Islamic Life Coach School Podcast

Life's Curriculum

Kanwal Akhtar Episode 243

Have you ever considered that what was missing from your childhood might be the key to your healing journey? This episode explores the powerful concept of your "invisible life curriculum"  the lessons we absorb not through what was present in our upbringing, but through what was absent.

I share a transformative three-step process to help you identify patterns, connect them to what was missing in your past, and begin the healing work of self-parenting. Whether you struggle with setting boundaries, expressing emotions, resting without guilt, or communicating during conflict, these challenges point to specific gaps in your emotional education that you can now fill as an adult.

 Your journey to emotional health begins with awareness – and this episode is your first step.

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Wisdom Wednesdays is your chance to apply what you learn in this podcast. It is my weekly coaching program that will create real time change based on everything you learn here. 

https://www.islamiclifecoachschool.com/wisdom-wednesdays

Speaker 1:

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. I hope you guys are ready to learn something, because today we're going to be talking about curriculums, and not the one that you learn in university or school, but your life's curriculum.

Speaker 1:

I heard something powerful the other day, and it was just one sentence and honestly I can't even remember the exact sentence or the context, but the message was so powerful that it stuck with me, or at least the essence of the message stuck with me, and that was that the past only adds to your growth if you're able to reframe it, meaning your difficult past might always weigh you down unless you're able to think differently about it, and that differently does not have to go from I had a tough childhood to I had the best childhood, or going from I had a horrible past to I had it best. When I talk about reframing the past, that's what usually comes up for clients, because at the default setting, the brain only offers black and white, the extremes of a possibility. It was the worst and I meant to make it the best. But when I talk about reframing, what I mean is you have to find meaning somewhere in between. You have to look for the gray area. It makes a huge difference where you can see what was missing in your past rather than what was present. So this invisible life curriculum elaborates on how children absorbs lessons not just through what's said or done to them, but also through what was absent in their life. So examples like if no one said I'm proud of you without an award attached, you may still be chasing achievements just to feel love and belonging. If you always saw the adults in your life fight a lot and you had a lot of examples of unhealthy conflict and you were missing all of the examples of healthy conflict resolution, then how would you ever know how to do that? So if your past only works in your favor, if you're able to reframe it and not only reframe it but you see the gray area in it and for recognizing that gray area you have to see what was missing in your past so that you can give it to yourself as an adult then it only makes sense for me to give you a framework on how to do that exactly. So this is what this podcast is about.

Speaker 1:

So step number one in this whole process is that you name the pattern. What do you struggle with now? Find out, name it, label it. Step two you spot it in your past where you think it was missing, where it wasn't modeled, where you weren't validated, where your feelings weren't allowed. Step three is that you give it to yourself now. Learn it, get coaching on it, obtain it from self-help books. How you're going to choose to practice that today, that's step three. So, for example, if you don't know how to ask for help, that's your pattern. That's step one. Then step two is you're going to try and identify where in the past it wasn't modeled for you, where you were never taught to ask for help with dignity, and then you're going to start to practice it for yourself. That's a self-parenting phenomena. You start by practicing small asks and letting people say yes or no without making it mean anything about yourself.

Speaker 1:

And this absolutely has to happen for you to not perpetuate generational trauma. For you to break that link, you have to change your relationship with the past. You have to see it in a way that provides you healing. Well, you don't have to, but you might want to, because that's what studies show is most helpful. Otherwise, you'll be stuck in blaming the world, the marriage, the economy, your diagnosis, your in-laws, your children or your business. And the worst part is you're not going to know that you're stuck in blaming these things. You're not going to know that you're in a victim mentality. And if you're unaware of this victim mentality, then chances are that you're not looking for solutions because you're unaware of the problem to begin with, and that you're not going to be listening to this podcast and you're just existing in your victimhood like it's some sort of unchangeable reality. But for those of you where this victimhood is present and you're aware of it without self-blame, this podcast will serve as the healthiest launchpad for change.

Speaker 1:

Generational emotional deprivation, especially in the absence of healthy emotional modeling, and the resulting unlearning of the healthy patterns. All of this is your curriculum. This means that you get to relearn as an adult and you must face this reality to become emotionally healthy. When you were never taught how to set healthy boundaries as a child or resting without guilt or trust your intuition, then this is your curriculum as an adult to learn for yourself the cost of never having had a model and the radical possibility of becoming that model. Now, the difference between these two possibilities is your ability to learn. Is your ability to learn? If you're at a point in your life where you have an awareness that you're unable to hold boundaries, you might have seen modeled that the only way to exist as a woman is to be a doormat. Then, instead of blaming that past, see that it was missing. Just acknowledge it and be aware of it. What was missing is your curriculum. Now you get to learn holding healthy boundaries, with respect. If the only resolution you ever saw was silence and cold treatment, then you will not magically know how to resolve conflict calmly or with communication. And instead of blaming that past, notice what was missing and give yourself that education.

Speaker 1:

If you only received love when you were achieving, then of course, slowing down does not feel like rest. It feels like there's something missing, like you're doing something wrong. Through all of these events in the past, you learned that your value was tied to your productivity, that love had to be earned, that your presence had to be justified with performance. So even when your body begs for rest, your mind kicks in with guilt. When you recognize this pattern, you will know now that your past only works in your favor if you're willing to reframe it. And just like I said before, reframing is not about just positive thinking. It is also to see the gray in between, find out the hidden message.

Speaker 1:

Work now is not to blame. It's to name what was missing, because until you see what you didn't get, you will not know how to give it to yourself. If you didn't get love just for being, that's the missing piece. As an adult, that's what you get to give to yourself and to reclaim it. You get to create safety in stillness. You get to learn that rest is not a risk. Similarly, if there was no healthy modeling of how to express your emotions, you will not know how to direct your anger in a productive way. If you were raised to believe that speaking up leads to punishment when emotions were met with eye rolls or lectures, it makes sense that you second-guess every feeling that rises up in you as an adult. Now, if no one ever apologized to you and actually meant it, how would you be able to recognize what real repair looks like? If growing up peace meant pretending nothing was wrong, of course any kind of discomfort is going to feel dangerous now.

Speaker 1:

All of these point to your invisible emotional life curriculum. What you learned? Not through words, but through what was absent Silence or escapism instead of resolution, criticism instead of comfort, celebration of achievement instead of unconditional love, self-abandonment instead of boundaries. You might freeze or fawn in a conflict, not because you're weak or it's a personality defect, but because disagreement in your past always came with a cost. This is your curriculum, when you had to guess what mood the room was in, just to stay safe.

Speaker 1:

Asking directly now probably doesn't feel natural. That does not mean that you have poor communication skills. That just means that you need to relearn them. If people around you fought, stormed off and never repaired, then how would you know that intimacy grows from relationship ruptures? What you always saw modeled was that the goal was to win an argument, not to understand each other. It only makes sense that listening now feels like a surrender. That does not mean that you were born to be a bad listener. So use your past to create a curriculum and not blame yourself.

Speaker 1:

Through the process, talk more and more about your own healing and reparenting yourself as an adult. You're not erasing your past, you're just updating this blueprint. You can say things like I soothe myself after conflict now because I never saw peaceful repair growing up, or I can never rest without guilt because I was only praised for my productivity. If these are the realities for you, talk and practice more about this healing and reparenting yourself as an adult. Normalize the gray space, the missing links that you're learning about, about your past.

Speaker 1:

So the three-step process, to recap all of that is number one you name the pattern. What is it that you're struggling with now? Number two spot where it was missing in your past. It wasn't modeled, it wasn't validated, it wasn't shown to you and it wasn't taught. Number three is you give it to yourself now, through some means or another, without self-blame, because blame is what keeps your nervous system on alert, looking for someone to punish and more often than not, you're punishing yourself. Reframing will shift you into a solution mode where the nervous system heals and softens, and this curriculum is exceptionally unique to each and every one of you, because legacy is not just about what you leave behind. It's more about what you stop from passing down.

Speaker 1:

Reframing your difficult past only adds to your success in this world and the afterlife. Your motivation to reframe your past, to create your healing now, is going to be a powerful motivator for you to discover this invisible life curriculum. When you do it with a coach, it happens much faster. You can do it with yourself, but it's a slow and tedious process and there are a lot of mistakes that people make, which is not a bad thing in itself if that's what you choose to do, but with a coach it's a lot faster and easier.

Speaker 1:

With that, I pray to Allah, subhanahu wa ta'ala. Ya Allah, help me see my past with compassion. Show me what was missing so I can grow. Grant me the wisdom to reframe and the strength to repair. You are the one who sees what no one else sees. Let the invisible of the past be visible to me now, so I can heal. For the sake of this ummah, for the sake of myself, ya Allah, teach me how to nurture and parent myself. Let this reparenting be an act of worship. So I return to my fitrah. Ameen, ya Rabbul A'lamin, please keep me in your duas. I will talk to you guys next time.