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Monday, 28 May 2018

Psychological crisis during fasting - need advice

Assalam’mualaikum,

I need to get this off my chest.

Since puberty, I haven’t been able to hold my fasts, primarily due to heedlessness and a weak will. I also did not receive a strong Islamic education and had no strong idea of the consequences related to breaking my fasts unnecessarily.

Due to a variety of circumstances, I was also misguided and engaged in premarital sex during my late-teens to early 20s, with negative regard for religion, much less for sex during Ramadan. Any sporadic fasting that I did was just for cultural reasons.

Over the years, I’ve been (Alhamdulillah) guided back to Islam again during my mid-20s. During the peak of my spiritual state, I was even able to hold a fast for an entire month. The only time I ever achieved it. It was the happiest month in my entire life. After speaking to some people in my local mosque that year, I was just advised to pay haid fidyah for the year before. The rest, they said, was to focus on repentance and try to make up for those fasts I’ve missed.

It’s three years from that beautiful Ramadan, and fasting had just been a torture. Actually, life has been some sort of unstable since that Ramadan.

Between the long term effects of various psychiatric ailments and medications, being put on medications, personal stresses, disturbances by jinns, and a weakened faith, I haven’t been able to keep my fasts despite my intentions. My carefully developed faith also crumbled.

According to some Muslim colleagues I worked with, I was semi-conscious and eating/drinking/smoking without my own knowledge. Other times I was just asleep. They had to cover up for me at work, or distract others away from my work cubicle, in case others noticed.

I thought this year would be better because I’ve been diagnosed with premenstrual syndrome, and had looked forward to a good Ramadan with the appropriate treatment. Though I can’t muster the will to pray, I play the Qur’an everyday to reduce the jinn disturbances and/or psychotic episodes (can’t tell if the white woman with long hair lying on top of me trying to force her way into my mouth is symptomatic of which issue anymore). I’ve even been extremely compliant with psychotherapy in hope that I would develop mental strength.

But I still struggle in the same scale but differently this year. On days I try to hold my fasts, I feel like I’m going to get an anxiety attack and go crazy. The thirst and hunger is not an issue. Fighting against my mind is. Past a point I really don’t know if I’m ill or just have a weak will.

I didn’t fast today again, and I’m starting to feel this spiritual depression creeping in. My family and friends comfort me, by saying not to beat myself up and do better each time. Repent repent repent!

However I can’t help but think, why can others persist but I can’t? I did well once, why can’t I replicate the success? Will this pattern ever break? My guilt and self-blame led to a rabbit hole of research, as I’m trying to make sense of my situation.

I started reading on fidyah, and did some exaggerated estimates of missed fasts since my adulthood, and how much I have to pay. The amount is more than I can prudently handle at this point.

On top of that, this doesn’t include kaffarah for intercourse during Ramadan, which I honestly have not kept count of. The shame and psychological trauma related to that period of time also does not allow me to recall and access this information. This above fidyah amount doesn’t even include the missed fasts from my puberty to my adulthood.

At the moment, I cannot afford to pay for all my missed fasts at one go, less so the kaffarah. Though the administrator and Ustadhz at the mosque I went to during my mid 20s did say I don’t have to pay anything and focus on tawbah I just can’t help analysing this. And in my current state, I’m not even able to make up by fasting because I can’t even do it properly in Ramadan.

The worse of it is that when I try to calmly recall my toxic relationships back then, I start feeling a sense of dirtiness and remember the manipulation related to them. There’s also the awareness of my own sins. Intense psychological pain everywhere and I can’t breathe.

I feel like I’m outside the fold of my faith since that successful Ramadan three years ago. My faith is destroyed by a landslide of issues I can’t put my finger on.

I don’t want to give up on practicing Islam but my faith and mental health is regressing. Right now, I am thoroughly broken and hope for some advice and kind words.

Thank you, and I pray everyone had a good Ramadan.

submitted by /u/laoniang
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