By Aleynanur Sarap
PART 2
TCERS Skill 2: Understanding Emotions as Messages, Not Enemies
One of the most common patterns I observed in my patients was that they saw their emotions as the enemy.
They did everything in their power to suppress, avoid, or escape what they were feeling, often because they did not fully understand what emotions were to begin with. And yet, emotions are a fundamental part of what it means to be human.
So we would begin there.
We would start by grounding ourselves in one simple but powerful truth, emotions are temporary.
In moments of crisis, when everything feels overwhelming, I would remind them, this feeling will pass. It may last minutes, hours, or even days, but it will not last forever. And in contrast, the decisions we make in those moments, especially irreversible ones, carry permanence. Ending one’s life is permanent, and it removes the possibility of ever experiencing relief, joy, or healing again.
From there, we would shift into understanding what emotions actually are.
Emotions are not random, and they are not useless. They are messages. They carry information. They are signals that tell us something about our internal and external world. What matters is not just what we feel, but when we feel it, how much we feel it, and how we respond to it. Take anxiety, for example.
If I am crossing the street and suddenly see a car coming toward me, anxiety activates my body to move, to run, to protect myself. This is the flight response, and it is life-saving.
If I am camping and encounter a bear in a situation where I am told not to move, then anxiety may activate a freeze response, helping me stay still to survive.
If someone is charging at me and I have the ability to defend myself, anxiety may activate a fight response.
In all of these situations, anxiety is not the problem. It is protective. It is intelligent. It is helping us survive.
The problem arises when there is no immediate threat to our lives, but our mind perceives something as dangerous. For example, giving a speech in front of a class. The fear of being judged, rejected, or not accepted can feel like life or death internally, even if there is no real physical danger. And so the same intensity of anxiety can arise. The emotion itself is not wrong, but the perception and the response may need to be explored. The same applies to other emotions. Anger, for example, is what allows us to respond to injustice. Without anger, there would be no systems of accountability, no drive to protect others, no motivation to stand against harm. But when anger is expressed in disproportionate or harmful ways, especially in response to minor triggers, it can become destructive rather than protective.
Or take sadness and happiness.
If someone shares joyful news, like getting married or being accepted into their dream school, and we dismiss them or respond with indifference, it feels misaligned. Similarly, if someone shares a deep loss and we respond with laughter, it feels inappropriate.
Each emotion has a purpose. What matters is the context, the intensity, and the behavior that follows. Because while emotions are valid, they are not excuses for harmful behavior.
At the same time, avoiding emotions altogether can be just as harmful which we will talk about in the next skill.
What is also deeply striking, and honestly beautiful, about human resilience is that when we allow our pain to move through us, rather than resist it, it has the capacity to transform us. It is important to note that this is not to say we should seek out pain or place ourselves in harmful situations in the hope of becoming stronger. But once painful experiences have happened, we are given a choice in how we relate to them.
We do not come out of our pain the same, we come out wiser, stronger, and more grounded in who we are. This is something I often explain to my patients through a simple, but powerful example. Carbon, in its original form, is opaque. It can keep us warm, but it can also leave marks if you touch it. It is not seen as something particularly valuable or precious. And yet, when that same carbon is placed under immense pressure and heat over time, deep beneath the surface of the earth, it transforms into a diamond.
A diamond reflects light. It allows light to pass through it and shine outward. In many ways, our inner painful experiences mirror this process. When we go through pain, when we sit with it, process it, and allow it to shape us rather than harden us, we are transformed. And through that transformation, we gain something meaningful: insight, depth, compassion, wisdom.
We begin to reflect something back into the world. What once felt like unbearable pain, something that was burning us from within, can one day become a source of light for someone else who is still in the dark. And in that process, the very experiences that once made us feel broken can become part of what makes us more whole, more beautiful, and more deeply valuable.
TCERS Skill 3: Sitting through Discomfort, rather than Avoidance to build Emotional muscle
As we began to understand emotions, this naturally led to the next step, learning how to relate to discomfort. In the inpatient unit, I often saw patients with what I would describe as emotional wounds that were still bleeding, yet they were placing Band-Aids over them because they did not know how to go deeper. If you had a deep physical wound, you would not treat it with a Band-Aid. You would clean it, tend to it, and if needed, stitch it. Emotional wounds require the same level of care. The Band-Aid was used because they often didn’t know what else to use, or because the discomfort of going deeper was not something they were taught was okay to experience. One of the patterns I observed in many patients was what is known as an avoidance cycle. An avoidance cycle occurs when an individual experiences an uncomfortable emotion and immediately engages in behaviors to escape it. These behaviors may provide temporary relief, but they often lead to long-term harm, reinforcing the very distress the person is trying to avoid.
For many patients, this looked like self-harm, and substance use. But for the common folk, it can look like excessive shopping, overeating when bored or sad, always being around people and not wanting to be alone, keeping themselves busy all the time, reading fiction books and watching movies excessively because it feels easier to live other character’s emotions than our own, playing video games all the time – just to name a few, you get the idea. These behaviors often feel good in the moment, but are followed by guilt, shame, and a continuation of the pain.
So we begin to reframe this understanding.
Not everything that feels good is good for us. And not everything that feels bad is bad for us.
Sometimes, allowing ourselves to feel sadness, to cry, to sit with discomfort, even when it feels intense, can lead to a sense of release and lightness afterward.
In those moments, I would encourage my patients to ask themselves a simple question:
“Is this good for me?”
Because growth often requires discomfort.
To make this more tangible, I would often use a physical health example because it was easy and relatable for many people.
If someone decides they want to get into shape and starts going to the gym, the initial experience will likely be uncomfortable. Their body will feel strained, tired, and resistant. If they stop at that first moment of discomfort, they will never reach their goal.
But if they persist, understanding that this discomfort is part of growth, they eventually become stronger. What once felt impossible becomes manageable, and over time, even easy.
The same applies to resisting temptations that may feel good in the moment but undermine long-term goals. Eating something that sabotages your progress may feel good briefly, but it often leads to regret. Choosing discipline in that moment may feel uncomfortable, but it aligns with long-term well-being.
Emotional healing works in a very similar way. What once felt overwhelming may not impact you in the same way years later, because you have built emotional resilience. You have strengthened your capacity to tolerate, process, and move through difficult experiences. It is, in many ways, like building emotional muscle.
And just like physical training, it can be painful at times. Sitting with difficult emotions, facing painful memories, feeling the heaviness in your chest, allowing anxiety to rise without immediately escaping it, these are not easy experiences.
At the same time, safety always comes first. Just as someone would stop exercising if they were physically in danger, emotional work must be done within a safe and supported space. But when it is safe, and when we allow ourselves to stay with the discomfort just a little longer, to process what is there instead of avoiding it, something begins to shift.
We begin to heal.
We begin to “stitch” the wound rather than cover it. And over time, we become more resilient. The same experiences that once felt unbearable no longer carry the same weight.
Because the reality is, life is hard but we pick our hard. Hardships do not fully disappear. But we become stronger, more grounded, and more capable of moving through them with greater ease.
At its core, this skill comes down to one powerful principle:
Sitting through short-term discomfort helps prevent long-term dysfunction.
TCERS Skill 4: Self-Growth is an Unending Journey: Accepting Where We Are in that Journey
Another pattern I often observed in my patients was the way they saw themselves in extremes. They tended to view themselves as either all good or all bad, and when they made a mistake, they would quickly label themselves as a bad person, erasing everything good about them in that moment. Sometimes, they would also take their mistakes out of proportion, allowing one action to define their entire identity.
To help them understand this differently, I would introduce a visual that we called the infinity line. I would draw a line with three points, negative infinity, zero, and positive infinity, with the positive side extending upward and the negative side extending downward. I would explain to them that they are born at zero, they have not done anything good or bad yet. As they move through life, every good action moves them upward. I intentionally place infinity there because there is no limit to how much a person can grow, how much good they can do, and how much they can improve. Self-growth is a lifelong journey that continues until our last breath, while also recognizing that we will never reach infinity itself, because perfection belongs only to Allah.
At the same time, I include negative infinity on the line to show that there is no limit to how far a human being can go in the direction of evil. But this is where an important shift happens. When you make a mistake, it does not mean you suddenly drop below zero and become a bad person. It may move you downward on the line, but you are still capable of moving back up. You are not defined by a single moment, you are defined by your direction.
This also helps us understand something important, the people in our lives are not perfect either. Our parents are growing, our loved ones are growing, and everyone is somewhere along this same line. This brings us to a key question, what is a person’s intention? Are they striving to be better, or do they believe they have already reached a point where they no longer need to grow? Because believing that you have “arrived” is not confidence, it is a form of arrogance, it reflects closed-mindedness and a lack of self-awareness.
This often opened the door to another important realization. Many of my patients, especially those who feared becoming arrogant, would place themselves lower than where they actually were. They believed that putting themselves down, minimizing themselves, or even humiliating themselves was a form of humility. But it is not.
So we began to differentiate between humility and self-humiliation, and between humility and arrogance. Arrogance is when a person believes they are better than others, attributes their goodness entirely to themselves, looks down on others, or becomes inflated by recognition. It is the belief that “I am the source,” rather than recognizing where goodness truly comes from.
On the other hand, humility is not denying your goodness. Humility is recognizing the good within you while understanding that it is from Allah. It is staying grounded, grateful, and aware that whatever you have been given is a trust, not something you created independently. So when someone offers praise, humility is not rejecting it or putting yourself down. Responses like “I’m terrible,” “you don’t know me,” or “I don’t deserve that” can become forms of self-rejection and even a denial of the blessings Allah has placed within you.
Instead, humility allows you to receive appreciation with grounding. It sounds like saying, “Alhamdulillah, whatever good is in me is from Allah, may Allah make me better than what you say and forgive me for what you do not know”. In this way, when praise comes in, the goal is not to shrink yourself, but to stay connected to the source. To remind yourself internally, I am where I am because Allah allowed me to be here.
This shift protects the heart from arrogance without denying the good. It moves a person away from thinking, “I need to lower myself so I do not become arrogant”, and toward a healthier understanding, I can receive appreciation with gratitude, because Allah is the source of any good in me.
There is also something deeply important in this. Gratitude increases what is good as Allah states: “Be grateful, and I will increase you” (14:7). When praise is met with gratitude to Allah rather than ego, it becomes a pathway for growth. The pattern becomes, praise, then gratitude to Allah, then increase, rather than praise, then shame, then self-rejection.
As part of this skill, I would encourage patients to practice simply receiving appreciation. To pause, to say thank you, to allow the moment to land, and to respond with grounding rather than discomfort. And then to reflect afterward. What thoughts came up? Was there fear of arrogance? Did it feel uncomfortable to be seen in a positive way?
The goal is not perfection. The goal is learning how to hold both truths at the same time, to recognize your goodness without becoming inflated, and to remain humble without putting yourself down.
At its core, this skill teaches one essential truth. Humility is not denying your goodness, humility is recognizing that your goodness is from Allah. And you do not protect yourself from arrogance by humiliating yourself, you protect yourself by staying grateful, grounded, and connected to Allah as the source of all good.