Tag: self-worth

  • The Fragility of Trust

    A question I received from a friend this morning coincided with something I was considering yesterday. I wondered why it’s sometimes easy to trust, and at other times it’s nearly impossible. Why does it seem so easy for some to walk away from depression, while others are haunted with it for most of their lives? In fact, why is depression so closely linked to issues of trust and betrayal?

    I think that sometimes it’s a balance we have to strike between wanting to trust, and not caring about the potential of betrayal. At some point we will accept that there’s a certain amount of risk we’re willing to take because we’re confident enough to deal with the consequences of a potential breach of that trust. So the reality is that we trust more easily when we have a greater sense of self, or perhaps a greater level of confidence in our ability to be resilient in the face of betrayal. Unfortunately the very nature of the issue drives us to defend or protect our fragility and vulnerability in the aftermath of betrayal, and quite quickly, without noticing, we end up stuck in that cycle not realising that we’re only as vulnerable or as fragile as our ability to rise above it.

    I’ve previously said that a healthy self-esteem is the greatest gift any parent can give their child. That self-esteem must inform the way they view themselves, their choices, and the associated outcomes. It must teach them that no matter what bad things may happen to them in life, the only part of the encounter that defines them is how they chose to respond, and never what was presented. The power of choice, and more importantly, the realisation of that power of choice, is the key to unlocking our resilience. But resilience, like happiness and humility, are only end states, but not a skill or trait in itself. Our belief in our own principles and convictions, and our courage to stand up for it in the face of ridicule is what determines (in part) our level of resilience.

    Unless we believe in ourselves, we’ll find it impossible to believe in anyone else, and by extension, it will be impossible to trust. Under such circumstances, it’s easy to confuse a hopeless surrender and dependence on others as trust. When we undermine ourselves, we empower our enemies, and like they say, the friend of my enemy is my enemy. So it stands to reason that that is how we become our own worst enemies.

  • Another Anon but same OCD…

    I have to wash my hands sticf´tfully and sometime more than two times and it injures my skin. If I take a shower I don’t really feel the need to be strict with my body but my hands always have to be clean. Or if I feel like something that touched my pubic area(awra) I feel like crazy washing that part. I just feel very impure and non of my deeds will be accepted. And yes I am wasting so much soap. I don’t know you said find the reason and I tried – part 2;

    Continued…SO I thought about my past and I found out that I was masturbating without knowing that it is wrong. When I got a guilty feeling after some time after doing such stuff I told my mom and she got mad at me. And since then it is a BIG NO NO for me. And since I did it with my hands they got kind of “ugly and impure”. I never touched my down there even if it was for cleaning purpose I would wear gloves and what not. But I try to learn that my body isn’t something impure. I am a teenager now and I got a boyfriend, I regret it and I didn’t have sex or anything I broke up befor but he was very sexually, like his jokes and stuff. And I didn’t have the power to say stop it. But one day I did and blaah. But now I felt like because of my loneliness that I have to masturbate. I did it without knowing. It just happened. And I got a feeling and I was WTH was that. And I just did it till one told me that you have to do ghusl. Soo.. this plus my OCD is freaking me out. I am loosing my self trust I start to question everything. Did you reallllyy wash that part, did you wash your mouth did you do it 3 times. And it is just exhausting. So I kind of got addicted to masturbating but I have to take ghusl after it but I can’t. Actually I do now since I know but it is like going through hell. Why do I have to masturbate? I have to think on sexual stuff all the time. I can’t controle it anymore. I just don’t want to do anything else than sex… it’s so embarrassing I don’t know what to do

    Assalaamu Alaykum,

    For starters, I would set the labels aside. OCD, although it may be a fairly good description of the behavioural tendencies you’re feeling about cleaning yourself, has such a huge stigma attached to it that without realising it, you end up trying to deal with the stigma more than you’re dealing with the actual problem. The real issue is what is driving you to feel so dirty or impure, and secondly, why the need to pleasure yourself as often as you do.

     

    I’m not going to go into the issue of labels again, because I think I’ve debated it ad nauseum recently, so having said all that, I think you need to start by accepting that the past is the past. Whatever you did then is done and cannot be undone. So rather than reminding yourself about past mistakes, limit yourself to referring to the past only to explain present behaviour, but not to undermine what good you may have achieved since then. And more importantly, accept that your duas for forgiveness have been accepted and trust in Allah’s mercy. Doubts around that are only encouraged by Shaytaan because that’s his way of convincing you to feel helpless which makes you do things to distract yourself from the guilt or persist in what you’re doing because you don’t see the point in stopping.

    The positive thread through all of this is that you appear to be genuinely concerned about changing the behaviour that is proving to be destructive for you, so that’s a good starting point. The problem with attaching negative labels to yourself is that it makes you feel inherently unworthy. In your case, that appears to be triggering a vicious cycle because you feel dirty, you try to clean, you touch yourself to clean and then get drawn into pleasuring yourself, which results in the guilt, which results in you trying to clean yourself excessively, which is leading to physical harm to your skin, etc. The cycle needs to be broken, but that’s always easier said than done.

    The sense I’m getting is that there is a low self-worth underlying both issues, i.e. the ‘OCD’ as well as the masturbation. If you’re feeling disgusted about yourself for whatever reason, it would stand to reason then that you would not be able to imagine yourself as being attractive to anyone else (or at least not anyone that you would want to find you attractive), so automatically that would lead you sub-consciously to want to ‘take care of yourself’ since it’s unlikely that anyone else will want to take care of you that way. However, you’re also committed to your moral obligations, which leads to the guilt associated with doing what you’re doing, so that just adds to the vicious cycle.

    To break it, I think you need to consider a dual approach. Firstly, you need to identify what are the ideal circumstances under which you are able to masturbate without fear of being caught. You’ll probably be able to find some helpful ideas and information here about ways to break the habit. In fact, read through some of the posts relating to masturbation on that site and you’ll realise that firstly, you’re not alone in this, and secondly, it is possible to break the cycle.

    The problems you’re facing with excessively cleaning or washing yourself needs to be dealt with slightly differently. You’re doubting whether or not you cleaned a certain part of your body already, which suggests that there is again a lack of confidence or self-worth, hence you doubting yourself so easily; and secondly, you need to establish a fixed routine about how you go about bathing, or making ghusl. What I mean is, if you fix a routine that says that you’ll start with your hair, then wash your face, then your ears, then your arms, etc. and you ensure that you follow exactly that routine every single time, you’ll have less reason to wonder whether you cleaned a certain part already or not. Another option is to not rinse the soap off any part until you’re completely done. That way, if it’s still soapy, you know you already cleaned it.

    Insha-Allah as it becomes habit/routine, the confidence will improve and the self-doubt will decline, which will allow you to assume a more flexible routine around cleansing yourself. If you want to discuss this in more detail, please email me directly. You’ll find my email address on my homepage. I hope this helps, and please don’t hesitate to discuss this further with me or my wife, if you’ll feel more comfortable going into more detail with her.

    Insha-Allah you’ll overcome this and realise that your shortcomings do not define who you are, how you deal with them is what determines your character and your self-worth.

  • Dress your soul in modesty and wear your spirit with confidence

    Cynically Jaded (via cynicallyjaded)

  • Random thoughts about people and me

    I’ve often felt like life was a losing battle. No matter how often I would extend myself to those that I accepted as significant in my life, I found myself grovelling rather than being appreciated. Grovelling for attention or reciprocation that is. The more I extended myself, the less I was appreciated, which in some twisted way actually makes sense.

    We take for granted that which is most readily available. We only appreciate and nurture things that we realise are precious and hard to come by. Otherwise we kick into consumerism mode and forget about the blessings at hand (I hate the fact that I can’t even use the word ‘blessings’ and similar words without feeling like I’m being a religious zealot simply because of all the scripture-thumpers out there).

    Anyway, at the risk of sounding cryptic, I think that focusing on the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of ourselves is more important than focusing on external factors that we cannot control. What I mean is the ‘what’ should be our decision about what is or isn’t truly important in the bigger scheme of our own lives, right? While the ‘how’ is our decision regarding how we choose to accept or achieve how the ‘what’ plays out in our lives.

    I guess what I’m trying to say is that if the focus is on making conscious decisions regarding what affects us, and learning to accept the things we cannot influence about the behaviours and decisions of others, we’ll find ourselves less often in a position to be trampled upon or taken for granted. This approach, whilst it took forever to realise, has worked well for me. At times it threatened to isolate me from people that I wasn’t willing to let go of, but it also made me realise that if I was significant at all to them, they would realise the potential loss and do something about it to avoid the rift from happening.

    But the devil in all this is our often low self-esteem. When we assume that we’re not worth the effort, we become victims and martyrs to situations and desires that we believe we will never acquire for ourselves unless we sacrifice ourselves in the process. It’s a self-fulfilled unfulfilling prophecy. And if this is still sounding cryptic, it’s because that’s how life is. It’s the biggest puzzle we’ll ever try to assemble, which reminds me that the best way to build one of those massive 5000 piece puzzles is to start from the outside and work your way in. I think the same is true with life. We need to start by determining what our boundaries are, what we’re willing to compromise and what is non-negotiable. Once we have that nailed, we need to decide how we’re going to go about filling in the pieces that will complete us.

    This all reminds me of a simple thought process I often share in my workshops with others regarding brainstorming. It comprises of three simple components, and talks directly to the puzzle analogy. Output, Method, Resource. If we start by defining what the objective (output) is that we desire, we can then understand what methods or actions would be needed to achieve it. And once we know that, it will be that much easier to determine the resources required to make it all happen. That’s the easy part. Once we have that plan drawn up, it takes courage and determination to act on it and make it happen. That’s usually where most of us suck because of that same demon called self-esteem. A healthy self-esteem really is the best gift any parent can give their child, ever!

  • A healthy dose of self-loathing is usually sufficient to kill any hope you may harbour inside. But, in the process of trying to convince yourself that you’re worthless, take a moment to observe your insincerity. It’s unnatural for any human to sincerely believe that they are worthless. It goes against the very survival instinct that is hard-wired into our reptilian brains. So instead, the same energy we could have applied constructively to alter our reality into one that is more palatable, we apply it to subdue that survival instinct because along with it comes the torture of hope and expectations. But with that comes a demand for trust…trust of similarly flawed humans that we use as a yardstick to measure our own worth, without realising that the yardstick itself is defective. 

  • Note to self: Peace is only as elusive as your ability to make a decision…when you take a decision, you take back the power you gave up when you became a victim.

    Cynically Jaded

  • At some point you will realize that you have done too much for someone, that the only next possible step to do is to stop. Leave them alone. Walk away. It’s not like you’re giving up, and it’s not like you shouldn’t try. It’s just that you have to draw the line of determination from desperation. What is truly yours will eventually be yours, and what is not, no matter how hard you try, will never be.

    Unknown 

  • Dress your soul in modesty and wear your spirit with confidence

    Cynically Jaded