Islamic Life Coach School Podcast
Islamic Life Coach School Podcast
Your Internal Gaslighter
Do you ever sense something's wrong but can't quite grasp what it is? That foggy feeling might be evidence of internal gaslighting – a psychological phenomenon where your personal qareen (the Islamic concept of an individual's shaitan) subtly manipulates your perception of reality.
This podcast explores how this spiritual gaslighter operates with Oscar-worthy precision, creating emotional confusion without ever being detected. Rather than making overtly negative statements, your qareen plants doubt through implications: "I'm not saying I'm a bad mom, but..." followed by evidence that leads to exactly that conclusion. The brilliance of this tactic is that it bypasses your conscious defenses, making the real problem always feel just beyond your reach.
For high-functioning Muslim women, this manifests in constantly denying what's truly bothering them. You might hear yourself saying "I don't care what others think" while secretly ruminating on criticism, or "I'm not judging" while comparison steals your joy. These contradictions aren't moral failings but protection strategies that shaitan weaponizes. The tragedy isn't in experiencing negative emotions – jealousy, judgment, or anger – but in being unable to recognize them. When emotions remain unnamed, they can't be transformed through dua, self-reflection, or conscious redirection.
The path to freedom begins with radical honesty – telling yourself the unfiltered truth about what you're feeling. This isn't contrary to Islamic teachings; rather, it embodies true tawakkul, trusting that Allah's mercy encompasses even your most uncomfortable emotions. When you bring your whole, unsanitized experience to Allah, you create the spiritual intimacy that leads to genuine transformation. Join me in the Empowered Muslim Women Coaching Program where we learn to unmask the internal gaslighter and reclaim our emotional clarity through Islamic psychology.
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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:Today I come to you with an amazingly fascinating subject. This has to do with internal gaslighting and how you're doing it to yourself. We all have a professional, deliberate internal gaslighter whose job it is to make you mistrust your thoughts and your emotions. Everyone has this gaslighter and that's your inner Kareen, the voice of mischief, the Shaitan. This Shaitan is your professional internal gaslight lighter. Now, this is an incredibly life-changing concept. Inshallah, it's going to create a huge effect in your life and all you have to do is pay attention and internalize lessons in this podcast.
Speaker 1:So in my AMW program, I have a powerful framework that takes into account the negative cognitions through the lens of Islamic psychology, and at the center of this concept is our true, inherent, primordial self, the soul that's pure and connected to Allah, that is always seeking Allah and that shows up in our behaviors, aspirations, thoughts and our dispositions. All of us have that as well Through the Islamic lens of ruh. All of us have that as well Through the Islamic lens of ruh. This is the battery of life, battery for your body. Without it, your body is lifeless, and this ruh is what is always connected to Allah. Now, in this podcast, I'm going to use the term ruh and soul interchangeably, and this is for the sake of simplicity, but there are a lot of more important details that we go through in the program that I'm not going to mention here, because I want to deliver an incredible and a simple message that makes a change in your life. So this ruh is pure and it's 100% worthy through the factor of creation by Allah.
Speaker 1:So then, why is there so much mischief in our minds and in our lives? Because, then, on top of that ruh is the nafs and shaitan. More specifically, our personal shaitan, or the qareen, uses this nafs as a seat to anchor himself into our psyche and, by extension, he anchors himself in our daily lives. This shaitan, as a professional gaslighter, is so well-versed and knowledgeable about you that he could literally win an Oscar for emotional misdirection, and he does it very subtly, very swiftly, and he does it so proficiently that you don't recognize that this is happening. He will leave you with complete disillusion and confusion if you don't slow down to recognize what I'm about to teach you.
Speaker 1:What the voice actually says is I'm not saying I'm a bad mom, but I am saying that I don't usually remember appointments, I forget to pack their snacks and I don't stay calm when it counts. And this is exactly what the trick is. It doesn't call you a bad mom that would be too obvious and your conscious mind would catch it. Instead, it lets you believe that you're not calling yourself a bad mom or any other mean names, while it's sneakily planting those conclusions right under your skin. It gives you a feeling of the failure without being able to recognize the language of it. So that way you can't control it directly, you can't change it and you can't even coach yourself out of it, because you're not aware of what's happening. This is internal gaslighting. It's what happens when the real problem keeps slipping through your fingers like fog. You know something's off, you sense it, but every time you reach for it to try and explain it and help yourself, it evaporates.
Speaker 1:In my coaching, very frequently it sounds something like this I don't think I'm being too hard on myself, I'm just trying to hold myself accountable, or I'm not avoiding conflict, I just prefer peace, or I don't know what I'm feeling right now. It's not a big deal anyways. When I hear these sentences in my practice that start with I don't think I'm doing this, or this is not what's happening. Or women telling me I don't let anyone's opinion bother me, I don't care what he says about me. But all of these sentences are always followed by a pain point, something that the client's going through. I know exactly what the problem is as soon as these words start to come out of her mouth. The problem is that his opinion is bothering her and she does care enough. But all of that is happening at the subconscious level.
Speaker 1:When, as a coach, I reflect something back to you as a client and your first instinct is confusion, dismissal, denial, defensiveness. Not because my reflection is wrong, I mean. It certainly can be and it happens at times, but majority of the time, if I point out that you were saying something that is not bothering you, is exactly what's bothering you. You might not see it the first time and that's okay. That phenomenon happens to me all the time as a client. My coach points out something to me and I would be like what are you talking about? That's absolutely not true. That's obviously not happening. But when we approach the topic from a different direction, it turns out it is true and it's been true, and that is usually the core of the problem to begin with.
Speaker 1:This happens not because you or me, as clients, are deflecting or we're avoidant, but because we genuinely can't see it. What's happening is that you've been gaslit by what seems like your own self, seems like a part of your own nervous system, but it's actually shaitan's trick. That doesn't mean that your coach is always right. That does not mean that there's something wrong with you for not being able to recognize this. It just means that shaitan is editing your awareness. No, there is a part of your inner healing intelligence, a part of your mind that is protective and it keeps you from uncovering things that you might not be able to handle currently, and that is a very smart design. But if the problem keeps evading you, even when you're trying to actively heal it on your journey, even when you're resourced enough to hold your pain and awareness, especially when you're working with a professional, and even in those circumstances, the truth still keeps escaping you, this is the work of the internal gaslighter, shaitan. The protective part of your nervous system works to save you from the discomfort of noticing something painful, especially if you're not equipped to handle that in your awareness and if there's a risk that with that awareness, your nervous system might get overloaded and flooded with an open memory. This is a super smart design. It's designed to protect you. But if any of those beliefs are outdated and need to change and you have the correct support system and still you're unable to recognize the problem, then it is the internal gas lighter and it's time to bring them to light.
Speaker 1:A lot of times this level of avoidance is trauma-based and when that's the case it's essential to work with a licensed therapist or trauma-informed clinician. But a lot of other times it's just uncomfort, mild, moderate, manageable, and even then your brain will do everything to protect you and eject that insight out of your conscious awareness. You'll scroll past it, you'll forget what the coach said, you'll start cleaning the kitchen or replying to the emails or scrolling through social media whatever it is that you do for escaping and instead you'll tell yourself that's not me, that's not what's happening with me. What I'm talking about is a whole different level of psychological escape artistry. Shaitan doesn't need to shout. All it needs is for you to doubt, to second guess, to stay foggy just long enough that you don't recognize where the change needs to happen. The invitation in my coaching is not to fight that voice but to notice it. Not to shame yourself for that voice being present, but to name it. To slow down long enough to allow yourself to ask what am I not willing to feel right now? Are these thoughts mine or is this the internal gaslighter writing the script for me? With that awareness, start your awudu billah.
Speaker 1:This is the case of the slippery brain that I talked about in the previous podcast. It pulls the disappearing act where the psyche is unable to recognize the problem. But, most importantly and luckily, it's not your own psyche that's trying to harm you. It's takareen. It's not happening because you are inherently evil. It's happening because a third party that wants to cause you harm is creating this. Your slippery brain is sometimes just trying to protect you, but the harm of ongoing non-healing happens because of shaitan. And in that case, when you recognize that, you ask Allah, subhanahu wa ta'ala, to help you protect from the effects of the shaitan and to help you heal, the trick that the slippery brain feeds on is that it's able to pull off a successful disappearing act.
Speaker 1:This is especially exaggerated in the society, where negative emotions are socialized to never be felt and are considered that it's the worst thing that can happen to you. So, as a child, you never get any training to carry your emotions or to live through them. You're only trained to bury them or avoid them or escape them. So, as a result of all of this, when a client starts off by saying it's not like, I'm bothered by my mom's comment. I'm the kind of person who lets things roll off my back, but the fact that we're even talking about this tells me that it didn't roll off her back. The story is still stuck in her mind and in her nervous system and she keeps revisiting it, replaying it.
Speaker 1:The slippery brain, the professional internal gaslighter, causes the erasure of emotional pain because we're not taught how to deal with it in a healthy way, and this is shaitan's finest work. So what you have to do is learn and allow yourself to have emotional intelligence and recognize that the most painful of emotions frustration, anger, judgment, jealousy, emotions themselves are not sinful. There's no actual harm coming to you from feeling an emotion, but from not recognizing them, from avoiding them, from escaping them. Harm actually does come to your life. One of the most cunning emotional distortions that I see happening in high-functioning Muslim women is the rebranding of such negative emotions, especially judgment. Because, as Muslims, as we are rightly taught to think highly of other people, if there's a subconscious judgment present for another person, it quickly slips out of awareness because recognizing it would make us a bad Muslim, while that actually is not true. Same thing with jealousy. Only not being able to recognize these emotions and continuing to act on them is going to be sinful. That's what's going to create harmful effects in your life.
Speaker 1:This is not a moral failing. It's a protection strategy and unfortunately, shaitan knows how to weaponize it. Because when you can't name what you feel, you can't transform it, and when you're confused about what's happening inside, you stay stuck in the cycle of constant low-key shame. Shaitan doesn't win by making you sin overtly. He wins by keeping you confused so you continue to sin covertly. He wins when your pain is camouflaged and confused with piety. He wins when your judgment is wrapped in a religious concern, especially when you start to appear to be extremely self-righteous.
Speaker 1:The cost of misnaming or completely not recognizing emotions is large. It is extremely huge, because now you're not just feeling something painful, but you're feeling wrong for feeling it and it continues to perpetuate because you're unable to recognize it. You're emotionally dysregulated and spiritually guilty and, yes, your emotional health might need to be uplifted and purified. But that can't happen unless you can identify it. You need to understand the emotions you're going through, but when you can't label jealousy accurately or judgment accurately, you can't turn that into dua, you can't turn that into something constructive or even ask for forgiveness for having been in that state. When you name your judgment for somebody else, clearly you turn it into self-awareness. But when you deny these feelings, you don't become more religious and righteous, you become more resentful, and that's the real spiritual danger.
Speaker 1:The negative emotion itself does not cause as much harm as not recognizing it does. What happens when the negative emotion is denied, misnamed, is shaitan comes in and completes his trick. The moment you name an uncomfortable emotion, the moment you are able to recognize that negative thought pattern, what was previously very slippery and was previously escaping your awareness, when that happens, you unlock your power to direct that energy. When you name jealousy as jealousy, judgment as judgment, it becomes material. You can work with. That's when transformation begins.
Speaker 1:One of my clients came to my session saying I'm not judging other moms I barely have time to look at what anyone else is doing but as we talked, she confessed that she felt inferior when she saw other parents post about their kids' accomplishments. She started saying things like how everyone's child is in a gifted program and mine is average, and again followed by that famous line I'm not jealous or anything. I'm just worried and that might be true for her and for you as well that you are worried because you're a mom and you want the best for your kid and you want what somebody else's married life looks like on Instagram peaceful and loving. You want all of that for yourself. But not admitting that you want all of that, not admitting that you've fallen into comparison and not inspiration, it will never allow for you to have what you want. You can't make dua for it, you can't work towards it, because you're unable to bring into your awareness what you actually want. And that is why coaching sessions are so extremely powerful. And that mom, when she recognized that she stopped escaping her discomfort, she stopped being reactive around her children, which was coming to her because she was trying to suppress all of this discomfort and this worry.
Speaker 1:When Muslim women mislabel their emotions or are unable to recognize them, they lose the opportunity to redirect them. They miss the learning opportunity that teaches them that next time I feel this way, this is what I'm going to do with it. And the fear that blocks this progress is exactly from shaitan as well Fear of being a bad woman or a bad Muslim. I'm not supposed to think these things, I'm not supposed to admit to these things. Islam, in reality, gives a far more nuanced and detailed response than don't feel that. You're not supposed to think that. Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam never taught us to suppress emotions. He taught us to bring everything to Allah, subhanahu wa ta'ala. And if you can't recognize what you need to bring to Allah in dua, then bring it to a coach. So now we have named the slippery brain, we've exposed Shaitan's trick of emotional rebranding.
Speaker 1:What do we do about it? How do we turn this from spiritual gaslighting to spiritual growth? And the answer is very simple, but it might feel confronting. You start by telling yourself the truth, not the polished, presentable, socially acceptable truth, the actual truth. I felt jealous, I felt hurt, I'm judging this woman because I might be insecure in this area or that, and then you sit with it because these are not your thoughts. Remember your pure, inherent psyche. The ruh, the soul, is completely pure when you are sitting with these thoughts that seem like yours are actually shaitans. When you join my program, it becomes very easy for you to separate yourself from these levels of negative cognitions. These are all simple, powerful questions that act like mirrors, and if you're unable to hold that mirror up for yourself, allow me and my coaching program to do that. In the Empowered Muslim Women Coaching Program, we start with the first month labeled for Emotional Fitness Clinic, and that's where I use my Soulful Intelligence Framework to rewire all of this.
Speaker 1:This is spiritual work. This is not something separate from your deen. Understanding this design, working on this design is not self-indulgent, it is absolutely essential. It is self-honoring. You are acknowledging the design of your heart, your nafs, your nervous system, all created by Allah SWT.
Speaker 1:If your emotions are constantly playing hide and seek, if you've never learned to trust your own judgment, if you've always been gaslighted by distortions, your inner healing intelligence can never come forward, and that's where shaitan thrives. This is why community and coaching is everything Most of us don't realize. We're gaslighting ourselves until we hear another woman speak the truth about her life. There's immense power of women, healing in sisterhood and community. We help each other name what's hiding and once it's named, we redirect it, we heal it, we get elevated.
Speaker 1:Inshallah, bringing your whole raw, unsanitized emotional experience to Allah SWT is not spiritual failure. It is the best example of spiritual intimacy. It is your declaration that you trust His mercy more than your own shame, that you believe that he created your nervous system on purpose, that even your most unflattering feelings are worthy to be seen, held and healed. This is tawakkul. This puts you on a life of ihsan, the path of self-leadership grounded in Allah's rahmah. And when you do this work, when you stop hiding from your own emotional reality, the payoff is massive. It's spiritual, it's practical, it's life-changing. You stop outsourcing, you start self-validating, you stop spinning in confusion while you're feeling off all the time. You're calmer, you're lighter, you go through life with much more peace and sense of stillness and kindness, not because your life changed or that your life is now perfect, but because you're not fighting yourself anymore. Your inside starts to match your outside.
Speaker 1:With that I pray to Allah SWT. Ya Allah, let me see what is true inside of me. Let me uncover what is shaytan's trick and what it's not letting me recognize, uncover what shaitan has buried for me, not to shame me, but to free me. Protect me from shaitan's whispers that confuse my emotions and silence my heart. Help me name what I feel with courage and bring it to you with sincerity. Make my awareness a doorway to healing, not self-blame, and turn every emotion into a means to come near to you. Ya Allah, ameen, ya Rabbul Alameen, please keep me in your du'as. I will talk to you guys next time.