Overcoming Fear and Anxiety

If each of us were asked,

How many fears entered your heart and troubled you?

If each of us came with a sheet of paper and began writing down those things that perhaps

had made him sad, worried, distressed, and miserable one day,

he would list many, perhaps even fill pages enumerating them.

Fears upon fears.

Then if he were told,

Gather them and read them. How many came true? How many of those fears

came true? One?

Perhaps not one of them came true.

Not one came true. That is why I recall coming across a study saying

that eighty or eighty-five percent of the fears

people fear never come true.

This is by God's grace, that God gives you psychological stability and inner strength.

So look, look at how the Prophet, peace be upon him,

protected this

aspect, in the depths of the cave, in the middle of the mountain, while Quraysh surrounded him, then

he whispered in his companion's ear, “Do not grieve. God is with us.”

Anas says, who served the Prophet, who served the Prophet, peace and

blessings be upon him and his family, for many years. He said, “I often heard”

The Prophet, peace be upon him, said, “O Allah, I seek refuge in You

from worry and sorrow.”

The rest of the hadith is in Sahih al-Bukhari.

Why did the Prophet seek refuge from this?

Why? Because, dear ones, if a person is enslaved by those

fears, pains,

worries, sorrows, and distress, he will be dead, even if he is alive.

He will remain tense and anxious. He will be strained. He will be

in pain. He will be afraid. Those fears will remain

before his eyes at night and by day, while traveling and at home, at every

moment of his life, even though none of it has happened. Therefore, the Prophet, peace be upon him,

wanted people to remain strong, so he said, as mentioned in Sahih Muslim, “Do not say,

‘If only I had done this or that, this or that would have happened.’

Rather, say, ‘Allah decreed it, and He does what He wills.’” Imam Ibn al-Qayyim, may Allah have mercy on him, says,

commenting on the matter of sorrow, “Sorrow… Sorrow…

The Quran has 604 pages. Not one page or two,

or three, or ten, or 100, or 200, but 604.

He said, ‘Sorrow appears in the Quran only as a prohibition or a negation.’”

How so? God either forbids it or…

Where is that? God, Blessed and Exalted, says, “Do not lose heart, and do not grieve.”

And do not grieve over them. God, Mighty and Majestic, says, “They will have no fear, nor will they

grieve.” Here there is a prohibition, and there a negation. Ibn Taymiyyah, may God have mercy on him, says,

Shaykh al-Islam, may God have mercy on him, says while speaking about

how God

and His Messenger, peace and blessings be upon him and his family, did not command grief.

All right, why?

He says, “Because there is no benefit in it.”

Has any one of us ever benefited from the grief that tore

his heart apart? No one, right? Rather, sometimes even

his family felt distressed over him, he himself felt distressed, and

the earth, vast as it is, felt constricted around him. Meaning, brothers, if a person

reflects on people’s suffering today, he sees the one who visits clinics and examines

hospitals and finds them to be illusions, they are only

like a path. Therefore, Ibn Taymiyyah, may God have mercy on him, says,

grief has no

benefit in it, brothers. There is no benefit because grief has no

benefit in it, even though a person does not sin by it, except that

God and His Messenger did not command it.

with sorrow. Thus, it is through God's grace

— Blessed and Exalted be He — upon a person, His mercy, and His guidance by God, Majestic

and Exalted is He, that his soul be at peace, and that

those pains have left his soul, and that those worries

have become the past after having been present.