How should I deal with living in a chaotic home?

- How should I cope with living in a chaotic home when I cannot afford to live anywhere else and struggle to protect my feelings?
- My younger brother and older sister hold a grudge against me and hate me; they
are angry with my mother for taking care of me because of my disability and my spoiled behavior at times. They bully me but sometimes they fight too, but rarely. My sister is cold and reckless, my brother is narcissistic and manipulative, and my sister has a big ego.
- My mother and I both take values and empathy very seriously, but this can lead us to take things too seriously and conflict because we are stubborn and have childhood traumas.
- My brother is trying to get me jailed or humiliate me on social media by recording me and my mom as revenge for getting him jailed. He describes these recordings with harsh words.
- I go to a specialist doctor and therapist. My sister is from another father and both our fathers abandoned us. This caused trauma. How can I manage my feelings?
- I know that the Messenger of Allah (pbuh) faced many harsh words and bullying, but he was patient and won in the end.

Dear Brother / Sister,

We understand that you have many problems. However, on the other hand, you try to solve them by going to a specialist doctor and therapist. We appreciate you for showing this courage and making an effort to solve your problems.

Our first recommendation is to go to your therapist without interruption and to take the medications your doctor gives you regularly in the same way because psychological problems can be solved in a long time, with patience and determination.

Badiuzzaman Said Nursi’s most basic philosophy derived from the Quran and the Sunnah was not to be drowned in the events that disturbed him. He viewed events from the point of view of qadar (destiny), turned to the reasons that we do not know, and accepted the principle of “every cloud has a silver lining” as a criterion.

“In everything, even the things which appear to be the most ugly, there is an aspect of true beauty. Yes, everything in the universe, every event, is either in itself beautiful, which is called ‘essential beauty,’ or it is beautiful in regard to its results, which is called ‘relative beauty.’ There are certain events which are apparently ugly and confused, but beneath that apparent veil, there are most shining instances of beauty and order.” (Sözler, 18. Söz)

He approached material and immaterial, spiritual and physical diseases and problems from this viewpoint.

He says that diseases and misfortunes make people perfect and mature. He draws attention to the fact that even if the world of people who are exposed to diseases and misfortunes is chaotic, their eternal life will be in peace and happiness. He even says that he does not feel sorry for some young patients; on the contrary, he congratulates them.

As a result of this point of view, despite all kinds of torture and imprisonment, he turned his attention to those who saved their hereafter, not to the troubles he suffered, and was pleased to do so. In other words, he looked at the event from the point of view of destiny and on behalf of the hereafter:

“In all my eighty-odd years of life, I have not experienced anything in terms of worldly pleasures. My whole life has been spent in battlefields, prisons, dungeons and courts. There is no agony that I have not suffered, no infliction that I have not experienced. I have been treated like a murderer in court martials; I have been exiled from city to city like a vagrant. For months, I was prevented from seeing anyone in the dungeons of my country. I have been poisoned many times. I have been subjected to all kinds of insults. There were many times when I preferred death to life….

My whole life has passed with such problems and hardships, disasters and misfortunes. I have sacrificed my soul and my world for the belief, happiness and security of the community. I am pleased with what I have done. I do not even pray against them because, thanks to it, Risale-i Nur reached at least a few hundred thousand or a few million people, they say; I do not know the number.” (Tarihçe-i Hayat, Isparta Hayatı)

As you can see, what affects our feelings is actually our thoughts.

If we look at events or people negatively, if we only evaluate them with their negative aspects, negative feelings will overtake us. It is reflected in our behavior and harms our relationships.

In this context, we give you the following advice:

- Make those problems a means of your spiritual development; focus on your own personal development without being too busy with others.

- Increase your worship and dhikr, read the verses of the Quran with their interpretations and the hadiths with their explanations; we recommend you to read the Risale-i Nur tafsir in particular.

- Look at the good aspects of your family members. If your view of them is good and your communication is softer and sweeter, they will become better toward you over time.

Questions on Islam