 Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim. Alhamdulillahi Rabbil al-Alamin. Wa salatu wa salam ala as-sharaf al-anbiyaa. Wa al-mursaleen Sayyidina Muhammad wa al-Alihi wa sahbihi ajma'een. Allahumma al-lamna ma yinfa'una wa nfa'na bima al-lamtana wa zinna al-man. So now we go over the chapter of becoming a self-expert. Previously we went over how do you understand changing behaviors and habits on a general level? Now we're going to talk about how does that work with us individually? Each one of us has a different conditioned habit and self. In the Qur'an, the self is referred to as the nafs. So the first way the word nafs is used is just to talk about our self. Another way the nafs is used in the Qur'an is to talk about a specific part of our self. And that part of our self is the part of our self that has almost like an animalistic nature. It drives us to our desires, our appetites. It commands us to do things. So in the Qur'an in Surah 12, Ayah 53, it says, Verily the nafs commands a person to do bad or sin. So this is referring to the part of ourselves that commands us and drives us towards unhealthy choices, unhealthy behaviors, immediate gratification. This is the part of ourselves that discounts future rewards and just focuses on I want it and I want it now. The part of us that wants to eat more than we need to sleep more than we need to and engage in pleasurable things more than what is healthy for us. So what's interesting about this ayah is it says, Verily the nafs commands to unhealthy choices or sin, except that which my Lord has mercy, except by the mercy of my Lord. So in other words, the mercy of Allah is so important to be able to help tame the nafs. So one way to tame the nafs is to to work on it and struggle against it. But then another secret here is that another way to really help to loosen the grasp of the nafs on us is through attracting the Rahmah of Allah, the mercy of Allah. And what better month to do that in the month of Ramadan, where it's just pouring the mercy of Allah and we sort of feel that in a lot of ways. The nafs has less of a hold on us in this month. OK, so the first stage that the nafs goes to is nafs al-amara, the nafs that commands to unhealthy choices. But the nafs can change and this is important. The nafs can change. If you work on it, the nafs can change. So the second type of nafs is nafs al-awama. In Surah 75, ayat two, Allah says, So this is the nafs that now challenges these unhealthy, this unhealthy drive. This is the nafs that now censures itself. This is the nafs that disapproves of the consequences of the instant gratification. This is the nafs that starts to struggle with itself. So that's the second stage. And then finally, the third stage is nafs al-muqma inna. So in Surah 89, ayat 27, So this is the nafs that is at peace. So it's gone through the struggle. It's trained and rewired itself. And now it's at peace because it's now conditioned to do things that are good for itself, not only in the moment, but now it reaps the benefits of what that does in the future. So these are the three stages in Islamic spirituality that the nafs goes through in order to benefit. What's important to understand, though, is that everybody has a different nafs. Everybody has a different conditioning that they grow up with. So some of us can grow up with a nafs that's really strong with food or with sleep or with some other desire. And we all have a different conditioning that we have to undo and rewire. And that's where becoming a self-expert is important. So one of the things that at first requires is awareness. And that's what the text starts to go into. How do you become a self-expert? How do you focus on how your nafs plays games with you and tricks you? And in order to do that, what's required is a sense of awareness of what's going on. When you look at the brain, a lot of the brain, when habits occur, it starts to happen like in an unconscious level. So when you do something repeatedly, the brain as a mercy automates that behavior so you can focus on other things. So driving is a good example. The first time you drive, you're aware of everything around you. The car is zipping past you. You got to take a right turn. You're looking behind you in front of you, so on and so forth. But after you do it over and over and over again, you're driving and you don't even know what's going on. Like you get to your destination, you don't even remember how you got there. You're driving and you're making all these complicated adjustments, going at 60 miles per hour. Sort of not even thinking. Sometimes you wake up in the middle of driving and you're like, whoa, you know, like that could have been dangerous. When you start to develop habitual behaviors, it becomes subconscious. So then what you have to do is you have to become aware of those subconscious behaviors. So that's the first step. You have to understand what are the messages myself, my brain is sending me unconsciously for me to become aware of them. Once you become aware of them, then it's about challenging them. Now it's about challenging them. And then we go into a bunch of strategies on how to challenge them. And then the third is becoming accustomed to that new way of doing things. So the first time you dribble a basketball, the first time that you do anything, it's really complicated. But then after a while, it becomes easier and easier. The important thing to recognize here is that the first step is becoming aware and becoming a self expert. So I'm going to start with that in the text. So now that you've looked at the problem of drug and alcohol use and you've looked at your motivation and you've learned how to strengthen your motivation and you've created a change plan. Now it's important to learn to truly know your addicted self. What that means is we talked about in the past chapters and sessions, feel free to look at them. We talked about the addicted brain versus the rational brain, how the addicted brain drives you to act in destructive ways and support your addiction. And so now that this chapter is the first step we're taking to strengthen that rational brain. This is the chapter now where we're putting ourselves back in the driver's seat. We're starting to learn how to control our behaviors. And we're starting to learn how to censure our behaviors and challenge our behaviors. And then eventually just become comfortable with a new norm. All right, so to do this, you need to know your addicted self inside and out, not somebody else's addicted self, not addiction on a general theoretical level like we've been talking about in the previous sessions. You need to know your own addicted self inside and out. So what are the rationalizations you use before you use? So for somebody, it might be one last time. For another person, it might be a whole nother set of rationalizations that resonate with them and get them to sort of cave. So you need to know your own dialogues, your own patterns in order to start making traction. And what that requires, like we discussed last time, it requires rigorous honesty with yourself and being able to do that, putting it all on paper, putting it all out there. So then now you can examine the workings of your mind. One of the biggest barriers to do that is, like, right when you start to discover what's going on in your mind, labeling it or judging it, that's the fastest way to close that opportunity to peek inside your mind. If you can reserve judgment and just stay curious about the dialogue that goes on in your head before you use, if you can stay curious about the irrational behavior or the irrational way we go about things, which is something that is a very human thing, if you can stay curious about it, then you can start to become aware of it, put it on paper. And now what you have is you have a blueprint and you can start looking at structural weaknesses and start breaking it down. Once you have that figured out, once you have that figured out, you will become a self-expert. In this chapter, you will begin to learn how to use cognitive and behavioral therapy skills to understand your own unique patterns of thinking and feeling as they relate to your addiction. So how do you use mind strategies and behavioral strategies in order to reverse those behaviors? The purpose of this chapter is to teach you three strategies. The first strategy is identifying your unique triggers for alcohol or drug use, identifying your triggers for alcohol or drug use. Number one, so you may say, okay, well, I've been sober for a month or six months or a year. These things are less important to me. You know, I had a counselor tell me they had a sobriety date and then they had like an emotional sobriety date. In other words, they had the sobriety date that they stopped using drugs and alcohol. Then they had a sobriety date of when they became aware of and decided to stop living in emotional chaos. In other words, a date where they recognize what are those emotions, whether it be constantly self-loathing or whether it be constantly looking at the future and overwhelming themselves with anxiety. So they looked at drugs and alcohol and had a sobriety date. Then they looked at a date where they recognized that what was driving them to use drugs and alcohols? What were the internal states that drove them to use drugs and alcohol? And they had a date for when they made a decision to focus on that. So if you're looking at the boundaries, the first boundary is using drugs and alcohol. You can create a larger boundary and say, this is when I'm becoming emotionally and mentally or spiritually unbalanced. And this is where I'm spiritually balanced. So you have the use of drugs and alcohol in the middle. Then you have a boundary around that, a circle around that. These are like triggers being around somebody that uses drugs and alcohol, driving past some place that has drugs and alcohol, so on and so forth. Then you have a larger circle around that that encompasses that. And at the edge of that boundary is spiritual, emotional and mental balance. And at the farther you go inwards towards relapse is spiritual, mental, emotional imbalance. And so what you want to do is you create different battle lines and you start to realize that this isn't just about drugs and not doing drugs. There's something that drove me to use drugs and alcohol in the first place. And there's something that helps me and remedying that helps me to stay away from that in the bigger picture. So that's the first thing that they go over is identifying your unique triggers for alcohol or drug use. The second one is recognizing distorted thinking. Recognizing distorted thinking. Every behavior starts with a thought. Every emotion starts with a thought. Whether it be conscious or subconscious. So if you want to change how you feel and change how you behave, you change how you think. And that requires the words you use, the dialogue you use. That's why the Quran is so effective. That's how the Quran works. It works on your heart and mind. And once it captures that heart and mind. Then your emotions and your behaviors take over and change. So recognizing distorted thinking. Then the third is using self-monitoring skills. So it doesn't creep up on you. So it doesn't creep up on you. A lot of times people relapse and their thought is, oh, I relapsed because of this. And they're not realizing that there was a whole chain of events that led up to that relapse that they could have been aware of. The more frequently you are able to recognize and anticipate when your addicted brain is taking a hold and causing you to think and act in an irrational, self-destructive way, the better you will get at intentionally using your rational brain to make healthier choices for yourself. Each time your rational brain wins, control over your behavior, your recovery gets a little bit stronger. So each time you challenge your nefs and you win, you get one more step to serenity and peace to the peaceful nefs, peaceful self. And your addicted brain loses a little bit. It loses a little bit of power of your behavior. And the long-term, your rational brain can take over completely. Becoming a self-expert is a process of understanding how your addiction controls you so that with time and practice, you can turn the tables on it. So once you learn how to use it, once you understand your enemy, it's no longer this mysterious force that just happens and takes you out of nowhere. Once you understand it, then you start to get in control. And that's an incredibly liberating place to be. That means understanding situations, places, people, experiences that activate your addiction. So again, understanding your addicted brain is not just understanding your patterns, but understanding situations, places, peoples, and experiences that activate that addicted brain. And then also thinking patterns. So with that, I'm gonna stop here. Let's start by going into check-ins and see how everybody's doing. We can start with questions. So the question is, can you provide an example of unconscious behaviors that fuel addiction? I think a really good example is using the idea of drug and alcohol use being in the middle, and then people, places, and things being triggers that lead to the drug and alcohol use, and then emotional, spiritual balance, imbalance being something that leads to drug and alcohol use. So there's a lot of studies that look at negative affect and they find that people who feel better tend to do better. People also, people who score higher on spiritual, on measures of spirituality tend to do better in terms of abstinence after a rehab program. So long story short, if you feel better, you do better in terms of recovery. So when we talk about subconscious patterns that drive us to use drugs and alcohol, if you look at your emotions in a lot of ways, your emotions are like habits. How you feel are like habits. A lot of times the ways that we talk to ourselves, they're so ingrained, they're habits. So the way that we approach situations, oftentimes are habits. So let's say for example, you have a difficult situation, some sort of loss. You're gonna have a habitual response to that loss, whether you're aware of it or not, and that's gonna be guided by your 10, 20, 30, 40 years of experience prior to that happening. And that's gonna be ingrained in you. Now what recovery essentially is, is becoming aware of that and replacing that with better dialogues that are gonna have a better outcome, that are gonna have better lifestyle, spiritual, emotional balance. So for example, when it comes to a difficult situation, let's say it's a financial loss, a relationship loss, we're all dealing with some sort of financial loss, relationship loss, legal consequences, some sort of damage from our addiction. Spiritual consequences, maybe something, just not being in a place where we wish we were essentially. So all of that has subconscious patterns and behaviors leading up to that, and that's exactly what recovery goes into. It's developing different ways to think about our lives that lead to more lifestyle balance, as opposed to our default way of thinking about our lives that leads to drug and alcohol use. Think about it like this, the default way we think about our life and respond to life is perfectly suited and wired to gravitate back to drug and alcohol use. And it's been sort of automated and it's happening without our control. It's a, you press play and that recording is going on. I'm a bad person, I never get anything right. Look, I went ahead and did it again. Like all these things are happening and it's basically this low level static that's operating in the back of our minds and it is perceived sometimes just as an emotion or feeling, but that's important to just like have times where you can start to look inwards and be aware of what's going on.