CBT and Islamic Healing, Post 3
In the previous post, we mapped the twelve thinking traps that block action in work, finances, marriage, and studies. You saw how jinn use these patterns to maintain blockages, and you learned how to pause and examine a thought before it shuts down an opportunity.
But if you have been practising that and found the same thoughts keep returning, there is a reason. A thought like “I will fail” or “there is no point trying” is not the root of the problem. It is the fruit. Pull it off and another one grows in its place, because somewhere beneath it sits something deeper: a core belief.
Understanding core beliefs is the difference between trimming a weed above the surface and pulling it out by the root. It is the difference between temporary relief and lasting change.
What core beliefs are
Core beliefs are the deep, fundamental convictions you hold about yourself, the world, and your future. They are not usually conscious. You do not walk around thinking “my core belief is X.” They operate more like the foundation of a building: invisible, but everything above them takes their shape.
They form in three domains:
Self: “Who am I? What am I worth? What am I capable of?”
World: “What is life like? Are people trustworthy? Is the world fair or hostile?”
Future: “What can I expect? Is change possible? Will things ever improve?”
Healthy core beliefs sound like: “I am capable. I am worthy of good. Difficulty is temporary. Effort produces results. Allah is with me.”
Unhealthy core beliefs, especially those shaped by trauma, prolonged hardship, or spiritual affliction, sound like: “I am fundamentally flawed.” “I am cursed. Good things are not for me.” “No matter what I do, nothing changes.” “I am a burden. People leave me.” “The world is dangerous and unpredictable.” “Allah is far from me. I am beyond His mercy.”
How core beliefs produce the thoughts that block you
Core beliefs are the factory that manufactures Automatic Negative Thoughts. Once a core belief is in place, the mind generates surface thoughts consistent with it automatically, even in situations where those thoughts are not warranted.
A person whose core belief is “I am not capable” encounters a job opportunity and the ANT fires: “They will not hire me.” They do not apply. A person whose core belief is “good things are not for me” hears about a marriage prospect and the ANT fires: “It will fall apart like everything else.” They withdraw. A person whose core belief is “nothing I do makes a difference” considers a new business venture and the ANT fires: “What is the point? It will not work out.” The idea dies.
Each time the ANT produces avoidance, and the avoidance confirms the feared outcome because no action was taken, the core belief is strengthened. This is the loop. This is how a person can be genuinely trying, making du’a, doing their ruqyah, and still find that life does not move. The spiritual affliction may have planted the seed, but the core belief has taken root, and now it grows on its own.
In Post 2, we saw how the businessman’s thinking kept him blocked. Every practical suggestion was met with a reason why it would not work. That was not stubbornness. It was a core belief operating beneath every individual thought: “The problem is the magic, not my effort. Nothing I do will change this.” That single belief, invisible to him, was producing dozens of ANTs that all pointed in the same direction: do not try.
Where core beliefs come from
Core beliefs are not chosen. They form through experience, and they can be shaped by several sources.
Childhood and family environment. A child raised in instability, criticism, or conditional love can develop beliefs like “I am only acceptable when I perform,” “I cannot trust others to stay,” or “I must not need too much.” These beliefs go underground and re-emerge in adulthood as ANTs about work, relationships, and worth. Many people dealing with spiritual affliction also carry these family-of-origin patterns, and the two compound each other. The affliction finds existing cracks and widens them.
Trauma and repeated failure. Repeated experiences of loss, rejection, or failure, especially without support to process them, can solidify into beliefs like “effort is pointless” or “I am not the kind of person things work out for.” The mind, trying to protect against future pain, establishes these beliefs as rules.
Spiritual affliction. This is where things become particularly relevant. Sihr, jinn whispering, and the evil eye do not only produce symptoms in the body and disruptions in daily life. They work at the level of thought and belief. A person under prolonged jinn influence will often report that they have developed deep convictions, seemingly from nowhere, that they are worthless, that they are cursed, that Allah has abandoned them, that nothing will ever change.
These are not conclusions they reached through honest reasoning. They were installed. And because they were installed gradually and subtly, the person believes they are their own thoughts, arising from their own assessment of their life. This is one of the most insidious dimensions of spiritual affliction: it can rewrite a person’s relationship with themselves from the inside.
Ruqyah, bi’idhnillah, disrupts and removes the spiritual cause. But the beliefs that were installed may remain as habitual patterns in the mind, even after the affliction has been treated. This is why the inner work is necessary alongside the spiritual treatment.
Finding the thought when you are “just feeling”
Before we can follow a thought down to its root, we have to find the thought in the first place. And this is where many people get stuck.
It is extremely common for someone experiencing anxiety or depression to say: “I do not know what I am thinking. I just feel it.” They feel the heaviness, the panic, the paralysis, but when asked what thought is driving it, they cannot point to anything specific. The feeling seems to exist on its own, without a thought attached to it.
This is not a barrier. It just means the thought is moving fast enough, or sitting deep enough, that it has become invisible. It is still there. It is still shaping the emotion and the behaviour. We just need to find it.
There are three ways in, and different people respond to different ones.
From the feeling itself. Ask yourself: “If this anxiety could speak, what would it say?” Or: “If this heaviness had a message, what would it be?” This sounds strange, but it works. The answer often comes quickly and clearly. “You are not good enough.” “It is going to go wrong.” “You will be humiliated.” That is the thought. It was there all along, operating beneath the feeling.
From the feared outcome. Ask yourself: “What is the worst that could happen if I do the thing I am avoiding?” Picture yourself actually doing it. Sending the application. Making the call. Having the conversation. Walking into the room. What do you see? What happens next in your mind? The scenario your imagination produces reveals what you actually believe will happen, and that belief is the thought you are looking for.
From the conditions for action. Ask yourself: “What would need to be true for me to take this step?” This one approaches from the opposite direction. Instead of digging into the fear, it asks you to imagine the conditions for movement. “I would need to believe I actually have a chance.” That reveals the belief that is currently blocking you: “I do not believe I have a chance.” Now you have the thought, and you can work with it.
Think of anxiety as a smoke alarm. It is loud and urgent, but the sound does not prove there is a fire. Sometimes it is burnt toast. The work is not to run from the noise. It is to check the kitchen. These three questions are how you check the kitchen. Once you can see what is actually there, you can decide what to do about it.
Following the thought to its root: the downward arrow
Once you have a thought, the next step is to follow it downward until the core belief beneath it is revealed. This is called the Downward Arrow technique, and it is one of the most powerful tools in CBT for uncovering what is actually driving a person’s stuckness.
The process is simple. You take the surface thought and ask: “If that were true, what would it mean?” Then you take the answer and ask the same question again. And again. Until you reach a statement that is no longer about the situation but about you, about the world, or about your future. That is the core belief.
Here is an example:
Situation: A business proposal is declined.
Surface thought: “This never works out for me.”
If that were true, what would it mean? → “It would mean I am not capable of building something real.”
If that were true, what would it mean about you? → “It would mean I am not good enough. That I do not deserve success.”
And if that were true? → “I am fundamentally not someone who succeeds. Good things are not for me.”
That last statement, “good things are not for me,” is the core belief. It is not supported by evidence. But it feels like truth. And because it feels like truth, it generates a constant supply of ANTs that make it behave like truth. Every opportunity that does not work out is absorbed as confirmation. Every opportunity that does work out is dismissed as a fluke.
Once a core belief is identified, the work shifts. You are no longer fighting individual thoughts. You are examining and rebuilding the foundation from which all those thoughts emerge.
What this looks like in real cases
The theory is important, but what matters is how it plays out in the life of someone actually dealing with a blockage and doing treatment. Here are two cases that show how core beliefs operate beneath the surface, how they are uncovered, and what happens when they are addressed.
The brother whose blockage changed shape
This brother came in with two presenting complaints: a work block and a salaah block. His business had stalled. He could not bring himself to do the work he knew how to do. Salaah was dropping. He was stuck in distractions all day, then consumed by guilt at night.
When we did his diagnosis, the following thoughts about his situation came out: “What if it does not work and I am going to be stuck, useless, and dependent on people.” “No one is interested in my work.” “I am meant to be stuck, poor, and to struggle.” And shame was keeping him from salaah, a belief that he was too sinful to stand before Allah.
Each of these beliefs was producing a steady stream of ANTs. Every time he thought about working, the ANT said: “No one will buy from you.” Every time he thought about praying, the ANT said: “You are a hypocrite.” The beliefs were invisible to him. The ANTs felt like obvious facts about his life.
His treatment plan included belief response sheets, simple written statements that answered each core belief with something truthful and grounded. For the work belief: “I have not been making a consistent effort to bring in new clients, yet I still get enquiries. If I do make an effort, in sha Allah it will increase.” For the salaah shame: “The one who needs salaah most is the one drowning in sin. Shaytan wants me to stay away, and that alone tells me I must go.”
He read these when the thoughts hit. Not to argue with the thoughts, but to have a prepared answer that was ready before the moment of paralysis arrived.
Treatment progressed. The avoidance broke. He started working. Clients began coming in. Salaah improved. And then something happened that catches many people off guard.
The blockage changed shape.
Once the initial wall broke and work started flowing, he threw himself into it completely. Work became everything. He neglected sleep and food and family. His ruqyah sessions got shorter, then got skipped. The ruqyah fell away because he was too busy with the business that had finally started moving. The avoidance had kept him from working. Now the compulsion to work was keeping him from treating.
The surface looked different, but the root was the same. His worth had always been tied to his productivity. In the first phase, the blockage exploited that belief through paralysis: you are not producing, therefore you are worthless, therefore why bother trying. In the second phase, once treatment broke the paralysis and work started flowing, the same belief drove him in the opposite direction: you are finally producing, this is what defines you, do not stop for anything. The avoidance and the overwork were not two different problems. They were two expressions of the same core belief about where his value came from.
The thoughts that came with the overwork sounded reasonable: “I am doing well now. I can skip today. The business needs me.” Those were ANTs too. But they were harder to catch because they did not sound like the voice of a blockage. They sounded like ambition.
The real work was not chasing a belief that kept changing shape. It was identifying the single belief underneath both phases and helping him build a healthier relationship with work: one where his worth was not contingent on output, where rest and treatment were not threats to his identity, and where he could be productive without productivity becoming the only measure of himself. That deeper work is what stabilised him.
This is why identifying a core belief is not a one-time exercise. The surface thoughts may change direction under treatment, but if the root belief has not been addressed, it will keep producing new ANTs from the same source. When the blockage can no longer keep you from acting, it tries to keep you from treating. When it can no longer make you feel hopeless, it makes you feel so good that you stop the treatment voluntarily. The direction changes. The root does not.
The businessman whose layers peeled back
This brother came in with a straightforward complaint: his business had no customers. We set him up with treatment and the practical effort was simple. Marketing, outreach, making the business visible.
He did the treatment. He made the effort. Customers started enquiring. And the moment they did, a problem surfaced that had been invisible before. When customers enquired, he froze. He felt anxious and delayed responding. The anxiety had always been there, but because enquiries were rare, he had never noticed it. Now that customers were coming in, the delays were costing him business.
So we adjusted. We added the customer-response anxiety to his recitation intentions. And we asked: what specifically about responding to customers makes you freeze? The answer was concrete. He was not set up to handle enquiries properly. He had no price list. Some customers asked for services he did not offer but felt obligated to take on because money was tight. He had no clear processes for quoting or scoping work. The anxiety was not irrational. It was his nervous system telling him he was not prepared.
The practical effort shifted. It was no longer about bringing customers in. It was about building the infrastructure to handle them: price lists, service descriptions, standard quoting procedures, clear boundaries on what he would and would not take on.
He built that infrastructure. He could handle customers. And then the next layer appeared. When it came to quoting, he undercharged consistently. He gave discounts too easily. He did work for free. He could not hold his price.
This was no longer an infrastructure problem. This was a self-worth problem. A deep conviction that his work was not valuable enough to command the price it deserved. If you applied the downward arrow, it would look like this:
“I cannot hold my price” → “Because they might say no” → “And if they say no, it means my work is not worth what I am charging” → “And if my work is not worth it, then I am not really good at what I do” → “I am not the kind of person whose work has real value.”
That core belief, “my work does not have real value,” had been running underneath everything. But it was invisible until the layers above it had been cleared. The no-customers problem hid the can’t-handle-enquiries problem, which hid the can’t-hold-price problem, which hid the I-am-not-worth-it belief.
The resolution came through CBT tools. He used the thought record to catch the moments when he was about to discount. He examined the evidence: his customers were satisfied, returning, and referring others. He applied the double standard technique: would he tell a friend with his skills and track record to charge less because of self-doubt? He worked through the belief systematically, and his pricing stabilised. From there, the business moved forward.
Notice the pattern in both cases. The first problem you can see is not the real problem. You treat it, push through it, and the moment it clears, the next layer surfaces underneath. This is not failure. This is the blockage being dismantled layer by layer. And at the deepest layer, almost every time, sits a core belief that has been doing the real work of keeping the person stuck.
When core beliefs target your marriage
The two cases above both involved work and business blockages. But some of the most deeply entrenched core beliefs we see are in marriages affected by separation sihr, and they operate differently enough to deserve direct attention.
In a work blockage, the core belief is usually about the self: “I am not capable,” “I am meant to struggle.” In a marriage under separation sihr, the core beliefs are about the relationship and the spouse: “This marriage was a mistake.” “I married the wrong person.” “I would be happier alone.” “He will never change.” “She does not really love me.”
These beliefs are particularly destructive because they feel like wisdom. The person does not experience them as distorted thoughts. They experience them as conclusions reached after years of evidence. And in a sense, they have. The problem is that the evidence was curated by the affliction. Every memory of closeness was dimmed. Every moment of kindness was explained away. Every argument was stored and sharpened. The person built their case honestly from the evidence available to them. But the evidence itself was filtered.
Here is what the downward arrow looks like in a separation case:
Surface thought: “He never listens to me.”
If that were true, what would it mean? → “It would mean he does not value what I think or feel.”
If that were true, what would it mean about the marriage? → “It would mean I am in a marriage with someone who will never truly see me.”
And if that were true? → “I am trapped in a marriage with the wrong person. I will never be happy here.”
That core belief, “I am trapped with the wrong person,” is one of the most common beliefs we encounter in separation cases. And it does immense damage because it reframes every interaction through a lens of futility. If you believe you are with the wrong person, nothing they do can be right. An apology is too late. A kind gesture is manipulation. An attempt to change is temporary. The belief filters out everything that contradicts it, just as the “I am not capable” belief filtered out every success in the businessman’s case.
There is another core belief that runs in many separation cases, sometimes alongside the one above: “Love is not written for me.” This belief often predates the marriage. It may have roots in the person’s childhood, in previous relationships, or in years of feeling unwanted. The separation sihr finds this existing belief and pours fuel on it. The marriage difficulties become proof. “I knew it. Even this did not work. I am not the kind of person who gets to be loved.”
This belief is especially dangerous because it can push a person toward divorce not because the marriage is actually broken, but because the person has concluded that happiness in marriage is simply not something they are allowed to have. They leave not because of what the spouse did, but because of what they believe about themselves.
When old wounds become the affliction’s weapon
There is a third pattern we see frequently, and it affects divorced people in particular. Some core beliefs about marriage are not installed by the current affliction and are not distortions of the current spouse. They were formed in a previous marriage, through genuine trauma, and the affliction in the new marriage simply hijacks them.
A man whose first wife was unfaithful carries the belief “I will be betrayed again.” That belief is not irrational. It is rooted in something that actually happened to him. But when he enters a new marriage and sihr or jinn are present, that existing wound becomes the easiest entry point the affliction has. It does not need to build anything from scratch. The belief is already there, fully formed, loaded with real pain. All the affliction has to do is activate it.
His new wife says she is going out with friends and his chest tightens. She does not answer her phone for an hour and his mind is already constructing the scenario. She mentions a male colleague and something in him goes cold. None of this is about her. None of it. All of it is about the first wife. But the jinn do not care about the distinction. They just need the trigger, and the trauma provides an endless supply of them.
The ANTs that fire from this belief look like vigilance. “I am not going to be a fool twice.” “I need to pay attention to the signs.” “Something feels off.” They do not feel like distortions. They feel like hard-won wisdom, the lessons of a man who learned the hard way and refuses to be caught sleeping again. That is exactly why they are so difficult to challenge. In his mind, he has evidence. It happened before.
But the belief does not protect him. It destroys the new marriage from the inside. The suspicion, the interrogation, the coldness when she comes home late, the inability to trust even when she has given him no reason to doubt her. These push the new wife away. And when she begins to withdraw because she cannot breathe under the weight of his suspicion, he reads her withdrawal as confirmation: “It is happening again.” The loop closes. The belief feeds itself. And a marriage that had nothing wrong with it is torn apart by wounds that belong to a different marriage entirely.
This pattern runs in women too. A woman whose first husband was controlling or emotionally absent carries “men cannot be relied on” or “I will always end up alone in the marriage” into her second marriage. Her new husband may be entirely different, genuinely present, genuinely trying. But the belief does not assess him on his own terms. It assesses him through the lens of the man who came before. And every small shortcoming, every moment of imperfection, is absorbed as confirmation of what she already “knows.”
If you have been through a divorce and you are now in a new marriage, or hoping to remarry, pay careful attention to the beliefs you are carrying from the previous relationship. Not every lesson from a difficult marriage is wisdom. Some of those lessons are wounds that have hardened into rules, and those rules will sabotage what Allah may be giving you now if they are not identified and treated.
The downward arrow is particularly important here. “I do not trust her” → “Because women will betray you when you let your guard down” → “Because I am the kind of person who gets betrayed” → “Because I am not enough to keep someone faithful.” That final belief, “I am not enough,” may have nothing to do with the new wife at all. It is the old wound, and the affliction is keeping it open.
Apply the same process. Name the belief. Ask honestly: is this about this marriage or about the last one? Examine the evidence from this relationship, not from the previous one. And act from the new belief before it feels true: choose to trust one time when the old belief says do not. See what happens. The belief says you will be burned. Test it. Because the alternative is to carry the punishment for your ex-spouse’s sins into every relationship Allah gives you after, and that is not wisdom. That is the affliction using your pain to keep you alone.
This does not mean ignoring genuine red flags. It means distinguishing between a real warning and an old wound firing in a new context. The difference is usually visible when you are honest with yourself: is this reaction proportional to what actually happened, or is it the size of the last marriage’s pain applied to this marriage’s minor friction?
Challenging and rebuilding core beliefs
Whether the core belief is about your capability, your worth, your marriage, or your future, the process for challenging it is the same. Changing a core belief is not quick work. These beliefs formed over months or years, sometimes decades. They will not dissolve in a single exercise. But there is a clear process that creates real movement, and it works alongside ruqyah treatment, not instead of it.
Step 1: Name the belief. Write it down, explicitly. “My core belief is: ____________.” Seeing it outside your own mind, on paper, often reduces its power immediately. What felt like an obvious truth about reality can suddenly look like what it is: a belief, formed under difficult circumstances, not an established fact.
Step 2: Examine the evidence. Ask methodically: what is the actual evidence for this belief? What is the evidence against it? A person who believes “I never succeed” often discovers, upon honest examination, a significant list of things they have achieved, things the belief had systematically filtered out. A person who believes “my spouse does not love me” often discovers, when they force themselves to look, moments of genuine care that the filter had erased. This is the mental filter distortion operating at the belief level. Deliberately searching for contrary evidence begins to loosen the grip. Post 4 gives you the full tool for this.
Step 3: Identify the origin. When did I first start to believe this? Was there a specific experience? A message I received from someone? A period of sustained difficulty? A previous relationship? Understanding where a belief came from helps you see it as a response to circumstances rather than a revelation of truth. For those with spiritual affliction: acknowledge honestly that some of these beliefs may have been installed through waswas and jinn influence, not formed through your own reasoning. You did not choose them. You do not have to keep them.
Step 4: Develop an alternative belief. What would a fair, balanced, Islamically grounded belief sound like in its place?
“Good things are not for me” → “My rizq is with Allah, and He has promised not to leave any believing soul without provision.”
“I am fundamentally broken” → “I am a human being in a process of growth and healing. My worth is established by my Creator, not by my circumstances.”
“Nothing I do makes a difference” → “Effort is my responsibility. Outcome is Allah’s. I do my part and trust His.”
“I am cursed” → “I may be under spiritual affliction, which is a test, not a permanent verdict. Allah heals. I am in treatment. Change is possible.”
“I married the wrong person” → “My marriage has real problems and it also has real good. I may be under an affliction that is distorting how I see both. I will treat the distortion before I make permanent decisions.”
“I will be betrayed again” → “What happened in my last marriage was real and it was painful. But this is a different person. I owe it to this marriage, and to myself, to assess it on its own terms.”
Step 5: Act from the new belief before it feels true. This is the hardest step and the most important. Core beliefs do not change because we argue them into submission. They change because we act differently, and the new actions produce new evidence that supports the new belief.
If you believe “I can make progress,” even slightly, even tentatively, and you act on that belief by sending one email, making one call, taking one step forward, and something comes of it, even something small, that result begins to feed the new belief. In marriage, the action might be responding to your spouse’s attempt at connection instead of dismissing it. Having one honest conversation. Offering one act of kindness you have been withholding. Not because you feel like it, but because the belief you are challenging says you should not, and the only way to test a belief is to act against it and see what happens.
Over time, consistent small actions produce the evidence that rewrites the story.
This is the wisdom of the Prophet ﷺ’s teaching: “The most beloved deeds to Allah are those done consistently, even if small.” Small, consistent action is not just spiritually valuable. It is psychologically transformative. It changes the belief.
The du’a that names the inner struggle
The Prophet ﷺ taught us to seek refuge in Allah from hamm (anxiety) and hazan (grief), from ‘ajz (incapacity) and kasal (laziness), from jubn (cowardice) and bukhl (miserliness), and from the burden of debt and the overpowering of men.
Look at this du’a carefully. It does not only mention outward difficulties. It names inner states that weaken a person and restrict action. Incapacity. Laziness. Cowardice. These are the downstream effects of unhealthy core beliefs. A person who deeply believes they are powerless falls into incapacity. A person who expects failure withdraws into avoidance. A person whose inner world is shaped by fear struggles with courage and initiative.
Making this du’a is not a substitute for the inner work. The two belong together. We ask Allah to protect us from these states and to remove their burden, while also using the means He has placed in our hands to address them. Du’a and inner work are not in competition. One is an act of dependence on Allah. The other is part of taking the means. Both are obedience.
What comes next
You now understand the factory. You know what core beliefs are, how they form, how spiritual affliction installs them, and how they produce the Automatic Negative Thoughts that block every area of life. You have seen in real cases how core beliefs operate beneath the surface, how they shift shape under treatment, and how they are uncovered layer by layer through effort and honest self-examination. You have seen how they target marriages and how old wounds from previous relationships can be weaponised against new ones.
Post 4 gives you the tools to dismantle them. The Thought Record, Examine the Evidence, Behavioural Activation, the Double Standard Technique, and more. Concrete, tested techniques you can start using immediately alongside your ruqyah treatment, including the specific tools that helped the businessman in the case above work through his self-worth beliefs and stabilise his business.
You do not need to wait until you fully understand your core beliefs before starting. The tools themselves are part of the discovery process. Start with one. Apply it to one area. And watch what it reveals.
CBT and Islamic Healing
This is Part 3 of the CBT and Islamic Healing series, covering the connection between spiritual affliction and mental health.
- Part 1: How Spiritual Affliction Affects Your Mental Health
- Part 2: Waswas and Negative Thinking: 12 Thought Traps That Keep You Blocked
- Part 3: Core Beliefs That Keep You Stuck: The Hidden Root of Negative Thinking (you are here)
- Part 4: Practical CBT Tools for Breaking Through Blockages
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