CBT and Islamic Healing, Post 2
In the previous post, we looked at how spiritual affliction does not just create suffering. It creates stagnation. It gets into your thinking and installs patterns that keep you stuck, patterns that persist even after the spiritual cause begins to respond to treatment. We introduced the thought-feeling-action chain: thoughts drive feelings, feelings drive actions, and actions produce outcomes. Change the thought, and you change the chain.
In this post, we go into those thoughts directly. What they look like, how they operate, how jinn and shayatin weaponise them to maintain blockages, and why the Qur’anic framework for dealing with them and the CBT framework are remarkably, almost startlingly, aligned.
The Qur’anic framework: not all thoughts are yours
Allah says in Surah An-Nas, the very last surah of the Qur’an, placed there as if to seal it with this critical reminder:
“From the evil of the retreating whisperer, who whispers into the hearts of mankind, from among jinn and mankind.” (Qur’an 114:4-6)
The word waswas describes something that comes and goes, retreating when Allah is remembered and advancing when the heart is heedless. The whisperer is not a fixed resident. It is a visitor whose access depends on the state of the heart.
In a hadith narrated by Ibn Mas’ud, recorded in the Tafsir of Ibn Kathir, the Prophet ﷺ described this dynamic precisely:
“Shaytan has an effect on the son of Adam, and the angel also has an effect. As for the effect of Shaytan, it is by his threatening with evil and denying the truth. As for the effect of the angel, it is by his promise of good and affirmation of the truth.”
Our inner world is a space of contestation. Thoughts arrive, but they do not all come from the same source, and they do not all deserve the same response. Some thoughts point toward truth, effort, and trust in Allah. Others point toward fear, avoidance, and paralysis. The work of the believer is discernment: learning to examine a thought before granting it authority over your decisions and your life.
How jinn use your thoughts to block you
Allah gives us a direct example of this in the Qur’an. Ash-Shaytanu ya’idukumul faqr. Shaytan promises you poverty (2:268). This verse describes a situation every person has experienced: an opportunity to give sadaqah appears, and immediately thoughts arrive that discourage you from giving. “What about yourself? If you give, you will not have.” Or a different angle: “He is capable of working, why should I give him?” “She will just come back again if I give now.”
These thoughts may or may not be true. But that is not the point. The point is what happens when the second a negative idea appears, you run with it and act on it without pausing to weigh the situation. You have been influenced into a decision that may be contrary to your values, your goals, and the direction you want your life to go.
What does Allah say in the very next phrase? Wallahu ya’idukum maghfiratam minhu wa fadla. Allah promises you forgiveness and increase (2:268-269). He is teaching us that when Shaytan introduces negative thoughts, we should remember Him, challenge those thoughts, and act according to His guidance rather than according to the whisper.
This same process, the whisper followed by inaction, followed by the blockage sustaining itself, operates in every area of life. And it is one of the most powerful tools jinn have against human beings, whether in the context of witchcraft or not. Let me show you how it works in practice.
Any businessman will tell you that without risk, you will never succeed. That is the nature of the dunya. When you take your capital and invest it in stock, you have no guarantee it will sell. It is always a risk.
So what happens when a businessman is affected by sihr and jinn? Through negative thoughts about himself, his plan, the economy, his competitors, and everything else under the sun, he is filled with doubt and fear of taking action. Every time he overthinks the situation, he talks himself out of the risk in order to be “safe.” And life being what it is, when he does finally gather up the courage to try something, he will come across hurdles. He may even fail. The difference between a person who succeeds and a person who does not is that the successful person has tried and failed more times than the other person tried at all. But now those negative thoughts become stronger because they have “evidence.” “You see, it is the economy.” “It is impossible to compete.” “It is not written for you.” “It is the black magic.” All sorts of reasons to give up. And he does.
This is the most common way people are blocked. Not through dramatic spiritual events, but through being blocked from taking action by their own thoughts.
I want you to see what is actually happening here, because this is the key to understanding how blockages work from the inside.
It is far more effective for the magic and jinn to block you, the business owner, from making the correct efforts in your business, than to block all one thousand of your potential clients. Think about it. By stopping you from making the right efforts, and I am saying “right efforts” deliberately, not just “efforts,” the magic and jinn have effectively switched you off at the mains. They then barely need to do anything to maintain the blockage, because by not consistently working hard and smart toward progress, pushing through obstacles and failures, you have effectively blocked yourself.
I treated a businessman years ago whose main complaint was that they had lost many clients and the machinery was constantly breaking down. He suspected witchcraft. After a basic diagnosis, I confirmed he had some magic and jinn symptoms and could benefit from treatment. I then asked what he had done to get new clients in. He admitted he had not done much beyond calling a few old clients once or twice. When I asked what more he could do, he had no real suggestions and kept bringing up the magic.
I suggested basic steps: assigning someone to bring in clients, networking with related businesses, B2B advertising, some marketing approaches. Every suggestion was met with a negative mindset response. That will not work. We tried that before. It did not help. He was convinced that his approach was correct even though he was not doing anything practical to get new clients, which was the biggest problem in the business. He believed the only problem was the magic, and that if the magic was resolved things would go back to normal.
That mindset is the blockage at work. The jinn had convinced him that his efforts were not lacking in any way and that only external circumstances were to blame. In that state, years could pass without him making any real practical effort to improve. And real practical effort was exactly what was needed.
Do you see how the negative thoughts are the blockage? What is happening behind the scenes is that every time he thinks about the progress of the business, the jinn make him feel negatively toward it, blocking him from taking action. And on the rare occasion someone convinces him to try, and it does not work out, that becomes “evidence” for why he should not try again.
I asked another patient whose business was not growing whether he was advertising. He said he was not. I asked why. He started: “Because I…” and I finished his sentence with him: “…tried before and it did not work.”
How did I know? Because his case was not unique. That is how the blockage works.
Here is the question I asked him: Is your advertising not working because there is black magic affecting hundreds of random people who see your adverts, convincing each of them not to support you? Or is it more likely that your advertising needs work because you are new at it, your actual expertise is in your trade, and you have not invested serious time or money learning how to market, but the jinn are telling you it is not working because of black magic so you stopped trying to improve?
The answer, every time, is that the person needs to take action. The ruqyah addresses the spiritual cause. But the practical effort is what breaks the blockage in the real world. And the thoughts are what stand between the person and that effort.
What CBT calls Automatic Negative Thoughts
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy has a precise name for these fast, reflexive thoughts: Automatic Negative Thoughts, or ANTs.
ANTs are not carefully reasoned conclusions. They are rapid, often below the level of conscious awareness, and they feel like facts even when they are not. For people experiencing blockages, ANTs are the hidden maintenance system that keeps those blockages running. They fire at the moment of opportunity and shut it down before any action can be taken.
A job opportunity appears. The ANT says: “They will not hire someone like me. What is the point?” The application is never sent. A marriage prospect is mentioned. The ANT says: “It will fall apart like everything else. I am probably cursed.” The meeting is declined. A business idea surfaces. The ANT says: “I will fail again. I always fail.” The idea dies before it begins. A course of study opens up. The ANT says: “I am not capable enough. I will embarrass myself.” Enrolment is postponed indefinitely.
In each case, the external door may be open, the opportunity is real, the path is there, but the internal door is shut. The thought does not have to be true to be effective. It only has to be believed.
The twelve thinking traps and how they block life
CBT identifies specific, recurring patterns of distorted thinking that consistently generate emotional suffering and paralysis. Each one acts as a specific kind of blockage. Here are the twelve most common, shown alongside their real-life impact:
1. All-or-nothing thinking
The pattern: Seeing things in black and white. Perfect or worthless. Total success or total failure. Nothing in between.
The blockage: “I did not get the promotion. I will never advance in this field.” One rejection becomes a permanent verdict. Effort stops. In marriage, it sounds like: “He never helps around the house. He does not care about this family at all.” One area of friction erases everything the spouse does in every other area. The marriage becomes all bad, with no room for a person who is trying in some areas and falling short in others.
The Islamic reframe: Progress is built from imperfect steps. Allah rewards consistent sincere effort, not flawless performance. “I did not succeed this time. I learned something. I try again.” In marriage: “He falls short in some things and shows up in others. That does not make him all good or all bad. It makes him human.”
2. Overgeneralising
The pattern: Drawing a permanent conclusion from a single event. “Always.” “Never.” “Every time.”
The blockage: “Every proposal I have had has fallen through. I will never get married.” One pattern of difficulty becomes a law of the universe.
The Islamic reframe: Allah’s qadar is not a pattern you can read. It is His wisdom unfolding. “This has been hard so far. That does not write the rest of my story.”
3. Mental filter
The pattern: Focusing exclusively on the negative while filtering out the positive, like a single drop of ink in a glass of water.
The blockage: Your husband helped with the kids all weekend, fixed the car, and brought food home. But he forgot to call when he was running late, and that is all you can see. The entire weekend disappears. Only the one failing remains. Over time, this filter builds a version of your spouse in your mind that is made entirely of their worst moments.
The Islamic reframe: The Prophet ﷺ said: “A believing man should not hate a believing woman. If he dislikes one of her characteristics, he will be pleased with another.” (Sahih Muslim). Shukr requires seeing the whole person, not only the part that frustrates you.
4. Catastrophising
The pattern: Jumping to the worst possible outcome and treating it as likely or inevitable.
The blockage: “If I lose this client, the whole business will collapse, and I will lose everything.” Fear of the catastrophe prevents any action, including the action that would prevent it.
The Islamic reframe: Tawakkul is not the absence of concern. It is wise planning combined with genuine trust. “I will address this step by step. Allah is Al-Razzaq.”
5. Emotional reasoning
The pattern: Treating feelings as proof of reality. “I feel it, therefore it must be true.”
The blockage: “I feel repulsed by him when he walks into the room, so he must not be the right person for me.” The feeling of aversion is interpreted as evidence that the marriage is wrong. But feelings under spiritual affliction are not neutral reporters. They are compromised witnesses. The same trap runs in finances: “I feel like my rizq is blocked, so it must be.” A feeling of hopelessness is treated as proof that the situation is hopeless.
The Islamic reframe: Feelings are signals, not verdicts. “I feel aversion right now. That feeling is real. But it does not mean the conclusion is true. Feelings under affliction are symptoms, not verdicts. I will not make permanent decisions based on temporary states.”
6. Fortune telling
The pattern: Predicting a negative outcome with false certainty, before anything has happened.
The blockage: “There is no point applying. I will not get it.” The prediction becomes self-fulfilling, because no application is made.
The Islamic reframe: “Only Allah knows what will happen. My job is to make the effort and make du’a. The outcome is His.”
7. Mind reading
The pattern: Assuming you know what others think, and that it is negative.
The blockage: “He does not ask me about my day because he does not care about me as a person.” Or: “She is being quiet because she regrets marrying me.” These assumed intentions are treated as established facts, and the spouse is convicted without ever being asked. The distance grows because both people are responding to what they imagine the other is thinking, not to what is actually there.
The Islamic reframe: “I am guessing. I have not asked. Let me ask before I conclude.”
8. Should/must statements
The pattern: Rigid internal rules about how things must be, creating guilt when reality does not match.
The blockage: “I should be financially stable by now. I should be married. I should have my degree.” The gap between “should be” and “am” produces paralysing shame rather than motivating action.
The Islamic reframe: “Each person’s journey has its own timeline. Allah’s timing for me is not the same as someone else’s, and it is not a punishment.”
9. Labelling
The pattern: Reducing yourself to a single negative identity based on a setback.
The blockage: “I am a failure.” “I am cursed.” “I am someone who cannot succeed.” Identity-level labels are the most powerful blockers because they feel like facts about who you are, not assessments of what happened.
The Islamic reframe: “I am a servant of Allah navigating difficulty. My identity is not my last outcome.”
10. Disqualifying the positive
The pattern: Dismissing good outcomes, compliments, or progress as irrelevant or undeserved.
The blockage: “Yes, it worked out, but I just got lucky. It was not really me.” Progress cannot build confidence when it is immediately discounted. Momentum never builds.
The Islamic reframe: “Recognising a blessing is shukr, not arrogance. Allah gave me this. I receive it with gratitude.”
11. Personalisation and blame
The pattern: Taking excessive personal responsibility for outcomes outside your control, or blaming everything on external forces.
The blockage: Either: “Everything that goes wrong is my fault,” producing shame and paralysis. Or: “Everything bad happens because of others or because I am targeted,” producing victim-thinking that removes all agency.
The Islamic reframe: “I assess fairly. I own what is mine. I release what is not. I keep my agency and my trust in Allah.”
12. Comparisons
The pattern: Measuring your worth and progress against others, usually against their best moments rather than their real struggles.
The blockage: “My classmates are all further ahead. My peers are all settled and successful.” In marriage: “My friend’s husband brings her flowers and plans weekends away. My husband does not do any of that. Other people have real marriages. I do not.” The comparison is always against someone else’s best moments. What is invisible is their private struggles, their compromises, and the fact that comparison under affliction is never fair because the filter is already set to make your own situation look worse.
The Islamic reframe: “My journey is between me and Allah. I am not running their race. His blessings on them do not diminish what He has for me. And I do not know what happens behind their doors.”
When the waswas targets your marriage
Everything we have covered so far about how thinking traps maintain blockages applies to marriage, but separation sihr adds a dimension that deserves its own attention.
In a work or financial blockage, the negative thoughts are usually about yourself. “I am not capable.” “I will fail.” “There is no point trying.” You are the target and you are the one being paralysed. In a marriage under separation sihr, the thoughts are about your spouse. “He has never really loved me.” “She does not respect me.” “I married the wrong person.” The target is your perception of the person closest to you, and the paralysis is not inaction but disconnection.
This is what makes separation waswas so dangerous: the thoughts do not feel like distortions. They feel like realisations. The person genuinely believes they have finally seen the truth about their spouse, that the scales have fallen from their eyes and they can now see the marriage for what it really is. What has actually happened is that the affliction has installed a filter that selects only evidence of failure, only memories of hurt, and only interpretations that lead toward distance.
Look at how the thinking traps operate together in a single evening. Your husband comes home late. Mind reading fires: “He does not care enough to be on time.” Mental filter activates: you forget that he was on time every other day this week. Overgeneralising kicks in: “He is always like this.” Emotional reasoning seals it: “I feel angry and cold toward him, so there must be a real problem here.” Catastrophising takes it further: “This marriage is heading for divorce.” All of this happens in seconds. None of it is examined. And by the time he walks through the door, you have already convicted him. The evening is over before it begins.
Now multiply that by weeks. Months. Years. Every interaction filtered. Every flaw magnified. Every good moment dismissed or forgotten. A person living under this for long enough does not just feel unhappy in their marriage. They build an entire case for why the marriage is wrong, a case constructed entirely from distorted evidence, and they believe it completely.
There is a critical principle that applies here, and it comes from the treatment method itself: the inside-out principle. You recite for your own symptoms, not for your spouse’s behaviour. If the thought is “he does not love me,” the recitation intention is not “make him love me.” It is “remove whatever is distorting my perception of my husband and my marriage.” If the feeling is aversion, the recitation targets the aversion, not the spouse. You are treating what is happening inside you, because that is where the affliction is operating.
This does not mean your spouse is perfect or that every problem in the marriage is spiritual. Real issues exist in every marriage. But under separation sihr, you cannot trust your assessment of which issues are real and which are manufactured, because the filter is compromised. The first step is always to treat the distortion. Once the lens clears, what remains are the real issues, the ones that were there before the affliction and will still need honest work. But you will be able to see them clearly, and you will be able to address them from a place of fairness rather than from a place of installed hostility.
If you are reading this and recognising your own marriage in these patterns, that recognition is the starting point. Not as proof that your marriage is fine and you are imagining problems, but as information that your thinking about the marriage may not be entirely your own. That is worth investigating before making any permanent decisions.
Distorted thoughts create distorted emotions
When you believe a distorted thought, you experience a distorted emotion. And that emotion does not stay abstract. It shapes how you relate to Allah, to other people, and to yourself.
“I missed Fajr. I am a failure.” That is labelling. The emotion it produces is shame and hopelessness. Not the healthy regret that leads to repentance, but the heavy, paralysing kind that makes you feel there is no point trying tomorrow either.
“No one understands what I am going through.” That is overgeneralising and mind reading combined. The emotion it produces is isolation and resentment. You withdraw from the people and support systems that could actually help.
“If I am struggling this much, Allah must be angry with me.” That is emotional reasoning. The emotion it produces is spiritual despair, and it is one of the most destructive states a person can carry, because it attacks the one relationship that is supposed to be the foundation of everything.
These patterns do not just affect your mood. They affect your worship, your relationships, your willingness to seek help, and your capacity to take the practical steps that treatment requires. This is why learning to identify and challenge them matters. Not as a self-help exercise, but as part of the healing. When you can catch a distorted thought before it becomes a settled belief, you break the cycle of guilt, fear, and despair. You begin responding to difficulty with clarity rather than with the distorted lens the affliction installed. And you move from survival mode into trust, growth, and alignment with what Allah actually wants for you.
Waswas is a test, not a truth
“And if an evil whisper comes to you from Shaytan, then seek refuge with Allah. Indeed, He is All-Hearing, All-Knowing.” (Qur’an 7:200)
The instruction is clear: do not engage the whisper on its own terms. Do not debate it from within the fear it has created. Seek refuge, interrupt the thought, and return to what is actually true.
This mirrors the core CBT process precisely: pause, examine the thought, test it against reality and revelation, replace it with what is balanced and true, then act from that truth. The Qur’an gave us this process centuries before cognitive psychology named it.
The whisper is not a truth. It is a test. And like every test from Allah, it has an answer.
A practical first step: pause before you believe
This week, when a fear-based or paralysing thought arrives about your work, finances, marriage, or studies, practise this:
Notice it. Say to yourself: “I am having a thought.” That one sentence creates distance between you and the thought. It stops you from running with it automatically.
Name it. Look at the twelve traps above. Is this catastrophising? Fortune telling? Labelling? All-or-nothing? Putting a name on it strips it of some of its power, because a named pattern is no longer a mysterious feeling. It is a recognisable trick.
Test it. Is there actual evidence for this thought? Or is it assumption, fear, and old pattern dressed up as reasoning? What would you say to a friend who told you they were thinking this?
Replace it. What is the truthful, balanced, faith-grounded response? Not toxic positivity, not denial, but the honest middle ground that accounts for both the difficulty and the reality of Allah’s promise.
Seek refuge. “A’udhu billahi min ash-Shaytan ir-rajim.” This is not a ritual add-on. It is a direct interrupt to the whisper. Use it.
Then act. Take one small step that the thought was telling you not to take. Send the application. Make the call. Open the book. Start the conversation. In marriage: respond to your spouse’s attempt at connection instead of dismissing it. Action, even small action, breaks the loop. Inaction feeds it.
You do not need to master this overnight. You are building a skill. The more you practise catching these thoughts before they settle into decisions, the weaker their hold becomes. This is training, and like any training, it gets easier with repetition.
What comes next
You now know the twelve thinking traps and how they maintain blockages. You have seen how jinn weaponise this process. You have seen how separation sihr uses it to dismantle marriages from the inside. And you have a practical method for catching and challenging these thoughts in real time.
But here is the question that Post 3 answers: where do these thoughts actually come from?
If you challenge a thought today and it comes back tomorrow in a slightly different form, and you challenge that one and another one appears next week, you are fighting symptoms. Somewhere beneath all of these surface-level thoughts sit deeper beliefs: “I am not capable.” “I am cursed.” “Good things are not for people like me.” “I married the wrong person.” These beliefs are the factories that produce the Automatic Negative Thoughts. No matter how many individual ANTs you challenge, the factory keeps producing more.
Post 3 goes into those core beliefs. Where they form, how spiritual affliction installs them, how trauma from previous relationships can be weaponised against new ones, and how to identify which beliefs are running beneath your own thinking. That is where the real leverage is.
CBT and Islamic Healing
This is Part 2 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 (you are here)
- Part 3: Core Beliefs That Keep You Stuck: The Hidden Root of Negative Thinking
- Part 4: Practical CBT Tools for Breaking Through Blockages
Not sure whether you are affected?
Take the Risalatul Khayr diagnostic quiz. It takes a few minutes, scores your symptoms across six domains, and gives you a clear picture of where you stand, with practical next steps based on your results.
Ready to start treatment?
Download the free 14-Day Self-Ruqyah Plan. It gives you a structured daily protocol, a symptom tracker, and a clear method to follow, starting today.
Need a personalised assessment?
If you have been struggling for a while and want clarity on what you are dealing with, visit How We Help to see the options available, from free self-treatment resources through to a full diagnostic assessment and personalised treatment plan.