What would it be like if I had never met him? How would life be different if I had just stayed at that job? It is possible to fill your reflections with ‘what ifs’ and ‘if onlys’ which eat away and darken the present moment. I would not erase any moment. Not the moment my brother died, not my divorce, not the abuse I have been through. They all create the present that I live now- with all its difficulties and challenges and that is what I have been given. But to bigger world events that in many ways are not mine to erase or not erase- the break up of the Ottoman empire, the Nakba, the industrial revolution- in my view all catastrophic events which have led to terrible inequality, exploitation and oppression… would I erase these? And the answer is, I don’t think so. I would erase present human suffering if I could instantly, but the events themselves, apart from the suffering form a part of history that shapes the direction of destiny. Regrets can make you mourn possibilities based on things that didn’t happen. As such, regret has never really shaped my way of thinking too much. Things are the way they are and difficult events shape existence as it is now. I miss my brother terribly. I bear the scars of abuse. And I know this is nothing compared to daily suffering endured by the Palestinians and other oppressed people. But to erase even the hardest of events would erase the present and I think God knows best.
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I remember my dad telling me when I was very young; ‘the only certainty in life is death.’ When I think of these wise words now I think they were a brave and true thing which must have stayed with me or else I wouldn’t be relaying it now. But do I always live by it? When I was younger, I think I did. As child, a teen and a student, even when I first became a teacher in my early twenties, I think I did. The point of change was having children. Suddenly, uncertainty just won’t cut it. You have societal pressures which you don’t necessarily agree with but feel the heavy weight of them, you have family expectations, you are juggling a thousand different things and you are doing it all because you place such profound importance in your children. At this point, uncertainty becomes intolerable. You try to build certainty through never forgetting anything and through making networks so that any issues will have a fall back plan. I guess it why so many mothers feel completely exhausted. At age 44, I am now a therapist. In my training I learned that Milton Erickson said that the greatest indicator of poor mental health was rigidity or an inability to be flexible. And it is all based on this need for certainty in a world where nothing is certain. Through my own therapy and reflection I have found that I can observe my discomfort with uncertainty and begin to reframe it so that it becomes a more tolerable element in life.
When did you realise you were officially an adult?
Daily writing prompt
What’s a moment when you realized you were officially an adult?
I officially realised I was an adult when the old school ‘Happy Eater’ restaurants, that you used to stop at on long car journeys stopped giving me a lollipop. It was a hard realisation. Because as soon as that happened, I began to notice the world around me redefining my identity. There were the fewer smiles, the greater expectations, the lack of acknowledgement for burdens that you have to bear though they are not necessarily yours. And as I grew, the more I found this to be the case. When you are a child you can truly believe that life should be fair, that people should be nice and that you have a place in the world. As you move to adulthood, those realisations fall away with what Jung called ‘the first death’. And honestly, it hurts. Adulthood requires you to operate despite unfairness in the world and despite the fact that you may not have a designated space in that world and your 20’s and 30’s can feel heavy as a result. But with effort, with reflection and time you start to realise that you can find your world inside yourself, you can create a fair system that works in the parts of your psyche. You cannot remove suffering, but you can alter your experience of it. So what starts with the withholding of a lollipop feels like a rather dark journey until I found that after that first death, I could be reborn again.
A stranger completely restored my faith in people.
Daily writing prompt
What’s a moment when a stranger completely restored your faith in people?
It was culture day at the school I work at. A beautiful event in a very diverse school of perhaps 60% Muslims in West London. Lining the streets on the way to the school for a couple of years now, since the London riots, have been St George’s cross flags- a sneering and deliberate message to the children at the school for a minority of locals, that they are not welcome. As a Muslim, I have felt that too. The greater divisiveness, the looks, the wondering whether the person in front of me is scowling because they’ve just had a bad day or if they’re ready to launch into an assault as to why I should not be in ‘this country.’ On this particular day, I was wearing a very bright Moroccan outfit and I was going for my lunchtime walk with my headphones on. As I rounded the corner, a white man indicated to me to take off the headphones because he wanted to speak to me. I didn’t want a confrontation, but I tensed and took them off. He beamed at me and said ‘that’s such a beautiful dress, you look lovely!’ This small gesture of connection meant so much to me. My shoulders relaxed and I felt tears come to my eyes. I beamed at him. I wonder if he knows how important that exchange was for me.
Judgement of people and Judgement of Allah
Ibn al Qayyim said “Whoever fears Allah, Allah protects him from everything. Whoever fears other than Allah, Allah leaves him to what he fears.
We spend our days under the watchful eyes of others. Are we dressed right? Have we performed our work correctly? Are our children conforming to certain standard? We are constantly aware of external evaluation.
Those watchful eyes, once in the heads of passersby, family, bosses, now sureville every moment of life which we record and put on social media. What once was something you could close the door to and relax, now has greater strength even behind closed doors, even in the darkness of the night. We have allowed ourselves to be pinned in the limelight whilst the judgmental eyes of unknown people evaluate our entire being based on unreal snapshots.
Even for those who have managed to keep social media at a distance, the world around has changed to such a degree that the concept of confessional self display has been woven into each of us by association.
We are told we will stand naked and uncircumcised on the day of judgement before Allah SWT, a terrible a fearsome image which describes having nowhere to hide.
With our current living, it is a question whether we have prematurely thrown ourselves into a human created judgement standing naked with nowhere to hide, but with the judge, not the All knowing, the Beneficent, the Merciful, but the cruel, the unkind and the self absorbed who judge from a place of temporality, a place of imperfection and a place of partial imperfect knowledge- which is no place to judge at all.
What sort of situation have we created for ourselves when our Lord says the Day of Judgement is so terrible and so great that;
‘man will flee from his brother, and his mother and his father, and his wife and his children. For every person, that Day, will have enough concern of their own.’
We have come to a place where man has indeed forgot his mother and his father and fled from his brother.
People no longer want to meet each other because they fear the judgement of others, people no longer want to engage in activities in their hearts they love, because they wonder about what people will say. Every step through this dunya is one where we feel we are judged and, in turn we judge.
But what if we were to remember the judgement only comes from Allah. Surely a person will continue to judge your work and your ideas and the things you say. But this does not mean that they can judge you. You are not your actions, you are you. Only Allah SWT has the full picture of you. The passing judgements of passing people, even family, cannot touch you because they do not know you.
Who am I?
If someone asked you who are you, you are likely to give your name- something someone else labelled you, your profession- something you do, you family status- definition by association.
But if you ask yourself who am I, without someone waiting for an answer, are you able to formulate a response? Do you know who you are?
A lot of our difficulties and struggles dealing with events as they occur could be alleviated if we could see the truth of the depths of ourselves. Therapy encourages this better personal knowledge. It asks you to look inside and come to ‘know thyself’. And when you do, it does not mean you never have a bad day, it means you respond to those days as you.
If you are seeking to know yourself better please WhatsApp message me, Rose, for therapy 07852702508.
Losing a loved one
It is fourteen years today since my brother died of cancer.
When he died, everything else happened at once. I left my home, left my job, moved to a new part of the country where I knew nobody, was navigating an unhappy marriage, protecting my daughter, dealing with court proceedings and trying to build a new life. There simply wasn’t time to stop. Grief was placed into a box because survival had to come first.
Over the years that grief would occasionally break through. There would be moments of intense anger followed by tears, but mostly I carried on. I worked. I parented. I functioned. Underneath it all, though, there was always a quiet heaviness. I once described it as a dark cloud that never completely left.
Today I allowed myself to sit with my brother rather than with his death. I remembered his mischievous grin, his irreverent humour, his intelligence and the way he understood me in a way very few people ever have. I realised that I wasn’t only grieving the person I had lost. I was grieving the life that disappeared with him, the role I was suddenly expected to take on, and the younger version of myself who had no choice but to keep standing.
Grief is rarely as simple as sadness. Sometimes it becomes entwined with responsibility, trauma, survival and identity. Sometimes what looks like “coping” is simply the only option available at the time.
As a therapist, this has deepened my understanding of bereavement. I know that clients do not always arrive wanting to talk about the person who died. Sometimes they arrive with anxiety, tension, depression, exhaustion or a sense that life has never quite felt the same since a particular point in time. Sometimes grief has been postponed because there was no safe space in which to experience it.
My role is not to push someone towards emotion before they are ready, nor to assume that talking is enough. Instead, I aim to create a space where the whole experience can gradually emerge, at a pace that feels safe. That may involve conversation, working with the body, exploring different parts of ourselves, imagery, or simply sitting with feelings that have been waiting patiently for years.
Grief is not something to “get over”. Love leaves a mark, and so does loss.
Sometimes healing is not about letting go of the person we have lost. It is about no longer having to carry the weight of that loss entirely on our own. For therapy sessions please WhatsApp message me, Rose, on 07852702508.
Online therapy
Online therapy is just as effective and face to face therapy. There is something wonderful about having the security of your own space, the comfort to relax and to have whatever drink feels familiar to you. It can help to move the relationship to a place of comfort much sooner than if you were to have to sit in a clinic room with a receptionist and a waiting room. Somehow it is more personal and more direct to work online. As well as this, after the session, when you are online you can have the time to reflect. There is no walk back to the car, no pleasantries with reception staff. You can continue the therapy by not closing as soon as you leave the room.
Some people genuinely prefer face to face, you may feel you spend too much time in front of a screen and you need that movement of space and that different environment. There is also truth in this, everyone has different needs.
If you would like to book online therapy please contact me, Rose on 07852702508.
Having a bad day
Having a bad day can mean different things to different people. It might mean things you had planned did not go as you had hoped. It might mean an argument or an unpleasant interaction. It may feel like noise, overwhelm and a picture of chaos. It might mean a feeling of empty coldness where you cannot imagine even trying to get up let alone have any motivation to do anything.
Clouds move over the sky of our existence and it is normal that the sun is blocked by their passing sometimes. But when it feels like the light just doesn’t return, it may be time to seek help.
I offer solution focused depth psychotherapy to really look beneath the surface and get to the core of the issue. If you would like more information please contact me roseshifa@outlook.com
Running away
There are a lot of ways of running away. Some people dive into busyness, always chasing the next thing, some people run away into addictions and compulsions, some into distractions like the phone or the TV. Some people literally run away, escaping to new and exciting lands.
But escaping to those new lands and achieving the next goal may seem more exciting in the imagination than it is in reality, when that which you are truly running from, you can never escape- you.
There are as many reasons as there are people why we might feel the need to escape from ourselves. Escaping from shame, from abandonment, from fear, from neglect, from unacceptability… the list is endless.
But what we can be sure of is that if we are able to turn and face and stay with whatever it is, when we are strong enough to see it for what it is, it stops having power over us. It stops controlling us. It softens and so do we. And as we soften we will realise that we no longer have the urge to run away.
If you are interested in stopping and facing what causes you to run, consider contacting me roseshifa@outlook.com to book a £40 initial session.