Meditation(which in an Islamic sense means Dhikr and Salat) can train the brain to switch out of ‘anxiety’ mode by increasing activity in the left pre-frontal cortex (the happy side!). Obviously this cannot be done overnight and there are other factors at play with depression so don’t go throwing your meds away just yet!
Sometimes I wonder if living in a non-Muslim society scares us so much that we become extreme (no, not as in ‘extremists’) but as in we either force our kids into all things ‘Muslim’ and nothing else, or we force our kids into all things ‘North American’ and keep that ‘Muslim-thing’ very low key. I try to keep a balance, it’s somewhat easy for me because I have always lived in Trinidad, and grew up pretty ‘westernized’, so I don’t struggle much with the way of life here, but I think that the balance that I grew up with has helped me to ‘integrate’ (as they like to call it) more easily.
