ALAM Psychotherapy & Consulting

06/01/2025

There are parts of you that survived by staying quiet, agreeable, and small.

Not because you were weak. But because your nervous system believed it was the only way to stay safe.

You learned to read the room before you could even read books.

You learned to anticipate others’ needs while disconnecting from your own.

You learned to confuse being accepted with being loved.

But healing invites you to pause. To return.

To whisper “I’m sorry” to the younger you who was just trying to survive.

To speak to yourself with the same compassion you offer everyone else.

To see that mercy is not just something we give others. It’s something we’re called to give ourselves too and sometimes, mercy looks like no longer abandoning yourself.

You are allowed to grieve the times you didn’t know better.

And you’re allowed to stop apologizing for the woman you are becoming.

If this resonates, follow .with.samira for more trauma-informed, faith-rooted reflections.

⸻

06/01/2025

Some relationships only work when you hide how you really feel.

That’s not peace. That’s called self-abandonment, when you stop listening to your own heart so someone else can feel comfortable.

Maybe you were taught that keeping the peace means keeping quiet.

Maybe you learned that love means never upsetting anyone.

Maybe, over time, you believed that your feelings were too much, so you stopped speaking them.

But here’s something important to know:
Silencing yourself isn’t love. It’s survival.
And survival mode isn’t how Allah wants you to live.

You weren’t created to walk on eggshells.

You weren’t made to hide your needs just to stay close to someone.

The nervous system plays a big role here. When you grow up around fear, yelling, rejection, or emotional neglect, your body learns to stay quiet to stay safe.
Even as an adult, your body might still think:

“If I say something, I’ll be hurt, left out, or unloved.”

That’s your trauma speaking. Not your truth.

True safety is when you can be fully yourself and still feel loved.

Not only does that help your mental health, it helps your body relax and your faith grow.

Because when you no longer fear rejection, you make space for rahmah (mercy), sakeenah (peace), and ihsan (goodness), the kind of love Islam teaches us to seek.

You deserve to be in relationships where your voice isn’t a threat, it’s a part of the connection.

Here’s what to try if this speaks to you:
Practice saying, “This doesn’t feel okay to me.” Even just to yourself.
Ask: “Am I safe… or just silent?”
Remind your nervous system: “I am allowed to take up space.”
Make du’a: “O Allah, surround me with people who make space for my growth and not just my silence.”

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Save this if you’ve ever had to shrink yourself to be loved.

Share it with someone learning to set boundaries.

Follow .with.samira for more trauma-informed, faith-rooted healing reminders.

05/31/2025

Many parents say they’d do anything for their kids. They talk about sacrifice. Staying up all night. Working multiple jobs.
Giving their child what they never had.

And while those sacrifices are real —
there’s a deeper offering your child needs:
Your emotional presence. Your regulation. Your healing.

the hardest thing to do - and the most loving - is to face the parts of yourself that feel angry, afraid, or ashamed.

Because unhealed pain doesn’t disappear.
It spills into your tone.
It shapes your child’s nervous system.
It becomes their inner voice.

Because what hasn’t been healed in you, gets passed on.
Not out of malice, but out of repetition.
Out of survival.
Out of what your nervous system learned when you were just a child.

You may not have been allowed to cry.
You may have been told to be “grateful,” “tough,” “quiet.”
You may have been gaslit, neglected, or parented through fear.

None of that was your fault.
But healing it is your responsibility now —
not just for you, but for the soul who now calls you “Mom” or “Dad.”

Your child doesn’t just inherit your DNA.
They absorb your energy.
They hear how you talk to yourself.
They feel whether it’s safe to come to you with their feelings.

And when your wounds remain unhealed, they will start thinking something is wrong with them.
They’ll internalize the tension. The blame. The rejection.

And carry it into their own relationships, their own self-worth, their own bodies.

You don’t have to be perfect.
But you do have to be willing
to pause, to reflect, to repair.

Healing isn’t loud. It’s not glamorous.
It often looks like sitting in silence with feelings you were taught to avoid.
It’s catching yourself before repeating a pattern.
It’s apologizing.
It’s going to therapy when you’d rather numb or blame.

That’s the kind of parent who changes everything.

Dying for them feels heroic.
But healing for them? That’s what breaks cycles.

Follow .with.samira for more.

—

05/29/2025

Avoidance feels like safety when your body is overwhelmed. But real healing means gently learning how to stay, even when it’s hard.

Let’s explain this more clearly.

When something feels too big, scary, or uncomfortable, your brain might say:
“Let’s just not think about it.”
Or
“Let’s do something else. Let’s scroll, sleep, clean, or eat instead.”

That’s called avoidance.

And your brain does it to protect you, especially if you’ve been through things that made you feel unsafe before.

But here’s the thing:
Avoiding hard things all the time doesn’t actually make us feel better in the long run.
It makes our world feel smaller.
It makes our body stay on “alert” more often.
And it can make everyday things feel harder over time.

Healing doesn’t mean pushing yourself into stress.

It means learning how to stay just a little longer with your feelings, and showing your body that it’s okay now.

Avoidance isn’t a bad habit. It’s a body signal that says: “I don’t feel safe yet.”

Healing means giving your body new messages. Messages like:
“You can be safe now.”
“It’s okay to feel this.”
“Allah is with me, even when I feel overwhelmed.”

You don’t have to stay in hard feelings forever.
You just need to practice not running away from them right away.

Healing takes time.
And it always begins with small, safe steps.

⸻

Follow .with.samira for more faith-based, trauma-informed support your nervous system can understand.

05/27/2025

When you feel scared, anxious, or overwhelmed, your body reacts before your mind does.

Your heart beats fast.
Your breathing changes.
Your hands might sweat.
You might feel like running away, shutting down, or doing nothing at all.

Even when nothing bad is happening, your body might still feel like you’re in danger. This is what trauma and stress can do to the nervous system.

But here’s something beautiful and comforting:

Allah already gave us ways to help our body feel safe again.

They are part of our religion.

Especially in salah (prayer).

When we pray, we recite.
We stand. We bow. We sit. We breathe.
We place our forehead on the ground.
We listen to the words of the Qur’an.
We move slowly. We repeat. We pause.

All of this helps you feel:
• More grounded
• More calm
• More connected to yourself
• And more connected to your Lord

Prayer helps the nervous system come out of stress and into peace.

And the best part? It’s not just your body that finds comfort.

Your soul does too.

Because prayer reminds you that Allah is with you.
He Sees you.
He Hears you.
And He is As-Salaam, the Source of Peace.

Modern therapy teaches grounding, breathwork, movement, and stillness to help people heal.

But Islam gave us all of that, long before therapy existed.

And it was given to us with purpose, meaning, and connection to the One who created us.

If you’re overwhelmed, start with salah.
A way back to and source of healing for your body, mind, and soul.

⸻

Save this for the days you feel disconnected.
Follow .with.samira for more healing through a trauma-informed, faith-integrated lens.

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05/26/2025

Did you know that reciting the Qur’an can actually calm your nervous system?

Not just your mind. Not just your emotions.

But your body, the part of you that holds all your stress, tension, and fear.

Let me explain in really simple words:

When we go through hard things — like fear, loss, rejection, or trauma — our body remembers.

Even if we’re no longer in danger, our body sometimes acts like we still are.

This is called being stuck in survival mode.

It’s why you might feel anxious for no reason.

It’s why you get tired, irritable, shut down, or overwhelmed even when nothing “bad” is happening.

That’s your nervous system trying to protect you — even when you’re safe now.

And this is where the vagus nerve comes in.

The vagus nerve is like your body’s “calm switch.”
It runs from your brain down into your chest, lungs, and stomach.

When it’s activated gently, it tells your body:
“You’re safe now. You can rest. You don’t have to fight anymore.”

Now here’s the beautiful part:
Reciting the Qur’an — especially slowly, out loud, with feeling — activates that same calm switch.

Why?

Because the melody of your voice, the rhythm of your breath, and the way you pronounce the verses all work together to relax your body.
It’s like breath work and therapy all in one.

When you recite slowly…
When you stretch the sounds…
When you breathe deeply between the verses…
You’re not just worshipping— you’re also regulating.

God gave us a book that doesn’t just guide our soul.

It also helps heal our nervous system return to peace.

So if you ever feel overwhelmed, anxious, disconnected…
Try this:
• Sit somewhere quiet
• Take a deep breath
• Open the Qur’an
• Recite one verse slowly, out loud
• Let your body hear it, not just your mind

You don’t have to be perfect at tajwīd.
You don’t have to finish a whole page.
Just one verse — one slow breath — one moment of connection.

That’s healing.

Science is just starting to understand what Allah gave us 1400 years ago.

But your heart and body already know:
The Qur’an is medicine. For the soul and the nervous system.

Follow .with.samira for more.

05/25/2025

05/24/2025

For too long, Western psychology has dominated the conversation around healing.

It was never built to see you in your fullness. It was developed in academic institutions rooted in colonial frameworks, by thinkers who were predominantly white, male, and disconnected from the spiritual, communal, and embodied ways of knowing that many non-Western cultures have relied on for centuries.

This model told us that healing means “coping,” “managing symptoms,” and “reframing thoughts.” But what about the culture that shapes us? The soul that longs for divine connection? These were left out and many of us were left misdiagnosed, misunderstood, or unseen because of it.

Healing about restoring safety in the nervous system, reconnecting with your body, and realigning with your spiritual purpose. It’s about returning to your fitrah, the pure, dignified self Allah created you with and healing the layers of shame, fear, and pain that have covered it.

You don’t just need coping tools. For many of us, you need healing that honors your faith, culture, and soul.

If you’ve ever felt like therapy didn’t fully reach you, you’re not alone.
And it’s not your fault.
The model itself was incomplete.

Let’s rebuild something better.
Something more honest.
More embodied.
More faithful.
More you.

—

Follow .with.samira for trauma-informed, faith-conscious care that honours your whole self.

05/23/2025

If you’ve ever felt like therapy didn’t fully see you, you’re not imagining it.

The truth is, Western therapy was never designed with all of us in mind.

It was shaped by cultural assumptions that ignored many ways of being, feeling, grieving, and healing.

And for so many of us, especially Muslims, people of color, and immigrants, that’s where the harm begins.

Because when a healing model is based on individualism, it often treats close family ties as unhealthy.

When it values emotional restraint, it mislabels your tears as instability.

When it sees religion as irrational, it pathologizes your connection to God.

I’ve worked with countless clients who came into therapy feeling like they had to choose:
Their faith or their healing.
Their community or their boundaries.
Their spiritual practices or their “progress.”

But real healing should never require you to abandon who you are.

Western psychology has many strengths, but it also has gaps.

It has overlooked the impact of colonization, intergenerational trauma, cultural grief, and spiritual disconnection.

It has often approached pain from the neck up, ignoring the body, the soul, and the social systems we’re all embedded in.

And that’s why so many clients feel disoriented.
Because they’re doing the work.
They’re showing up.
But they’re working within a system that doesn’t recognize the full context of their pain.

This is why faith-centered, trauma-informed, culturally grounded therapy matters.

It recognizes that healing is more than symptom reduction.

It’s reconnection, with God, with your body, with your lineage, with your voice.

It understands that your spiritual practices are not barriers.

They’re blueprints for healing.
They’ve always been.

We’re not broken.
We’ve been underserved.
And now we’re rebuilding, with intention, with soul, and with systems that finally make space for us.

Save and share if you’ve ever felt unseen in therapy, you’re not alone.

Follow .with.samira for more.

05/21/2025

You fear abandonment, so you cling, you people-please, you over-explain, you walk on eggshells, or you disappear before anyone else can leave first.

But here’s what most people don’t realize:

Sometimes, the most painful abandonment isn’t from others. It’s the abandonment of yourself.

Every time you silence your truth to keep the peace.
Every time you ignore your needs to meet someone else’s.
Every time you override your boundaries to avoid conflict.
You slowly leave yourself behind.

This self-abandonment often begins in childhood.
When love was conditional.
When your safety depended on being “good.”
When your nervous system learned that expressing your emotions came with consequences.
So you adapted. You survived.

But survival is not the same as living.

In Islamic, amanah (trust) includes caring for your soul, your body, and your heart.
You are not meant to abandon yourself to be loved. Your worth is not dependent on others staying.
Allah already declared your value when He created you with intention, dignity, and honour.

Healing requires learning to come home to yourself.
To notice when you’re disappearing.
To pause before you betray yourself.
To stay, with your feelings, your needs, your voice.

This isn’t easy work.
But it is the kind of inner work that transforms not just your mental health but your spiritual connection too.
Because when you stop abandoning yourself, you begin to embody amanah again.

You begin to trust that Allah does not love you because only if you’re perfect.

You don’t have to earn your right to exist as you are.

And you don’t have to keep proving your worth through sacrifice.

The healing begins when you start choosing you, gently, consistently, and without apology.
And when you start turning back to Allah not as someone you need to become “better” for but as the One who already knows your heart, your pain, and your potential.

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If this resonated with you, follow .with.samira for more faith-based, trauma-informed reminders and reflections.

Save this for later, share it with someone who needs it

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05/21/2025

Sujood isn’t just an act of worship, it’s one of the most powerful grounding tools your body already knows.

In trauma therapy, we talk a lot about the nervous system. About how your body stays in survival mode long after the danger has passed. How trauma can show up not just in flashbacks or anxiety, but in everyday ways, like chronic tension, racing thoughts, emotional shutdown, or feeling disconnected from your body.

And one of the most essential parts of healing trauma?
Helping the nervous system feel safe again.

This is where sujood comes in.

When your forehead touches the ground, your body enters a deeply regulating position. This posture naturally activates the parasympathetic nervous system, which is your body’s “rest and restore” mode.

Your heart rate slows. Your muscles soften. Your breath deepens.

And most importantly, your brain receives the message:
“You are safe.”

Modern somatic therapy encourages grounding, stillness, deep breathing, and embodied presence.
But what if you’ve already been doing that, 5 times a day?

What if sujood was always more than worship?
What if it’s also one of the most trauma-informed practices in existence?
• It grounds you in your body through full contact with the earth.
• It stimulates the vagus nerve, which calms stress and helps regulate emotion.
• It brings your mind back to the present moment.
• It offers rhythm, repetition, and predictability—three things your brain needs to feel safe.
• It creates space to surrender—physically and emotionally—when holding it all becomes too much.

Trauma takes away your sense of control and connection. Sujood gently returns both.

And for those who grew up feeling unsafe, overwhelmed, or emotionally neglected, this position of stillness and submission is not weakness.
It’s what nervous system healing looks like.

You are not weak for needing it.
You are wise for returning to it.

Sujood isn’t just spiritual.
It’s somatic.
It’s regulating.
It’s healing.
And it’s already yours.

Save this as a reminder.

And follow .with.samira for more trauma-informed, faith-rooted insights.