Why Do We Get Stressed & Anxious? - Highlights

This Dunya, stress, anxiety, a little bit of fear, a little bit of sadness, [these are] all parts of what the Dunya presents [of] itself and what we should expect from this Dunya.

What I tried to accomplish last night as a base-building discussion in my time here in Edmonton, was the idea that sometimes we think that "the higher I go up the ladder of spirituality, the more immune I should be from these realities". And that perhaps this Dunya was made, for the mu'minin at least, a place of contentment and serenity and itminan and sukoon. And the reality is that it was not.

The base verse from yesterday's discussion that we talked about, where Allah now very openly, time and time again in the Qur'an, refers to this Dunya as a test, as an azmayish, as an imtihan, as a fitna, from the Qur'anic perspective. And part of that, you going through that, or us going through that difficulty, is there is bound to be some stress, anxiety, and a little bit of fear.

And a few things that I want to clarify moving forward, just to make sure there is no confusion: there are two components to stress management in Islam. Islam absolutely believes in the idea of du'a, and spirituality, and 'ibadat, and worship, but also gives a lot of emphasis and a great deal of respect to the professionals in the field.

Sometimes I see individuals who are going through a lot inside their homes or in their families, and they approach, let us say, the elders, or sometimes a scholar, or sometimes, let us say, you know, the parents inside the home, and the only solution they ever hear is that, "If you were closer to God, you would not go through all of this". And so now, not only do you feel anxious, and stressful, and depressed, but now there is a guilt on top of that, that I am not doing enough for God as well, so that really kind of adds to the mountain that is in front of us.

When in reality, du'a and da'ah, both of them are equally important. No doubt, we will not eliminate the idea of spirituality, and dhikr, and tawassul, and tawakkul of Allah for sure, but there is an element where there has to be, sometimes, in certain cases, professional help, where you have an actual psychiatrist or a counselor you go to actually see, a mental health expert; or you have, in our communities, these groups that are formed, to be that liaison of services between you and whatever services the province or the city has to offer. It is not simply just to say, "If you prayed namaz on time, you would be anxiety and stress-free." It is not that simple sometimes.

And I think sometimes that advice, given especially to our youth, it actually compounds the issue; it adds more issues than there already are existing to begin with. So I will not pretend to be a professional and an expert in this field at all. I just simply am providing you reminders in my few lectures here in Edmonton, maybe opening a door for a discussion that perhaps would not happen otherwise.

The reality is that if you do have a case in your home, or you yourself feel like it is something beyond my reconnecting with God, then that is one portion of it. The other portion is maybe you need someone to talk to who is a professional, who can handle your case at a professional expert level, right? But to simply, you know, relate the idea and solution to be nothing but extra tasbih here and there; it is not that simple.

I think sometimes we have not quite presented the religion properly to our youth. I say it wherever I go. It is my belief; maybe I am wrong. Because I do not think that when things are looking dark, and gloomy, and they are sinking in quicksand, the first thought to these youth is to run to the masjid, or run to the musallah, or run to Allah Subhana wa Ta'ala. I do not think they are there yet. I do not think they have bought into that system just yet. And partly that is them taking that leap of faith that you need, from the heart and the qalb, and part of it is from us, where we have not quite presented the notion that the Din is not just jaiz, najaiz, halal, haram; it actually is an entire life system of solutions.

You see, we have various relationships inside of our life. We have those individuals who we are very close to. We have those people that could be family, even could be blood, maybe on that side of the ocean; while we connect with them, maybe on social media, maybe a WhatsApp group here and there. We are not quite close to them, to the point where this everyday discussion does not happen. Then there are those in our life who are not blood; let us say for example, they are not family. They do not have the same last name as I do, but I am very, very tight with them, and I speak to them. We converse on a daily basis multiple times a day, and they are the first ones I go to when things get a little bit difficult in my life.

Our relationship with Allah Subhana wa Ta'ala is one of these two situations. Either it is the idea that, yes, He is there in my life somewhere, but He is not quite, you know, someone I converse with on a daily basis. He is there; I believe in Him. There is no doubt; somewhere in the universe He exists. But this idea of there being a strong connection is not quite there.

Every single flight, whether it be a 1 hour flight or a 15 hour flight, it is the exact same information every single time. Never once do they ever tell you what they are serving for lunch or dinner on that plane, that is what I want to know. Allah Subhana wa Ta'ala tells us 10 times a day to recite Surah al-Hamd. For what? For our survival. What is that survival? Surah al-Hamd, it is so many things, but what it is at the bare-bone, minimum base, is a conversation between us and Allah Subhana Wa Ta'ala. The first half is He is talking to us, the second half we are talking to Him.

If we understood that conversation—think about the fact that now 10 times a day I am conversing with God, He is conversing with me, 10 times a day - if we had the sha'oor and the ma'rifat and awareness to understand it is an actual conversation, after a couple of weeks and months of Salat, we should be very, very tight with Allah Subhana wa Ta'ala. The fact that people like me are not, it means that I do not quite understand the philosophy of salat, but the system itself is beautiful.

Allah Subhana wa Ta'ala is forcing now a conversation. First you establish "Maliki Yawm id-Deen" (1:4). First, you establish His "Rahmaniat" (1:3), His "Rahimiat" (1:3). Then after you have established that, now it is time for me to talk to Allah: "Iyyaaka na'budu wa lyyaaka nasta'een" (1:5). "You, You alone, nobody else, right—"do I ask for help, do I worship" (1:5). I am asking Allah to guide me onto the Right Path, keep me guided on the Right Path - it is an actual full blown conversation between me and God. Not once, not twice, 10 times a day, all in [the] hopes that maybe - Allah is saying maybe you might what? "Strengthen your relationship with Me." "Why?" is the question.

Because, like I said yesterday, having Iman does not mean you are immune to stress. Having stress does not mean you are immune to faith. Sometimes we think and we adopt sometimes the Western ideology, where we think that these emotions—anxiety, depression, stress—are negative emotions, to the point where you should run away from them, bury them, put them in a compartment, ignore them, these are not good emotions. When in reality, what the Din says is that these are everyday emotions; these are natural emotions. Where faith in Allah comes is not the absence of the stress and anxiety. It is in fact the idea that that faith will what? Help you get through that stress and that anxiety. There is a big difference between the two.

It is one [mentality] where I am expecting the higher I go up the ladder of spirituality, the more aram say my zindagi is—no problems, nothing at all. That is one mentality that is bound for failure. It is a wrong mentality. The other mentality is that I know that no matter how high I go, stress, anxiety, sadness, fear, grief is all going to be there in all parts of my life but it is that faith that will what? Now walk with me through the storm, and get me through the storm, such that after the storm I still say, "la ilaha illa Allah."

This Dunya, the hardships, it is not prejudice; it is not like, you know, you are the only one in your neighborhood that has had a miscarriage. Or you are the only one, let us say, for example, that lost their job. Or you are the only one on the entire row of your homes on your street, let us say, whose mother has cancer, God forbid. No. The Dunya is not prejudiced. If you are going through something, then your Hindu neighbor, your atheist neighbor, your Sikh neighbor, your white neighbor, your black neighbor—they are all going through the exact same thing you are going through.

The difference is, like I mentioned yesterday in that Surah Hajj verse, when Allah says: "khasira ad-Dunya wa al-Akhirah" (22:11), that you will lose the Dunya and the Akhirah, because, why? When the Dunya does hit us with its struggles and its hardship— it is bound to do it—we turn our face away from Allah. "Now where do we go?" is the question. That is where we have lost this world and that is for sure where we lost the Akhirah.

So now you are going through your miscarriage, your Hindu neighbor is going through their miscarriage. You are going through your cancer diagnosis, your atheist is also going through [his] cancer diagnosis. The difference is that you turn towards the musallah; he might turn towards alcohol, or the casino, or drugs, or womanizing—anything to numb that pain. What do you do? You come to the Farsh-e-Aza of Aba Abdillah al-Husayn, and you drop all your grief onto this Farsh. Or you come to the musallah and you pray and you have itmenan—Shab-e-Juma, right? It is the best night of the week. You come and you drop your struggles here. And for a moment, for 2 hours, 2 and a half hours, you feel a little bit halka, a little bit light. That is the difference. When you remove that element, then naturally: "khasira ad-Dunya wa al-Akhirah" (22:11). The Dunya is gone, and the Akhirah for sure is gone.

So part of the process of stress management is, yes, I am sorry, you have to re-examine, we have to re-examine, our relationship with Allah Subhana Wa Ta'ala. He is that humsafar, that travel companion that will walk with you through the storm. He will not be your umbrella; He will not be somebody who will pull you away from the cloud—the rain will come down, the pouring will come down, but He will guide you through that storm. That is where faith comes in.

Faith is not only on the days of Eid or the days of celebration. True faith comes in when you have hit rock bottom. Now Allah looks to see: Where do you turn when you have hit rock bottom? "When there is dhulumat upon dhulumat (24:40), darkness upon darkness, stress upon stress, anxiety upon anxiety, do you call upon Me or do you call upon others?" Because that is when usually the reality of our Iman comes about. When things are pitch black around us. That is when those that we believe in, we reach out to. That is the moment that Allah is waiting for.

Sometimes my youth have it wrong; I am sorry guys, I love you, but you have it wrong. You think for a moment that "the more I have hit rock bottom because of my sins and my mistakes, the less Allah wants to hear from me," and that adds to the stress. So now I have guilt of the sin; I have guilt of the mistake; on top of that, because of my sin now, God does not want to see me.

Not the case at all. Some have argued that is exactly the moment that God wants to see you the most. Because sometimes we do not understand why the stress came about to begin with. Why so much anxiety? "Why is it—if it is true what you are saying, Mawlana, that sometimes these problems come from Allah Subhana wa Ta'ala, and sometimes Allah places these cracks in our sidewalk—why does He want me to suffer so badly?" You would be surprised how bold this generation is today. These young kids ask amazing questions, right to your face, and they wait for an answer. "Is that how cruel Allah is, that He likes to see me suffer? That He wants to see me now, restless, relying on medication?" And we know enough about God to know that He is not enjoying all of this. It is not like He is up there and saying, "Excellent, exactly what I wanted. I want my slaves to squirm", God forbid, "and suffer, and go through hardship, and rely on medication and not sleep at night."

He does it for several reasons. One of them is for you and I. Sometimes, I tell you—and my elders can attest to this, but my youth, I really want you to get this point for me. We do not understand the level of the light that we have inside of us; when I say light, I mean patience, and strength, and courage, and hilm, and forbearance, and perseverance. We do not understand—ourselves, we do not get it. We do not understand how strong I can be until I am forced to pull out that flashlight and turn it on. And that only happens when it is completely dark around me. Sometimes, you have to make your way all the way down to where there is darkness around you, for you to understand that there has always been that level of patience and strength inside you the entire time. It just took some darkness for you to get it. That is the message God wants to send to you.

Let us stop thinking of Allah as this cruel entity that simply enjoys the fact when I squirm in this Dunya. I even hear sometimes these, you know—albeit they are overly emotional, I get it—but to the point where, you know, people say, you know, "This happened to me; of course it happened to me; God loves it when I am in pain." And, yeah, they say it out of emotion, no doubt. But is that really deep down what you are thinking, until you walk through the storm? You get through the storm, you are still, mashaAllah, a Muslim, a Mu'min, you are still a lover of the Ahl ul-Bayt, and the first person that is more surprised than anybody else is you. "I thought for sure, Mawlana, that problem would kill me, or would kill us as a family, and now I look back to it, to 5–10 years ago, and that is why we are where we are today. We are cohesive units because of what we went through back then, that I thought would kill us."

And that is precisely why Allah sometimes places that crack on your sidewalk, places that level of stress and anxiety and fear inside of you, if not for anyone else, for you to think that, "Oh my God, the intensity of the patience, of the light inside of me, was so high; I had no idea, because I did not have anything to measure up against. It is completely dark around me, completely dark around me; I am forced now to look inside of me and shine that light, shine the patience, shine the strength, and oh, my God, it is enough where it conquers the entire darkness."

But it took that darkness, guys, for you to understand it.

Because true faith and how you truly think about Allah, I am sorry, does not happen during the happy times. Very easy to say, "Al-hamdulil-Lahi Rabbi al-‘Alamin" (1:2) when things are going by very smoothly—when you marry the boy you love, when you have the kid that you want, "we have one boy, one girl, perfectly three years apart, mashallah, exactly what I wanted. White picket fence, square footage—everything is going so well. Yes, al-hamdulillah, 'Al-hamdulil-Lahi Rabbi al-‘Alamin' (1:2)." The moment that that world now gets a little bit shook and rocked, then at that moment you end up finding who you truly are.

That happens when you embrace your stress and your anxiety. Easier said than done, I get it.

When people hit low, they get really, really low. They do not want to see a single soul. They want to turn their phones off, close the door, close off the lights; "I am going to be in bed with my blanket up to here. Leave me alone. I do not want to see the world." I get it. But sometimes it is a mindset to understand. It is a mindset to know this is not what God wants, for me to now be face-first inside the puddle of water. He wanted me to use that to propel me forward.