Sarah Sultan – Trauma 10 What Did I Do To Deserver This

			Bismillah wa salatu salam ala Rasulillah while and he was happy to Manuela and my bad Santa Monica
want to have a low but okay to this is sort of Sultan here with European Institute to speak with you
a little bit on one of the common thoughts that we tend to struggle with when we're going through
something really difficult in our lives something that we might perceive as a catastrophe or a
tragedy that might lead us to struggle in our faith with Allah Subhana Allah. And that thought is
Why do bad things happen to good people. And this is a thought that across the board, people of
faith have often struggled with when they go through difficult times. Whenever we go through a type
		

			of trauma, trauma always involves some sort of loss, whether it's the loss of somebody we love,
whether it's the loss of a job, the loss of a marriage, or even the loss of something intangible,
meaning the loss of a dream that you might have thought that your life would have looked like, but
now it's turning out, it doesn't look anything like that, and having to come to terms with the new
reality, which can be really difficult. Whenever we're trying to come to terms with a new reality in
our lives. One of the things that we tend to struggle with our negative thoughts, such as it's
always going to be hard, my life is never going to get better, no matter what I do, I'm going to
		

			fail. And we tend to have this really negative perception of our future, or the idea of this person
is always going to hurt me, or why do people always try to why do people always tend to mistreat me?
Right? So there's always a negative perception, this is something called jumping to conclusions.
jumping to conclusions is falls under two different categories. One is mind reading, where we
imagine that we know what a person is thinking. And there's always negative, we imagine, we know
that the person who's looking at us is criticizing us inside their mind. And then there's fortune
telling, which is imagining that we can predict the future, in terms of I know that, if I even
		

			bother trying this, it's going to fail anyway, so why bother trying? Right? So fortune telling and
mind reading are a form of jumping to conclusions where we imagine that we know what a person is
thinking, or we imagine we know what's going to happen. Even though rationally, we know we don't. We
know we don't know these things. But Emotionally, it feels very realistic and factual. And that can
be really painful. Whenever we imagine that everything that surrounding us in our life is coming
from a negative perspective, one thing to be aware of is that this thought pattern of jumping to
conclusions can also really impact our relationship with Allah subhanaw taala. And the way that we
		

			see him as human beings, we tend to search for meaning in our lives. When something happens that we
can't predict, we search for a predictable reason to understand why it's happened, right? So when we
ask why do bad things happen to good people, we might seek the explanation of Well, bad things don't
happen to good people, bad things happen to bad people, right? But that's not realistic. So a
thought pattern that you might see in a really tragic situation is for example, if you know someone
or if you yourself have ever experienced a miscarriage, then somebody might think to themselves, why
would Allah Subhana Allah test me in this way? What what does this mean? And so the explanation that
		

			comes to her mind might be, he must think I'm unworthy to be a mother. Right? So it's mind reading,
even in our relationship with Allah subhanaw taala. And if we believe that, well, I'm unworthy to be
a mother, then she might then start to think, well, since I'm unworthy, then it'll never happen.
I'll never have a child. And that's fortune telling. That's imagining that you know what the future
holds, right? We don't think about these things as I'm telling the future or I'm reading Allah's
past that as mind of course not. But this is what we deal with emotionally, when we're going through
the cognitive distortion of jumping to conclusions. So I wanted to give you one practical tip, to be
		

			able to address a situation where you might be struggling with this cognitive distortion.
		

			Whenever we go through difficult situations in our lives, when they're unpredictable, when they're
out of our control, we can feel helpless. But one thing that's really important to realize is that
we always have some control, we always have a choice. We don't have a choice about whether the test
comes our way. But we always have a choice in terms of how we choose to deal with that test. So for
example, if someone has lost their job, their company has downsized. They can't control the fact
that they've lost their job, but they can control how they respond to that situation. They can
control whether they call up their boss and start yelling and burn that bridge, or whether they try
		

			to maintain a working relationship so that they can have a reference for their next job. They can
control whether they choose to stay in bed all day because they're feeling so down about the fact
that they've lost their job, or whether they're going to try and start applying to new jobs and have
hope that there's something better out there for them and chulmleigh So when we are
		

			able to conquer this cognitive distortion of jumping to conclusions, then we choose hope instead of
hopelessness. And that's something that can be really empowering in our lives. If you'd like to
learn more about the cognitive distortion of jumping to conclusions and more on how you can break
this cycle and this pattern in your own life, then please check out the new article in the series.
Have your Lord has not forsaken you on the clean Institute's website to second law fighter