the thought of, well, if no matter what I do, nothing is going to
change, then it leads to that feeling of helplessness and powerlessness, which naturally leads to
the action of doing nothing, right. And so we stay in the same negative space, which leads us to
isolate ourselves from people in our lives, which leads us to forego putting forth effort to improve
our lives and also starts to impact our ability to get closer to Allah subhanaw taala. Because we
		

			just we give up, right? Why are we going to make.if We don't think that they're going to be
fulfilled, or they're going to do nothing, right. So one practical tip to try to change this thought
process is an activity that I call pixel versus big picture. So if you imagine on your computer
screen that you're looking at a picture of a scene, right? And you press the zoom button over and
over and over and over again, until you're just looking at one pixel on this picture. Then it
doesn't look like anything at all right? You're just focusing in on one small small component of it,
and then now you've lost the big picture. You can't even you can't see it at all. And what we do is
		

			then we zoom out and then we can see the big picture
		

			again. So try this in your life where what is the pixel that you're focusing in on in your life,
that negative event, that negative part of your life, that's just plaguing your thoughts over and
over again. And now try to zoom out. And when you look at the big picture, what blessings do you
have that are still in existence in your life. So if you move away from that pixel, all of the other
pixels in your life start to make a picture. That's a lot less magnification of the negatives and
minimization of the positives but something a lot more realistic, and that can be very helpful in
trying to come to overcome this cognitive distortion. If you'd like to learn more about this
		

			cognitive distortion, the negative thought pattern of magnification and minimization and how it
applies to your life, practical tips and more self awareness to be able to overcome it. And make
sure to check out the next installment of the Your Lord has not forsaken you series on European
Institute's website to second love it