Islamic Life Coach School Podcast
Islamic Life Coach School Podcast
Distress Tolerance
Ever wondered how enduring discomfort can lead to profound personal growth and success?
In this episode I discuss how to overcome self-doubt and distress. Discover the concept of distress tolerance and how it’s not just about surviving discomfort but thriving in its presence. Learn how enduring emotions like fear of rejection or setting boundaries lead to significant personal development and success.
This episode sheds light on how your reactions to guilt, fear, anger, and sadness can shape your life, serving as alarms for deeper issues
By shifting your perspective from a survival state to a thriving state, we can make more logical and beneficial decisions.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If this podcast has benefited you, imagine the value of a one-on-one meeting with me! Click below to schedule your FREE consultation. Discover solutions with no obligation.
https://www.islamiclifecoachschool.com/appointments
Welcome to Islamic Life Coach School Podcast. Apply tools that you learn in this podcast and your life will be unrecognizably successful. Now your host, dr Kamal Asar. Hello, hello, hello everyone. Peace and blessings be upon all of you.
Speaker 1:Alhamdulillah, I just got done publishing my 200th episode and I could not be more grateful to Allah for all of the resources that I have just to be able to bring you this message, and this is what I'm passionate about. This is what energizes me. I'm grateful to the future version of me, who saw this as a possibility and wanted to get started, despite of the hundred obstacles that my comfort brain created, including all the self-doubt and incompetence I visualized and borrowed from the future version of me that knew that this was possible, and I did it with consistency and creativity. When I started out this podcast, what my future version did was give me the courage to tolerate all of the distress that my self-doubt was creating. There was distress of the unknown how am I going to get started? Where to start? Who's going to listen? How am I going to publish? Distress of visibility how would women receive this message? And on and on it goes. So, in the example of my podcast, my brain would say this feels unpredictable. What if no one listens to this? What if you make a mistake? What if this is the wrong decision? These thoughts are the ones that created distress, and I would like to offer my comfort brain some evidence, because recently I came across a Facebook post in a Muslim woman's group where a comment was recommending my podcast, saying there's so much guidance on so many topics, so much value and a very compassionate teaching style, alhamdulillah. This comment is just one example of countless evidence that I get when I speak to women about how much this podcast has helped them. This is basically a sum of what I was hoping to achieve with this podcast. At this point, setting aside all of the download stats, all of the countries and the demographic breakdown of many places, this podcast is being downloaded, alhamdulillah. Comments like this supersede any statistic. I'm living the life of the future self that I envisioned 200 episodes ago. This is my current version now. She knew this work was going to be impactful and that was inevitable. If only I stayed persistent. The future self was able to talk me through the distress of what was unknown then, and this helps me to transition to today's topic, which is distress tolerance.
Speaker 1:Distress tolerance speaks to the human design, since Allah SWT created human beings as experiential. We do things or we avoid things based on an ingrained memory of how it will make us feel. If you've been people-pleasing, then to outgrow this tendency you have to learn the skill of boundary setting. Standing up for yourself, standing your ground and saying no. Being an effective leader, being assertive so not to be taken advantage of All are important skills, but you will not be able to learn them until you can tolerate the distress that any of these new skills will cause you.
Speaker 1:Increasing distress tolerance means growth. Like I said, humans are experiential and distress is a very visceral, body-based experience and subconsciously, you're going to want to avoid that distress. So, by extension, you will avoid effective boundary setting, effective leadership, effective stance taking, which will stunt your growth, and at that point you will be looking to consume more, to learn more, to have more resources and courses just to help you create that distress tolerance, or you will be engaging in self-blame that you're unable to create it. Actually, all you need is the capacity to experience the distress in your body without having alarm signals go off that something has seriously gone wrong, and if they do go off, then not getting off track because of the distress. So how do you actually do that? How do you increase the capacity of distress? Just so we're clear this distress tolerance does not mean that you stay in distress, that you continue to dwell in it. It means that you create space for it, you let it vibrate through you, you do not resist it, you do not become afraid of it. And to create room for it, you have to recognize whatever that felt sense of distress is.
Speaker 1:For you, like for me, in the beginning of starting this podcast, the distress was from the fear of rejection. And that fear was very visceral, very, very real, prominent and ever-present when I was delaying creating the podcast. I was doing so as an avoidance tactic for avoiding the distress of fear. I was not making room for it, I was not calling it out, I was not recognizing it, I was not accepting it, I was mostly ignoring it and pretending it didn't exist. But, like I said, with the help of my future version, alhamdulillah, 200 episodes and countless testimonials later, you know that I was able to make the capacity for that distress. A client recently told me before she signed up for my EMW coaching program. She said she remembers the exact moment during her walk listening to the episode Locus of Control, how it spoke so deeply to her and how it created a visceral experience and how she is now getting amazing results in the program, alhamdulillah.
Speaker 1:Making room for the distress does not mean having an intellectual understanding of what thoughts are causing the distress. Distress. Tolerance is a body-based skill, not a mind skill, where you know what thoughts are causing it and you call yourself silly for having these thoughts, because there will always be a primitive toddler brain part of you that will create distress without an actual danger. Like me, starting the podcast did not put me in actual danger, but the fear was absolutely real. So you just have to accept that primitive part of your brain will always be with you and in case of people pleasing, this is the fear of boundary setting and the fear of disappointing others when you want to say no.
Speaker 1:Creating emotional safety around distress, creating room for it to vibrate through you it has nothing to do with your understanding of where it's coming from. Creating emotional safety around distress is a body-based skill. Sometimes it's about asking the inner child what do you need love? What are you afraid of? And then just simply providing that, just giving the child simple acceptance and love, receiving whatever answer it gives you, letting it share whatever it wants, allowing it to exist in its element of fear, distress. All of it regardless of how intellectually advanced you currently are as an individual.
Speaker 1:Without developing the capacity of distress tolerance with any body-based tool at your disposal, you'll be running the risk of either constantly engaging in people-pleasing or not knowing why you're doing it, or, if you are able to stand up for yourself, doing it through sheer pressure, which will be nerve-wracking. Or the third option is that you do stand up for yourself. You will say no, you will do what you think an effective leader should do, but then you'll be beating yourself up. You'll be guilting yourself for having stood up or answering back, and then going into the distress of shame and self-blame for having done that. Think of distress like your emotional fire alarm going off signaling that something needs your attention.
Speaker 1:But the catch is, if you get distressed by the distress, then you end up getting stuck in fight, flight, freeze or fawn response. But these are the good old survival responses that come in handy when you're facing something life-threatening. Except most of the time, there's actually nothing dangerous going on no lions chasing you, no cliffs that you're falling off of, just your own thoughts and emotions running wild. So there you are freaking out, but all the while your brain is trying to get your attention, it's saying, hey, there's something that you need to look at over here. But you can't hear the message over the noise of your own panic. Look at over here, but you can't hear the message over the noise of your own panic.
Speaker 1:The way I want you to think about it is every alarm in your life serves a different purpose. The fire alarm it's telling you get out of the building. The fajr alarm that's a gentle nudge for you to wake up from your comfortable bed and focus on what truly matters, which is the morning salah. Or the kitchen timer it's telling you get up, take the stew off the stove, otherwise it's going to turn into charcoal. Each alarm has its own message. You wouldn't react to all of them the same way. So why do you want to treat emotional alarms as if they're all fire alarms, running around like something is really burning down, when the message behind it might be much more nuanced?
Speaker 1:And this is what distress tolerance is about. If one day you decide that's it, I'm going to say no this time. But then distress kicks in, your brain will start to throw guilt trips. What if they're disappointed? What if they think I'm selfish? And this discomfort is going to be real and it's going to be loud. But if you can sit with it, tolerate the momentary awkwardness of saying no, you unlock the door to healthier boundaries. You will learn that it's okay for others to feel a little disappointed. You don't create their disappointment. Their expectations create their disappointment and it doesn't make you a bad person. And with time that distress becomes less intense and your confidence in standing your ground grows.
Speaker 1:If it's leadership even if it's at home or in your career or in your community you'll find yourself in a position where you need to make a decision and that's not going to be making everyone happy. Maybe it's because you're organizing an event at the masjid or managing teamwork and someone doesn't agree with your approach. This is possibly when your distress will be full-blown. What if I lose their support? What if I'm not making the right decisions? That discomfort will make you second-gu guess yourself. But learning to tolerate it allows you to stand in it for a little bit, just so you can learn the message behind it. It allows for other people to see you standing firmly in your leadership role, and sometimes leadership means making tough choices, but most of the time leadership means slowing down enough to figure out if the distress actually has a message behind it, if you are going overboard in your decisions, in your family or your project, and if not, then all you have to do is let the toddler brain do its job without giving in to it. Your ability to tolerate that distress will keep you from falling into the trap of people-pleasing leadership.
Speaker 1:Running from discomfort will only delay the inevitable. Once you face it, you realize it wasn't as catastrophic as your brain made it out to be. Some of the examples of distress you might be feeling are guilt and fear of disappointment. When you decide to say no, your brain will flood you with guilt, making you question if you're letting others down In other leaderships, especially when making tough decisions that won't make everyone happy. The emotions at play might be fear of rejection. Anxiety about respect In relationships they might be around approaching difficult conversations In relationships. They might be around approaching difficult conversations.
Speaker 1:The key emotions again fear of conflict. Anxiety about making things worse as a mother if you're dealing with a child's tantrum in public. The distress of shame. Fear of judgment In spirituality, especially when faith is tested by peer pressure. The emotions causing distress again, a fear of judgment by them, insecurity about belonging these are all alarms designed to get your attention to something more valuable underneath, because not all distress is created equal Like anger, that's your high energy in your face. Alarm, it's like a blaring horn that says time to willfully engage with something. Maybe someone crossed your boundary or something unfair just went down and your anger is saying you need to stand up for yourself.
Speaker 1:On the other hand, there is the distress of sadness, which is much more of a low hum. It doesn't scream for attention. Instead, it tugs at your attention to slow down, to mourn something that needs to be let go of. If you respond to sadness like you would anger, you'd miss the opportunity to really understand what it's pointing out to you. Then regret as an alarm that's usually tied to guilt or shame and the message behind it is a bit sneaky. It will whisper maybe you could have done something differently. But if you get too caught up in it, you freeze, you're paralyzed or you engage in any of the survival responses. Then you're just getting caught up in what you should have done rather than focusing on what you can do, moving forward. Regret doesn't want to trap you. It just wants you to acknowledge the lesson you can learn, that you can still grow from. This is all for you to start to understand that not all distress is a fire that needs to be put out. Sometimes it's just an emotional alarm that's telling you that, hey, you need to shift your perspective. And when you understand that, you move from the survival mode to a state of thriving.
Speaker 1:When humans feel distress, it's not the sensation itself that's dangerous. No one ever died from feeling nervous, anxious or uncomfortable. But the tricky part is that the distress puts you in a state of survival Again fight, flight, freeze or fawn. That's when people start to make decisions that actually harm them, not because of the distress itself. The harm comes from how you react to it. In a fight state, you might lash out. In a flight state, you will avoid situations that otherwise might need your attention. In a freeze state, you will completely disengage. In a fond state, you will people-please until you can't recognize yourself. All of this shrinks your life down. Distress makes you want to play it safe, to make your world smaller, so you don't have to feel the discomfort. You don't speak up in meetings because you're distressed about being judged. You don't go after your goals because the fear of failure feels too overwhelming. After your goals, because of the fear of failure feels too overwhelming, and while none of the distress will actually harm you, the actions or inactions in this case is what's going to make your life smaller and that will actually harm you. You avoid, you hide, you retreat. It's not the distress that's danger. It's how you react to it when you believe it is dangerous. The only real danger comes from letting that survival state take over and making decisions from a place of fear rather than logic.
Speaker 1:So to help you guys understand, I usually give an analogy of a robot. So let's imagine an AI robot that can ask very insightful questions that almost feels annoying because of their accuracy. To help you understand the difference between emotional distress and the actions you take from it, or the actions that you take to avoid it, consider having a conversation with a robot. Imagine this is an upgraded version of a robot with AI trying to understand how your difficulty with the distress is causing you pain, and your job is to explain why distress is so bad. And I will play out both you and the robot.
Speaker 1:And there's a deeper message behind this conversation, and that's to help you understand that the intolerability of distress is just your inability to let the distress be present. So you say to the robot distress be present. So you say to the robot oh my god, distress is the worst. I mean, it feels so bad. Everything's falling apart. My chest is tightening, I feel sweaty. It's like I can't even breathe. It feels like something really bad is about to happen. It's hard to focus on anything.
Speaker 1:The robot goes so these sensations that you're describing the tight chest, the sweaty palms are they causing actual harm to your body? And you say, well, not exactly, but they feel harmful. It's like your body is telling you there's something dangerous just around the corner and you have to get out of there. Something that feels so uncomfortable must be dangerous. The robot says what is so dangerous here that your mind and body is alerting you to it? You say, well, it's a boundary that I'm trying to set. And the robot says, okay, are boundaries physically dangerous, like can they come and attack you? And you say, well, no, but they feel really dangerous, but boundaries are just conversations. Well, no, but they feel really dangerous, but boundaries are just conversations. The robot says, okay, so no physical harm, but sensations in your body feel dangerous. I understand that the sensations are uncomfortable sweaty palms, heart racing but there's no actual harm or danger. None of your answers tell me that you're in physical harm. It seems like your body is activating an alarm system, but there's no fire, no cliff, no immediate danger. Would you agree? And you say I guess, but it still feels awful, like what if I make the wrong decision because I'm so freaked out? What if I mess something up? What if this breaks these ties of kinship? That would be so bad.
Speaker 1:Robot says I see, the distress comes from the belief that you might do something wrong before you've actually done it. You say, well, yes, robot, but is it also possible that when you start to set a boundary, that you might be doing something right and your life would become easier and more enjoyable? You, yeah, for sure. That's why I want to set boundaries, robot. So you're failing ahead of time because of the distress of boundary setting, so you never find out if they work or not. But this distress that's limiting you is not actually physically harmful to you as a human. You, yes, that's correct. So that was me playing the part of the robot and you Kind of like a conversation that you might want to have in your brain next time your body says that distress is too much to tolerate. Want to have in your brain next time your body says that distress is too much to tolerate.
Speaker 1:You see how easily your argument loses ground once you come to the understanding that your actions are what actually harm you. And you only let that happen if you act on a belief that these distress signals are life-threatening. And the clients ask me but if I don't act on them, won't I just feel worse? Because isn't the point of distress is that it's warning me about something? And I'll tell you yes, it is a warning, but a warning itself is not the danger. The real issue is not from the alarm itself, but from your response to the alarm. Fire alarm itself is not dangerous. It's the fire that's warning you against. That's what's dangerous, and if you don't respond to it appropriately, that's what's dangerous as well.
Speaker 1:The sensations in your body are a way of getting your attention, but they are not themselves dangerous. They're uncomfortable, yes, but not harmful. What becomes harmful is if you respond to it in a way that limits your life, running from opportunities, avoiding situations or shrinking away from challenges. The feeling itself is temporary. It's your actions guided by your belief that distress is life-threatening. That's what causes lasting effects. Sensations are just noise. You only get hurt if you react, if they are dangerous. And once you realize alarm is just noise, you can choose to stay calm, tolerate the discomfort and make decisions that aren't based on fear, because the distress isn't dangerous. How you interpret or act on it is what will make the difference. You might have been running from shadows this whole time and they might have felt real, but there's nothing real actually chasing you. Distress is just a sensation. It does not have the power to harm you until you let it.
Speaker 1:This entire podcast is about guiding you to stay with that uncomfortable feeling, to really sit with it, and you will learn to move through it without shutting it down or lashing out. Without this practice, you'll keep falling back into old patterns of people-pleasing or pretending, ignoring what you truly need. As you build tolerance for discomfort, you start to trust yourself more. You become present in your body, aware of what's really coming up, instead of getting swept away with automatic survival reactions. This skill will take you places, especially when dealing with people in power, whether there's a boss, a family member leading a team, working with clients, patients or anything else. It's all about standing your ground in these moments, listening to your gut, even when the body offers a blaring fire alarm, because that might just be your toddler, primitive brain creating more of a danger when there's actually none With that.
Speaker 1:I pray to Allah SWT Grant me the strength to face discomfort with patience and resilience. O Allah, help me to stay true to myself when fear and doubt rise. Allow me to embrace the challenge as opportunities for growth. Strengthen my heart, o Allah, with trust in your wisdom, and guide me to make decisions with courage and conviction. Let me find peace and discomfort, knowing that you are always by my side, inshallah, guiding me towards my best self. Ameen, ya rabbul, ameen, please keep me in your du'as. I will talk to you guys next time.