You don’t feel like you can relate. You are almost dreading Ramadan. Not because you dislike this marvellous month, not at all, you know deep inside once it is here, it feels wonderful, and you fall in love with that routine designed to bring you closer to the One who created you. It’s powerful stuff. Yet this does not take away from the fact that you are borderline terrified. The Ramadan anxiety kicks in, you feel the pressure to perform to the best of your ability, and if you don’t, you are constantly bombarded with reminders, online, in person, on WhatsApp again and again, telling you when you cant live up to it, how you are losing out on thousands upon thousands of blessings, and every moment should be spent, in some way, sewing your seeds for Jannah. It is overwhelming!
Dear Readers,
Pre Ramadan is a real thing for people suffering from Eating Disorders. We bring you a very different perspective on Ramadan Anxiety from Anonymous Writer from Amaliah Magazine. We share this article for information and research purpose only.
Ramadan Anxiety: Overwhelmed
and Feeling Like I Can’t Relate
What I am about to say, feels a little forbidden and sacrilege, you see people don’t normally express their fears about Ramadan. What you do see though, all around you, through your friends and family members, is excitement to welcome this stunning month. You see them make plans about what they aim to achieve, you see them fall into peace, telling others how much they “need it.” Consequentially you feel like a bad human for not feeling the same, you dont say anything, you just silently observe as it builds up inside.
The Fears, Culture, & Thought Process
You don’t feel like you can relate. You are almost dreading Ramadan. Not because you dislike this marvellous month, not at all, you know deep inside once it is here, it feels wonderful, and you fall in love with that routine designed to bring you closer to the One who created you. It’s powerful stuff. Yet this does not take away from the fact that you are borderline terrified. The Ramadan anxiety kicks in, you feel the pressure to perform to the best of your ability, and if you don’t, you are constantly bombarded with reminders, online, in person, on WhatsApp again and again, telling you when you cant live up to it, how you are losing out on thousands upon thousands of blessings, and every moment should be spent, in some way, sewing your seeds for Jannah. It is overwhelming!
You read pages and pages of ayahs, almost as if you are in competition with your invisible community that lives in your head, the sisters who mention they have finished surah al Baqarah two days in to Ramadan, the aunty’s who spend their days reading the Quran, who are able to finish half of it every few days. You find yourself hoping the ayahs you are reading in competition, will fill your heart with light, knowing full well, that our actions that are not done for the sake of Allah (SWT) will ultimately be found. He knows when we are reading it just for the sake of the people. The pressure kicks in again, you tell yourself you are not even implementing each ayah into your day to day life, building good character and mannerisms, this thought process pushes you away from the Quran more out of fear of hypocrisy. This all almost feels contradictory. Kind of like when you’re at the wedding of someone you love, and you half feel pressured to document it all, so much so, you can’t enjoy the night, and the pressure of both documenting it and experiencing it, pull you from both arms, determining whether you will enjoy the night or not.
You realise you are not looking forward to the collective experience shared by all of the Muslims on Twitter, almost feeling like you cant relate, and therefore don’t belong to this constructed community online. You are caught between not wanting to waste time on carefully orchestrating a group of squiggly lines under a certain character limit to sound funny, or get the Ramadan followers. And thinking is this just our nafs? Or is it Shaytan wanting to remove us from the community, even if it is online?
Duties
You feel overwhelmed with work, or study or whatever else that encompasses your life, then feel guilty for prioritising these Dunyah tasks, when you really should be praising the One who gave you the ability to carry out the Dunyah tasks. Ramadan is a private experience, this is triggering too, the pressure of worshipping alone creates a little more anxiety- the thoughts once more arise, about never knowing if you are doing enough, this sends you into a new spiral of overthinking. You are then reminded of all the fasts you have not made up, and feel paralysed as to how you are going to do it. How will I manage my duties to my parents? My spouse? My kids? My job? How will I feel connected to my creator in a corporate job surrounded by those who do not believe in His existence? Their presence in the office sucks the barakah from the air, leaving me strangled by the end of the day. Worst of all you feel unworthy of Ramadan in itself, you recall how you have made so many little mistakes throughout the year, that you ultimately feel like a hypocrite to even step foot in this pure month.
Grand iftar anxiety is a thing too, seeing how your Muslim peers’ practice Ramadan, can actually serve to make it feel more isolating, scary even, you can suffer from a severe dose of FOMO (fear of missing out). Seeing friends and family come together for big iftars so often, creates another added pressure set in motion that leads you to feel obliged to make iftars yourself. To cook well, and to dress nice. Not because this will solicit so much Baraka, so much so, that your previous sins will be forgiven, every time you feed a fasting person. No, you’re doing it because you don’t want to look bad, or feel left out.
I think about how everyone else seems so excited to welcome this beautiful month, referencing hadith about how the companions prepared 6 months in advance. I can’t even think to prepare 6 days in advance. I end up avoiding my Ramadan expectations, expecting nothing, as this won’t leave me disappointed once it is here as I just can’t seem to live up to them.
Nourishing your own soul
I used to have a group of friends who used to use tarawih as a way to meet up and have evenings out late after Salah, milkshakes, and hangouts. I never could weigh in on the culture, it didn’t feel right to me, I wasn’t at the mosque to have a giggle, and I also hated that feeling that was triggered deep inside, as a result of this dichotomy. Every time I saw their snaps in Tinseltown, from a different mosque, I felt my heart sink. I would choose to pray at another mosque because it would have the optimum conditions to help nurture my soul, but even then, seeing them enjoy themselves still caused a slight pang in my heart, my nafs was calling out to me to go and have fun with the friends who weren’t honouring the nights that were rare. So it made me resent myself for not being able to be less mindful of what my heart and spirit needed to feel at peace. As it meant I would miss out on all the fun, this would happen every Ramadan. That is an awful lot of FOMO for one person.
My personality type really doesn’t leave much room for balance either, it allows room for the polar opposites. Either retrieving into my cave completely void of social media, or interactions with people out of fear of one little moment changing my mood or influencing my energy and state of mind. Or the other end of the scale, completely wasting precious time on overindulgence in all of these things. These are the surface problems though, that I realise are symptomatic for something deeper.
Ramadan symbolises gain for a lot of people, I can understand why in every way, for me, it symbolises severe loss. Loss of loved ones to death. Loss of loved ones to life’s circumstances. Loss of friends who moved away. Horrific moments that I still have not reconciled. Unfortunately, some of my most horrific life experiences happened during Ramadan, that sends me into a spiral of fear every year, how can the very month designed to bring me peace and fill my heart with light, be so triggering? Allah made it so, no doubt, he made it that this would be a test of mine, to fear the month that will bring me safety and security.
Maybe there are others who fear Ramadan too, not the month, but the expectations and culture that surround it. My best Ramadans have been in other countries. Because the pressure of that crippling expectation, and the memories, do not follow me there.
Solutions: be prepared
I was reminded of something at a Halaqa though recently, Allah the One who loves me, the One who protects me, wants me to spend Ramadan where I am, in the country I am in, In the house I live, around the people I know. This in itself brought me great comfort, that the One with the sublime plan, who planned for me to be here, where I am, also planned for me to face it. I am meant to be here, I am meant to feel these things, and I am meant to overcome them. The reason I write this is both because it is cathartic for me to say my truth, but it is also largely beneficial for me to express what I feel so that I can address where the problem lies, sometimes speaking the forbidden thoughts out loud, allow less judgement and more introspection and understanding as to where the route of our fears lie. To be prepared you must identify the problem first, and understand it, in an accepting manner. If you can relate in any little way, and have a million Ramadan anxieties, my advice, write them all down, everything, and be non-judgemental of your thoughts. Accept them, and work with them. Write a list of fears, and on the other side find ways to combat the fears. Interrupt the fearful thoughts with solutions, and positive affirmations, like “what if its a great day where I read 2 ayahs with conviction and understanding”, “what a great achievement to pray just one night in the mosque for Tarawih” “What if the more athkar I do the more at ease I will feel?” “How great I read 10 ayahs with meaning today and it felt wonderful.”
After this, learn to be accepting of your personality type, be kind to your needs, if too much social media starts to trigger anxiety, delete the app for the day. If you feel iftars bring you away from Allah, attend one or two in moderation. Ensure you still mix with the ummah, the people, the community, just as the Prophet saw did, but not so much that it consumes and saddens you. Learn how to say no to the Dunyah wants that won’t even serve your Dunyah let alone your Akhira. Be mindful of what you are feeling, intuition is a God-given attribute, trust it, trust the sick feeling in your stomach if it is telling you to run from that which does not nourish you. Find solace and friendship in the books about the Prophet SAW and his companions, documenting kindness, and simplicity. The books that narrate good manners, and contentment, this will help you get lost in their worlds so you do not overthink your own. See the Quran as medicine, visualise yourself drinking in the ayahs as you recite them as if it is cleansing and curing you. Ponder on their meaning, and if it does not help you, do not document how many Ayahs you are reading a day, I know all the productivity blogs encourage this, for some people this clinical approach works, for others, it just doesn’t, in fact, it triggers more anxiety and less productivity. If this doesn’t work for you, honour your soul, and how it nourishes itself. There are subtle resources that we wouldn’t necessarily associate with Ramadan all around us constantly, designed to bring us back to Allah. Things like gardening, reading, painting, writing, moving, travelling, being in the company of animals, having moments in solitude, find your thing, find your window to open. Just as all the other windows are closing, perhaps Allah just wants you to see Him through a different window allowing your previous ones to close. Open a new window, clean and shine the glass a little, and peer through in awe of His light.
I believe our fears about Ramadan are not a bad thing, they are our soul’s way of saying, this universalising culture of how to reach Allah and feel Him, may not work for you, and that is ok, each soul is unique and its journey back to Allah is very different. 7 billion souls alive today on planet earth, 7 billion journeys back to Him. Do not judge your journey, embrace it.
To those who feel different, Allah loves you.
