Helping a Friend

Dear Fatima,

I have a friend who is an amazing person. She is extremely talented, intelligent, caring, compassionate, and kind. She has been a good friend of mine for a few years now and in all the time that I have known her, I have only known her to be a kind-hearted person. While this is my perception of her, as it turns out she does not see herself in this light. For years now she has been battling with low self-esteem. She is her worst critic and is always worried about how people perceive her. Recently she opened up to me and talked to me about how much of a toll her constant self-negativity is taking on her. I truly think her self-doubt and worry is crippling her ability to be happy. Whenever anything good happens to her, she feels like she doesn’t deserve it because of whatever reasons. Likewise, she is increasingly sensitive to small things and sees them as manifestations of her low worth (for example – if someone is laughing at a table where she is seated she automatically assumes she must be doing something wrong and they are laughing at her). It kills me to see her in this situation because she is such an amazing person. No matter how much I tell her, she doesn’t believe it herself. I have suggested counseling to her and, while she is not opposed to it, she hasn’t made much of a move toward going or toward resolving/understanding this issue in general. I even told her to post a question to you and she said she would but never got around to it. I understand that you cannot force or propel anyone toward taking any sort of action. However as her friend, what can I do to help her through this? How can I help her start taking action?

Any advice you can offer would be helpful.
-Helping a Friend

Dear Helping a Friend,

Assalamu ‘alaykum,

Your friend is blessed to have a friend who is caring – and persistant in making sure that she can insha’Allah some day achieve happiness.

What you describe is definitely someone whose inner critic has gotten out of hand.  Since it’s really unlikely that she will seek help on her own – try watching this video and if you think that it would be helpful to her, suggest that she watch it (http://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_on_vulnerability.html)

The speaker shows pretty plainly how shame gets in our way of acheiving growth and ultimately happiness. Guilt and regret are very different than shame.  As Dr. Brown defines it – guilt and regret is about not reaching the principles that you hold yourself to which motivates you to grow and succeed. Meanwhile shame makes you feel that YOU are the problem, not your behavior, so it corrodes the motivation you have to do better.

This is very similar to the idea behind the Prophet (saaws) recommending that you give people good names, and that you don’t call them by derogatory nicknames.  It’s connected to the fact that Allah (swt) creates us pure, and that we always have the opportunity to repent and be better as long as we are alive.  So she’s speaking to a lot of issues that connect very well with the principles in our deen.

She has three books – “I thought it was just me” (about shame), “The Gifts of Imperfection” (about why shame is destructive and the beginnings of what protects against the ways it sabotages one’s life), and “Daring Greatly” (about how to overcome it).  If the video hits a chord, then she might want to look up the books.  I’ve read “The Gifts of Imperfection” and would highly recommend it.

wa ‘alaykum salam

 –       Fatima FM

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