Islamic Life Coach School Podcast
Islamic Life Coach School Podcast
The Pain You Practice
While women's gatherings offer beautiful opportunities for sisterhood, laughter, and validation, they can unwittingly become breeding grounds for negative thought patterns. Each time we share our struggles, about parenting difficulties, business challenges, or relationship problems, without the intention to think differently, we strengthen neural pathways attached to those limiting stories. What begins as validation transforms into an emotional quicksand where our pain becomes our personality.
The difference between healing and habitual reliving is subtle but profound: healing happens when you hear something unfamiliar and let it land, while habitual reliving just replays the same painful narrative. One expands your emotional bandwidth; the other contracts it.
This episode contains practical guidance for transforming validation from mere comfort into a catalyst for change. By asking yourself "Am I building a bridge out of this experience or digging myself deeper into it?" before sharing, you can harness the true power of connection. Your friendships can either reinforce your limitations or inspire your growth, the choice lies in your intention.
Take a moment to reflect on how you're using your conversations. Are you training your brain to love your story more than the solution? The path to transformation begins with allowing yourself to be not just seen but also challenged, not just validated but truly changed.
Start with this Description
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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 Aftar. Hello, hello, hello everyone. Peace and blessings be upon all of you.
Speaker 1:The topic of today's podcast is something I revisit frequently, and it has to do with your friendships and how you're using them. I love women's gatherings, all the friendships, the connection, the laughter, the sharing. I love the idea of sisterhood, and I've made that abundantly clear. I absolutely love people around me and I choose to be with them when I share and when they share. I love the exchange, the energy, the trust and the humanness, and Alhamdulillah for that. I don't think I say that enough, even though I have multiple episodes on this topic. I think it can be said many more times and differently.
Speaker 1:Something that I want you guys to be aware of, though, that I want to bring your attention to in this podcast, is, while there's healing and growth in sharing of ideas and networking and the whole web of interconnectedness, which is an incredible tool, it is an amazing resource, there are also some dangers to it. That is the danger of commiseration, commiseration of pain, validation of your negative thought patterns, and I want to bring your attention to something that's happening behind the scenes. Every time you share your story in a gathering or in a virtual group without the intention to think differently, as an outcome of that conversation, you strengthen the neural pathways attached to that story. This is, of course, neuroplasticity. The neuroplasticity can be both negative and positive, while the concept of neuroplasticity the neuroplasticity can be both negative and positive. While the concept of neuroplasticity is mostly used in a positive way, it can, and usually does, end up being negative as well. Meaning, every time you're sharing a difficulty with a group and you get validating feedback, then your story gets ingrained further in your mind. This is the negative use of neuroplasticity, and all of this takes a very heavy toll on your psyche. It keeps you in difficult emotions and it doesn't let you achieve the positive outcomes in your life that you want. So every time you gathered in a group or just sharing it with one more person where the conversation's flowing, it feels warm, connected and you're feeling comforted. And let's say you're sharing stories about how hard parenting is, how exhausting it is to build a business or how impossible it feels to find a good Muslim man as a single woman, and it feels validating because the other person's sharing their story, and it totally proves your point.
Speaker 1:But I want to get very nuanced and very detailed here. There is a very big danger that gets overlooked, and that is that your brain uses this validation, this comfortable connection, to gather evidence for your limited beliefs. You start off by needing a connection, but without direction, that connection turns into commiseration and this turns into emotional quicksand that keeps you trapped. You get stuck in the same loop, saying the same thing to maybe different people, waiting for a new outcome that doesn't come. While it feels like you might have gone into the conversation with the intention of healing, healing doesn't happen. Instead, you start looping and when other people start mirroring back the same struggle without offering any shift, you start to mistake your pain for your personality. You don't just feel overwhelmed and distressed and overlooked, you become the overwhelmed one and the distressed one. You don't just feel the hurt, you become the one who's hurt. Your identity gets hijacked with this negative thought looping of neuroplasticity. And this all happens while everyone else is nodding in agreement and you feeling like this is a good thing.
Speaker 1:Let's say, your teenager is a reckless driver and it's very difficult for you to calm her down and at the same time another mom says I know exactly what you mean. My daughter does the same thing. She goes to pick up her friends and they're all riling each other up. I'm so afraid for their safety. You feel so validated that you're not alone in thinking that your teenager behavior needs to change, that your fear for her safety is valid and all of that is true. Your teenager behavior might need to change and your fear is valid. But if, beyond the validation, no alternative was provided, then it becomes a negative thought loop. Same thing happens if you're trying to find a spouse and you say to somebody there's no good men left, and then maybe in the gathering you have seven other women agreeing with you that yeah, you're right. It's so hard to find a good guy. So this validation is healthy and it can be healthy to an extent, but not when you're trying to create the outcome of finding a well-adjusted Muslim guy to marry.
Speaker 1:If you want the outcome to be different, it is not in your favor to continue to tell the same limiting story. This commiseration does not help you. Same thing if you're trying to build a business and you think to yourself nobody wants to spend money, it's so hard. And in a gathering of other entrepreneurs, they say the same thing how hard it is to work as a businesswoman and how hard it is to make a profit in this economy. Validating your experience, which seems innocent and even therapeutic, but at the same time, it is also gathering more evidence against the change that your life needs, against the change that your business needs in order for it to be successful.
Speaker 1:If you want a different outcome, you have to go beyond commiseration. Your brain absolutely loves validation, because it gives you dopamine, it gives you connection. It says see, I'm not crazy. But just because someone else agrees with your pain does not mean you're making progress towards change. You may just be cementing in an old story. That's keeping you stuck. That's the danger that I want to bring your attention to. This is the danger of repeating validation without intentional change.
Speaker 1:And if I haven't already said it, I'm going to say it again. I'm not saying don't speak your pain. I'm not saying don't gather in sisterhood. I'm saying just go with intention about what you're doing. Know the difference between I'm speaking this to process it or I'm speaking this to prove it to myself and to others. One is a mindset that opens the door to something new. The other one locks you inside the same emotional room with no doors and no exits. You can validate yourself and also stay open to a completely different interpretation. That's what's going to create a different result.
Speaker 1:Validation alone does not create change. It might create closeness, it might create trust, it might help you exhale and feel seen, which are all of the preliminary, foundational things that you might need to be able to create change. So please do share if it matters to you, if it calms your nervous system down, if it helps you process. But if that's where you stop, if your only goal is I just want someone else to see what I see, then your brain will continue to keep collecting proof that the pain is permanent. It will reinforce every belief that's already keeping you small. And this does not happen because you're a weak human being. This happens to every human being. The brain loves patterns and more than that, it loves to prove those patterns. And once that pattern is the reimbursement of that pain and it becomes familiar, it becomes a part of your emotional blueprint. While validation soothes and connects, in the long run it works as a sugary dessert that is delicious in the moment but offers zero nourishment. It's just empty emotional calories. That's harmful for your health and when consumed over and over again, it contributes to the very problem you're trying to heal from.
Speaker 1:In unchecked commiseration, you develop a procedural memory of relating to certain experiences in your life let's say a relationship with your father, that you develop a procedural memory of relating to certain experiences in your life let's say a relationship with your father that provokes a certain set of memories and that in turn correlates with the habitual set of emotions that you're familiar with. When you talk about this experience just for the sake of validation, it will further ingrain that procedural memory and it hardwires even more and more. And when you hear other women's experience of their relationships with their fathers and if they were not ideal then your brain just seals the deal. It says this was horrible and how your life is just screwed up and nothing good can come out of it. In this negative loop of neuroplasticity, the rewiring is going against you. It's being used to tell yourself self-deprecating stories that relational trauma with your father has no good outcomes. So by all means share your experience and listen to other women, share their experience. But what I'm also saying that it does not constitute the entire reality. There's a lot more that is happening outside of what your brain is allowing to filter in. Maybe there are women out there who have relational trauma similar to yours, with difficult relationships with their fathers, but that has helped them heal tremendously. That has helped them become excellent parents and break generational trauma, and that has helped them how to become productive human beings and how to love their fathers despite of their relational ruptures.
Speaker 1:If you only go in a conversation to validate yourself, you're going to miss out on all of this learning, the learning from the experience that the other person is sharing with you. Your brain is simply going to emit this information and you will never get the benefit of positive neuroplasticity that this conversation has to offer. And if, as usual, women are gathering to talk about how difficult life is, how difficult earning money is, how challenging parenting, marriage, life as a Muslim is, how difficult it is to establish healthy communication, how difficult education in public schools is, allow yourself a healthy dose of validation if it heals your nervous system. But when you see that your brain is using that validation for data gathering to prove the point of how your life is particularly screwed up, that's when I'm asking you to pause. That's when I'm asking you to create a difference.
Speaker 1:The habitual reliving of your previous painful experiences validates your distress, but it does not change it. If you're trying to create change, you have to go from constant validation to finding alternative explanations for the events. So next time you sit in a circle to start to share, just ask yourself am I building a bridge out of this experience or am I digging myself more into it? Your brain will follow the intention you set behind the scenes, and if you want to heal, not to just feel seen, you will need to let your story stretch a little bit. You will need to let it breathe. You will need to be flexible with it. That's the difference between validation that comforts and the validation that transforms. Every time you tell your story just to feel better, without the intention to think differently, you're training your brain to love the story more than the solution. You're getting a high of the dopamine of me too while your goals and change suffocates quietly. Without intention, validation becomes a cage, and this is what I want you guys to be extremely careful about.
Speaker 1:While you're venting about how difficult everything is, how impossible it is for you to trust yourself, or how no one listens to you, you're hardwiring your struggle, there is a danger of only repeated validation. While it might start as healing, it doesn't always end there. You'll feel heard, you will feel seen, but don't cut yourself short in this deal. Also, allow yourself to gather evidence of the success stories that are out there. One is healing, the other one is habitual reliving. The difference is healing happens when you hear something that you don't yet believe and you let it land, even if it's a little bit. Healing creates expansionual reliving contracts your emotional bandwidth. Healing introduces nuance and flexibility. Habitual reliving just replays the same story. Healing will soften your judgment towards yourself and others. It involves openness to you being wrong, openness to you allowing yourself to let go of your story a little bit. Habitual reliving will adamantly guard your current belief. It will not let it change.
Speaker 1:Change requires intentional openness, not just passive listening and sharing. You can actively choose to expose your brain to something unfamiliar, something that might feel difficult for you in the beginning. If you walk into a conversation already decided on what you want to believe, your brain will filter out everything that doesn't match. This is not discernment, this is pre-programming. So let go of these glasses, for I just want to be heard. So let go of these glasses, for I just want to be heard. While that is true, you also want change, otherwise you wouldn't be sharing.
Speaker 1:When you enter a space in a conversation with the intention to truly hear something different, something radical happens in your brain. It starts to tell you that the story that you've been living isn't sick. Your pain is real, but it's not the only reality. It tells you that you're open to more and maybe better interpretations. And with all of that, suddenly change becomes available in the same exact circles, the same exact people that you're hanging out with, same women sharing their stories, but now you also look for how they do things differently, how women create successful businesses in the same economy, living in the same world as you. How does somebody else raise her level of consciousness, raise children strong in their Islamic identities, also while sending them to public schools? How does she get a degree while being a mother? What is the difference in her story that she's telling herself compared to yours? This information has always been around you. It's just not been filtering in.
Speaker 1:Pick an area in your life where you want a different outcome, something that you haven't been able to create yet. While you make dua for it, start to notice how you share your story about that event, how you talk about the difficulties, the failures, the setbacks, and what stories are you only allowing to filter in? Give yourself permission to release your stories for a short period of time. Give yourself a window of time where you're listening for solutions as well. Solution two how do I take care of my elderly parents? Ask yourself, how does she take care of aging parents that are ordinary and agitated all the time? How does she create a million-dollar business? How does she memorize the Quran? How does she become a professional outside the home? All of the answers will filter in through the same gatherings that have otherwise been reinforcing your limited identities, and all of these answers will create change in the positive direction, positive neuroplasticity In everyday conversations.
Speaker 1:For this pre-wiring to happen, set an intention. I'm opening to hearing something that challenges me, that is new to me. Ask other people what works for you in this situation. Allow yourself to say your pain out loud, to share, to validate, to be seen and heard, but also wonder what is it that I'm not seeing? Yet If you're not careful, the comfy circle of friends becomes breeding ground for procedural, negative memories. This is how your brain begins to associate certain relationships and roles, like a daughter, a mother, an entrepreneur, with fixed emotional patterns. A lot of times, these patterns filled with fear, resentment, hopelessness. But just a small shift in how you allow information to come into your mind With that right intention, your brain will start looking for change instead of proving its pain.
Speaker 1:You might feel a little uncomfortable, but you will also feel curious. You will stop dismissing somebody else's story just because it doesn't match yours. You will allow yourself to say what if I'm wrong about my story? In the best way possible. Start by asking small questions and shifting the conversation without shaming your pain. Am I repeating this to feel better or am I allowing myself to see better? What do I want people to say back to me right now? What am I looking for? Is this helping me grow or is it just helping me cope? What belief am I reinforcing by saying this out loud? If I want a different outcome, how will I share my story differently? This alone will take you from validation only to change, from commiseration to growth, from negative to positive neuroplasticity, and just like that, you will stop practicing the pain you've been in.
Speaker 1:With that, I pray to Allah SWT. Ya Allah, let me speak not just to feel seen, but also to be set free. Let me share stories, that they become my new realities. Ya Allah, keep my heart soft to what I haven't seen yet. Guide my tongue away from reinforcing my pain. Let the gatherings around me be a place of light. Let me rewire towards rain, not trauma. Let my comfort seeking be a source of healing, not the one that hides. Ameen, ya Rabbul Ameen, please keep me in your du'as. I will talk to you guys next time.