Name: How to Cope with the New Zealand Mosque Shooting Tragedy | Trauma Special
Uploaded: 2019-03-15T22:59:15.000Z
Channel: Najwa Awad
Description: Licensed therapists Najwa Awad, LSCW-C and Sarah Sultan, LPC, LMHC, authors of “Trauma: Your Lord Has Not Forsaken You” share practical tips on how Muslims can cope with the recent tragedy in Christchurch, New Zealand. Explore the first few chapters of the series here.

<a href="https://yaqeeninstitute.org/series/trauma/">Trauma: Your Lord Has Not Forsaken You</a><a href="https://yaqeeninstitute.org/omar-suleiman/after-devastating-new-zealand-attack-we-will-not-be-deterred/">Christchurch, New Zealand</a><a href="https://yaqeeninstitute.org/series/trauma/">here</a>

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A psychological and spiritual perspective on enduring emotional pain and suffering. This topic explores healing mechanisms found within Islamic traditions and modern psychology.

Trauma

Your Lord Has Not Forsaken You | Trauma Series Introduction

Why Do Bad Things Only Happen To Me? | Trauma Ep. 1

How to Cope with the New Zealand Mosque Shooting Tragedy | Trauma Special

I Should've Gotten Over It by Now | Trauma Ep. 2

Why Bother Living if the Future is Filled with Pain? | Trauma Ep. 3

How Can I Ever Trust Again? | Trauma Ep. 4

Why Does Allah Hate Me So Much? | Trauma Ep. 5

Addressing the Topic of Trauma and Faith - Sh. Omar Suleiman | ISNACON 2019

The Impact of Trauma on Faith - Sarah Sultan | ISNACON 2019

The Duha Approach: A New Model to Treat Trauma - Najwa Awad | ISNACON 2019

How Islam Addresses Grief - Dr. Altaf Husain | ISNACON 2019

Everything is Falling Apart | Trauma Ep. 6

The Impact of Grief on Faith - Sarah Sultan | ISNACON 2019

Understanding Traumatic Grief - Najwa Awad | ISNACON 2019

I Must Have Done Something Wrong - Is It My Fault? | Trauma Ep. 7

How Can I Ever Get Past This? | Trauma Ep. 8

Why is Everyone's Life Better than Mine? | Trauma Ep. 9

3 Reasons Why You Think the World Is Against You

Healing the Community | MASCON 2019

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Najwa Awad

Written by licensed therapists Najwa Awad, LSCW-C and Sarah Sultan, LPC, LMHC, this series of articles and videos seeks to address trauma through The Duha Approach, a comprehensive and Islamically sound approach to treating trauma from a spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical perspective. Each article and video in the series will address one of the ten most common types of cognitive distortions, or unhealthy ways of thinking, linked to common faith-based questions that may arise after having experienced adversity. The primary purpose of this series is to provide a refuge and healing for those who have silently endured trauma, perhaps not fully understanding what is happening to them and not knowing how or where to get help. The articles will work through depressive feelings, worries, and doubts that may impact faith while helping promote growth and healing.

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This section provides research on trauma and adversity from a psychospiritual perspective and theoretical and empirical research on the psychological processes involved in belief, doubt, and religious identity.

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Trauma: Your Lord Has Not Forsaken You

 As-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatu. This is Najwa Awad, one of the fellows at Yaqeen Institute.  And today we're going to be talking about what everybody has been talking about, the shootings in New Zealand.  Just that surge of emotions, the fear, the sadness, the grief, and what we can be doing as individuals,  as families and communities to help cope with the situation.  Right, absolutely. And you know, what happened in New Zealand is nothing short of a tragedy.  And it's definitely something that is incredibly traumatic for the Muslim community at large.  And so anything that you might be experiencing right now in terms of fear, anxiety, hyper-vigilance,  anxiety, fear, anxiety, hyper-vigilance,  is completely normal. You might be afraid to go to the masjid today for jumu'ah prayers.  You might be afraid to send your kids to school after spring break is done,  when they might be attending an Islamic school or even a school within a masjid.  You might be worried about walking outside your door with hijab.  And all of that anxiety and all of that fear is completely normal.  So don't be hard on yourself because of the fact that you're experiencing that.  Yes, absolutely. And so today we wanted to talk about what happened within the context of trauma.  Because it's important to know why we feel the way that we do so we can better cope with what's been going on.  So generally when there is a trauma or something really catastrophic, people fall into one of three categories.  They can go from a very negative to a very positive.  So when there is a trauma or something really catastrophic, people fall into one of three categories.  They can go into fight mode, where they want to take action, they want to move their bodies.  They might feel agitated or they just feel like they're on the go and they can't stop.  The second category of people are people who go into flight mode,  meaning they tend to run away from the situation, they want to get out.  And this could be getting out from the community or from the house.  Or just wanting to isolate. And the last one is freezing.  It's just being paralyzed and not knowing what to do.  Right, absolutely. And I think one of the things that's a common theme,  even though all of these sound really different, one of the things that's a common theme is that  when we are in this really stressful mode of fight, flight, or freeze,  we can't process the emotions of what we're experiencing, right?  We don't allow ourselves to grieve.  We don't allow ourselves to feel the sadness, the overwhelming sadness that comes with news like this.  And so one thing, like Najwa was mentioning, is that this is something that is a response to trauma.  And I think a lot of times people don't realize that trauma doesn't have to just impact us  if we have been within that situation.  So we weren't living in the U.S., we're thousands of miles away from New Zealand,  but we can still experience some of the trauma through something called vicarious trauma,  where even though we were not in that masjid, even though we may not have known anybody personally  who experienced the tragic events that happened yesterday,  we can still feel traumatized in that we naturally tend to visualize that this is our local masjid.  That the people who were imagining that the person sitting next to you at the masjid during Jummah  is in this type of situation.  That in and of itself, the imagery and the visualization of something like that happening in our local masjid,  that in and of itself can be incredibly traumatic, and that's called vicarious trauma.  Yeah, absolutely. It's almost like secondhand smoke.  You're not the one smoking, but you still feel the effects of it.  And so, yeah, and so knowing this and exercising self-compassion,  not feeling bad that you feel a certain kind of way about it, helps a tremendous amount.  So, Sara, what are some of the things that you do with your clients  when they're experiencing some of these feelings of trauma?  That's a great question. And I do this with my clients and also with myself.  When something like this happens and my anxiety levels go up or my clients' anxiety levels go up,  one thing that I find really helpful is to realize that even though our anxiety levels are up  and our bodies might be experiencing this stress response of anxiety,  your heart might be beating faster, you might find yourself sweating  or feeling a little bit shaky and worried in that way, that in reality,  in the situation that you're in here watching this video, you are safe, right?  There's no impending physical danger, even though your body is responding to the thought of potential physical danger.  And that's what anxiety is, right?  And so realizing that the lungs that are going through, that your lungs are breathing in the air,  that are going through your nostrils and your mouth, that your feet are grounded on the floor,  which is very firm, that your eyes can scan the enviro…

Trauma: Your Lord Has Not Forsaken You

Najwa Awad

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