From suffering to thriving: Faith in destiny as a resilience strategy of Muslim with post-accidents physical disabilities

Abstract

Besides causing physical disability, accidents also cause psychological problems. Some people are easy to adapt to the situation, others have difficulty adapting so confined in psychological problems. This study aims to reveal the ability of resilience in Muslims with physical disabilities post accidents. Eight participants were recruited by purposive sampling, consisting of six men and two women. The data collection method used a semi-structured interview technique that illustrated the ability of participants’ resilience in dealing with post-accident problems. Data analysis used phenomenological techniques to uncover research objectives. The results showed that faith in destiny is influenced by the level of religiosity, the participant who claims to be religious and active in religious activities has an understanding of the destiny stronger than the participant who claims to be non-religious and does not participate in religious activities. Participants who believed that the accidents and physical limitations were part of God’s destiny, experienced resilience faster than participants who did not believe it. In addition to understanding destiny, support from the family has a major contribution in developing resilience capabilities. Further research is needed, especially using various research methods and including more participants which involved to obtain more information on this topic.

Keywords:

• resilience
• faith in destiny
• physical disability

PUBLIC INTEREST STATEMENT

There are six pillars of faith (iman) in Islam, one of them is faith in destiny (qadha and qadar). Belief in destiny means believing that God has foreordained its proper measure. This concept shows that humans must view a situation as a reality that must be accepted, including post-accident physical disabilities. It creates physical and psychological problems that supress a person’s life such as pain, anger, regret, feeling useless, feeling imperfect, and so on. This condition will have an impact on emotional stability, disrupting activities and hindering communication with others. People have to have an ability to sustain psychological stability in the face of stress, or resilience. One way for a Muslim to achieve resilience is believing in destiny. Believing in destiny will affect a person’s perception toward reality and it affects the individual’s ability to respond and to deal with crisis.

1. Introduction

Human life contains about two conditions, namely conditions that are pleasant and conditions that are pain. Conditions that are pleasant will cause psychological well-being and conditions that are pain will cause psychological pressures, thus making individuals feel uncomfortable. Therefore individuals need to “maintain emotional stability to deal with stressful situations” (Wang & Saudino, 2011), called resilience (Keye & Pidgeon, 2013). Numerous studies show that resilience has the equivalent of words with vulnerability reduced (Schneiderman et al., 2005), adjustment (Schoon, 2006), ability to recover as usual (Windle, 2010), and ability to adapt to obstacles (Stanton et al., 2007).

1.1. Resilience

Resilience shows one’s capacity to survive and develop in adverse conditions, but also to determine one’s ability to recover from conditions that suppress to develop (McCubbin, 2001). Resilience is the capacity of a person needed to manage the stresses of daily life so that he can respond healthily and productively when dealing with misery (Reivich & Shatté, 2002). Resilience is also defined as a person’s ability to face challenges and will emerge when individuals face difficult experiences and struggle to adapt to them (Rojas, 2015). Individual characteristics indicative of resilience are the ability to cope with life pressures, to be realistic and optimistic about the problems at hand, to express one’s thoughts and feelings comfortably (Reivich & Shatté, 2002). Then resilience is one’s ability to adapt to misery and get out of the condition well.

Emotion Regulation and Stress

Emotion Regulation and Stress

Theoretically the concept of resilience is easy to understand, but in reality not everyone can practice it in life. Many people are not ready to face the misery faced by showing various responses, such as surrendering without resistance, stressful, depressed, and also disturbances both social, physical, and mental abilities (Utami & Helmi, 2017). In dealing with these problems individuals are not able to maintain balance as a result individuals are shaken by various responses (Liu et al., 2013).

Resilience is needed by individuals when facing problems that aim to enable individuals to adapt to these problems. Resilience functions for overcoming problems, steering through self, bounce back to the previous condition, and reaching out means gain new experiences and meanings in life (Reivich & Shatté, 2002). In addition, other functions are to reduce the negative impact after a pressing event, reduce the possibility of the emergence of a negative reaction chain, help individuals maintain self-esteem and sense of self-worth, and increase individuals capacity to develop (Rutter, 1999). Furthermore Reivich and Shatté (2002) said that resilience not only causes a person to overcome difficulties but also makes a person can improve his life to be more positive. The statement above shows that resilience is not only applied when individuals face severe problems, but can also be applied when individuals face everyday problems.

The resilience ability is influenced by multiple factors (Grotberg, 1999). Factors that influence it include: optimism, positive thinking, interpersonal relationships, and confidence to build relationships to others (Hegney et al., 2007; Tedeschi & Kilmer, 2005). Resilience is also influenced by: self-esteem, social support, positive emotions, and spirituality (Clark et al., 2011). Positive emotions can reduce life pressures (Folkman & Moskowitz, 2000) and buffering mental illnesses (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000). In addition, spirituality reduce stress (Yadav & Khanna, 2014) and understanding of religion has a positive effect on resilience ability (Foy et al., 2011).

1.2. Faith in destiny as a strategy to resilience

Religion plays an important role in the creation of resilience through the element of faith. Believers believe there is the highest authority (Foy et al., 2011). This believe affects the giving of meaning to various painful events (Manning, 2014). Manning found three components of faith that function as mechanisms to maintain well-being, namely the believers feel have divine support, maintain their faith goals, and express gratitude for everything that happens (Manning, 2014). Manning’s findings show that faith acts as a source of resilience and plays a role in improving wellbeing in one’s life, especially faith in destiny.

Faith in God’s destiny is one of the basic beliefs in Islam. Faith in God’s destiny means that God knows everything, everything that happens in this world in his will and decision (Alhamd, 2015). Therefore, everything that happens to humans cannot be separated from God’s destiny. Whatever God wants will happen and whatever God does not want will not happen (El-Banjary, 2015). Including the suffering that happens to people with physical disabilities is also a scenario from God. So humans should not give up in trying and have the opportunity to change their own destiny because humans have free will.

Faith in destiny is the desire to accept whatever is to come (Boss, 2006). But destiny does not mean accepting without effort, because in Islam destiny can be changed by prayer (Mustofa, 2008). Perspectives toward God’s destiny are used to give meaning to the suffering experienced by someone (Boss, 2006), namely that what happens is not solely because of human beings themselves but because of God’s decrees (Parrot, 2017). Humans only run lives according to their life lines. Individuals who have faith that their suffering has been determined by God, will be easier to accept the situation than individuals who do not have faith.

Generally, people with physical disabilities due to accidents will experience severe stress and then this condition will affect several functional levels such as disorders of the body (somatic), emotion, cognitive, behavior, and personality (Kolk et al., 1996). Before an accident, they can move freely and confidently, then they are limited by circumstances due to painful traumatic events. In this situation, some people use different ways to adapt to their conditions, such as using their minds and experiences to understand the situation, seeking help from others to solve the problem, blaming others for the accident, or avoiding the problem so that individual are trapped in a circle of problems. Meanwhile there are some Muslim people who are easy to adapt to the situation, even though they experience the accident which resulted in the physical disability. They make an effort by returning all matters to their Lord. Trust in God’s destiny will calm his heart, and gradually the individual will see the situation positively. This research is important for believers to return all problems to the Creator and also to see problems that have occurred from a different perspective. The question is how does faith in destiny on Muslim with physical disabilities affect resilience building? This study aims to investigate what are the resilience strategy of Muslim with post-accidents physical disabilities.

2. Methods

A descriptive phenomenological approach was used to understand resilience strategy, specifically faith in destiny, in people with post-accidents physical disabilities. Participants who believe that the accident is part of their destiny can achieve resilience faster than participants who do not. Therefore, the way of learning and understanding phenomena must be based on the participants’ point of view, paradigm, and belief direct individuals (first-hand experience; Giorgi, 2009). Researchers did not have any relationship with all participants. During the data collection, the participants were asked to explain resilience experiences as people with physical disabilities post accident and their efforts to overcome life problems. Ethical approval for this study was obtained from Research Institution of Universitas Muhammadiyah Surakarta.

2.1. Participants

The participants were Muslim with physical disabilities post-accident that living in several provinces in Indonesia. The selection of participants was carried out by purposive sampling and snowball sampling, taking into account two conditions namely: Muslim people and experiencing physical disability due to an accident (broken or amputated). Five participants were selected purposively from the Social Rehabilitation Center for Physical Disabilities People in Surakarta, Central Java. The five participants came from various provinces in Indonesia (West Java province, Bangka Belitung province, East Kalimantan province, and East Java province). Three other participants were obtained by snow ball from Magelang, Central Java province. The characteristics of participants were shown in Table 1 below.

Table 1. Characteristics of participants

P	Sex	Age	Marital Status	Educ. Level	Time to Resilience	Incident	Physical Disabilities	Job
P1	M	24	Single	Junior High School	1 week	Fall from third floor	Broken left leg	Workshop technician
P2	M	21	Single	Senior High School	1 week	Traffic accident	Amputated left leg	Multi level marketing
P3	M	20	Single	Senior High School	1 year	Traffic accident	Amputated left leg	No job
P4	M	27	Widower	Senior High School	1 year	Job accident	Broken right hand	Parking officer
P5	M	19	Single	Junior High School	3 months	Traffic accident	Broken left hand	Workshop technician
P6	F	60	Widower	Primary School	> 1.5 years	Earthquake victim	Broken hip, paralyzed	Labourer
P7	F	45	Married	Junior High School	1 month	Eruption victim	Broken both legs	Farmer
P8	M	48	Married	Senior High School	5 days	Job accident	Amputated left leg	Electrical technician

The participants (P) consisting of eight Muslim people (six male, two female) with physical disabilities post accident. The average age of participants was 33 years (range 19–60 years). Majority of participants were not married (50 %) compared to those who were married (25%), widowed (12.5%), and widower (12.5%). The fastest resilience is 5 days (12.5%), than a week (25%), a month (12.5%), 3 months (12.5%), 1 year (25%), and more than 1.5 years (12.5%) since September 2018 until now the individual is still difficult to resilience. Most of participant got physical abilities in legs and hands (62.5%), and amputated in legs (37.5%).

2.2. Procedures and instrument

This research was carried out through several stages: 1) Participant identification, the first meeting with the participant was when asking for their willingness to become a research participant by first filling in the informed consent. In this stage, the earliest process by identifying Muslim people who have physical disabilities after an accident from various provinces in Indonesia. Information was obtained from Social Rehabilitation Center for Physical Disabilities People and additional information was obtained from community leaders (key persons) who knew about the information; 2) Background diversity, the participants were chosen based on different backgrounds, such as: marital status, jobs, time to resilience, physical disabilities, and the incident level as well. The different background would enrich information; 3) Inform consent, it was very important so that during the data collection process can run smoothly without any obstacles. Socially and culturally, Indonesian people have a less assertive character, so when asked to be an participant it will be difficult to refuse. They will approve the request, but the motivation is not strong enough so that not much information can be extracted. Therefore, informed consent is very important so that the participant is really willing to interview and can answer questions seriously; 4) Interview process, the interview process took place on average between 2–3 meetings. Determination of interview time was chosen by the participant and agreed by the researcher. Interviews were conducted in a relaxed atmosphere conducted at rehabilitation centers, participant’s homes or in other places that the participants wanted. Interviews were recorded using digital audio, then the data obtained were transcribed and analyzed.

The researcher is the main instrument in this study (Creswell, 2014), which is assisted by two research assistants. Researchers deal directly with research subjects to conduct in-depth interviews (Smith, 2014). The instruments used in this study were demographic and semi-structured interview guides. Demographic questionnaire was used to collect data on age, marital status, education level, employment, resilience time, the accident, and physical disabilities. The semi-structured interview guide was used as a data collection tool in this study. The list of open questions is intended to uncover several conditions, including: How does Muslim faith affect destiny affect resilience building? And what is the role of family and other close people in achieving resilience?

2.3. Data analysis

Data analysis was performed in a series of stages, namely: the researcher transcribed the data, coded that refers to research questions, then do thematic classification and labelling, ending with analysis and interpretation. The process of data analysis and interpretation was carried out to obtain textural descriptions and structural descriptions (Moustakas, 1994). It was done through a bracketing process where things that were not in accordance with the purpose of the study were set aside and the bracket out was done to help the researcher gain an objective understanding that was personally experienced by the participant without being contaminated by the researcher’s experience.

3. Results

The following results are based on informants’ answers to questions raised by the researcher. The presentation in this section is a summary of data findings in the field that have been analyzed using the phenomenological approach. Not all research data is presented in this part of the results, only data related to the purpose and formulation of the reported problem (brecket) which is used. Table 2 provides a general description of the results of the study, which include: sources of personal distress, participant responses, and resilience achievement.

Table 2. Overview of research findings

Participant background	Participant responses	Resilience achievement
Praying, zikr, and the holy Qur’an recitation as a healing	Gratitude, and making the heart calm	Faster
Islamic studies and the search for meaning	Understanding the concept of destiny and the essence of incidents	Faster
Family support (parents, wife/husband, children, brothers-sisters), teachers and friends support	Participants feel not alone, optimism, and understanding that his/her condition is better than others	Faster
No praying, no zikr, and no holy Qur’an recitation, without involving in Islamic studies.	the heart feels restless, did not understand the concept of destiny and the essence of incidents	Slower
Perceive the incidents because of a causal relationship: drunk, careless, superstitious.	Failure to understand the essence of accidents, blame yourself and blame God.	Slower
Less family support: families don’t care, the couple asks for divorce and remarries.	Angry, suffering more and more, finds it hard to accept reality	Slower

For a Muslim, faith in the teachings of religion and the values in it will affect the individual’s perspective, attitude and daily behavior. The participants reported that understanding Islamic teachings and values helped a lot in overcoming suffering due to accidents. As stated by participant-1 (P1) and P5:

The Islam teaches me to be patient in all circumstances. Patient because my physique is different from before, and also patient with the attitude of others to me (P1, lazy, 24 years old); Religion helps me understand the incident, all conditions are good for a believer. If we are happy, we are grateful and if we are sad, we are patient (P5, lazy, 19 years old).

To overcome the anxiety, the participant chose to read the Qur’an so that the heart becomes calm and more prayers so that God strengthens himself to face the situation.

I pray more and keep reading the Qur’an, so I feel calm and confident in looking at the future (P2, lazy, 21 years old); I always beg for forgiveness (istighfaar) so that God will help me to face this calamity that befell me, I get stronger when I pray diligently (P7, females, 45 years old).

The search for meaning is carried out by participants by understanding the verses of the Qur’an (tadabbur) and following Islamic studies delivered by Islamic scholars (ulamaa):

The Qur’an teaches us to think and find meaning in everything condition. I also increase my prayers (sholat) quality, zikr (remembering to God), and follow Islamic studies. I’m sure God will help my family life, so I am more optimistic (P8, lazy, 48 years old); I heard in Islamic studies, the disaster was a sign of God’s love for his servant. The greater the disaster received, the greater the reward will be received. Since I was hit by disaster, I am even closer to God. I keep reading the Qur’an and understand its meaning (P7, females, 45 years old).

In addition to patience, calmness, and the searching of meaning, participants provide another positive meaning that is very important, namely gratitude. Participants feel grateful that they are still given a chance to live, because according to their calculations they should have died:

I am grateful for this situation, because God still gives me the opportunity to live in the world. I show the gratitude by doing a lot of worship and reading the Qur’an (P4, lazy, 27 years old); There are still many people who suffer more than me. Then I must be grateful. Gratitude makes it easier for me to accept this situation (P8, lazy, 48 years old).

There were two other participants (P3 and P6) who suffered long enough because they did not have a solution to the problem at hand. They only focus on suffering but do not understand how to find a solution:

I don’t really understand my religion, what I’m thinking about now is how I can be comfortable with this situation. After undergoing surgery my stress increased. I feel that God is unfair. (P3, lazy, 20 years old); I don’t know what to do with this. Nobody can help me. For what prayer, my life is difficult. Even if I pray, there won’t be any change in my life. Let me live like this, just wait for death (P6, females, 60 years old).

In addition to the importance of understanding the concept of destiny, the role of family and those closest to us has a significant contribution to achieving resilience.

My wife always gives support to me. She often calms me down, comforts me. Even, after I left my job, my wife went to work. She works to support the family economy (P8, lazy, 48 years old); Now I have friends with disabilities, I am more confident, there are many friends whose condition is worse than mine (P4, lazy, 27 years old); My dad always motivates me, he says this accident is a trial. Father’s support has made me more comfortable (P2, lazy, 21 years old); I have good teachers and friends, so far those who motivate me (P1, lazy, 24 years old).

Another case with P6, although she has several siblings she still feels alone. P6 prefers to live alone. She prefers to interact with her neighbors who have often helped her.

My family doesn’t care about me, they don’t want to help me; My life is hard, moreover I get sick, its more difficult. Nobody can understand me; Rather than living a difficult life like this, I’d rather just die following my husband. Moreover, many people who hate me (P6, females, 60 years old).

Meanwhile, P4 said that in one week he was able to adapt to his physical disabilities. What makes him suffer precisely because it was abandoned by his wife, even his wife has remarried with another man. PS said:

I don’t feel this pain anymore. This has become my destiny. Actually I was able to receive this physical disability in one week. I suffer from it because of my wife’s bad treatment. After he found out I was disabled, he asked for a divorce and left me. Now he is remarried. I feel sick (P4, lazy, 27 years old).

The P4 condition is the opposite of the P8 condition. Because his physical condition was disabled, P8 offered to his wife to divorce, but his wife refused. His wife wants to give her time and energy to help P8.

4. Discussion

Belief in religion has a strategic role in helping participants overcome their life problems. For participants who believe in religion and the values in it and also practice their teachings in life feel the great role of religion in helping individuals to achieve resilience. Religious values related to resilience are patience and gratitude (Al-Jauziyah, 1997; Taimiyah, 2014). Patience in dealing with disaster is an important element to reduce depression, increase positive coping, well-being, and thriving (Schnitker & Emmons, 2007). Gratitude has a positive role on resilience ability, the higher the level of gratitude, the higher the resilience ability (Listiyandini, 2018). Beside that, the religion also give positive values for various events that befall. Like when you feel happy then you have to be grateful and when you are having a hard time you have to be patient (Al-Jauziyah, 1997). So for Muslims all conditions are good, because it has been determined by God and humans just run it.

To build resilience can be done in various ways depending on individual capacity and values they have. In this research, most of the participants relate the events experienced with religion (Choi & Hastings, 2019), specifically related to God’s destiny. God as the highest authority that regulates and establishes every human life (Al Ghazali, 1988). Participants also relate to the concept of destiny, that every human event that is both a pleasant and unpleasant event is his destiny (Bollas, 1989), which he must accept. These conditions are very helpful for participants in finding meaning, understanding the nature of life, understanding calamity with positive values that have been taught in Islam (Taufik & Ibrahim, 2019), and even able to find gratitude behind the disaster that they face (Kumar & Dixit, 2014), and gratitude will bring happiness.

The discovery of meaning for an event is influenced by awareness and peace of mind (Zohar & Marshall, 2007). Peace of mind is obtained from participant’s efforts to draw closer to God. Shapes of self-approach to God, namely: by carrying out the obligatory prayers (wajib) five times and also the non obligatory prayers (sunnah), doing zikr to continue to remember God and connect sufferers to God (Sabry & Vohra, 2013; Soliman & Mohamed, 2013). Zikr is recited repeatedly so that individuals feel connected to God. Individuals do not feel living alone, because there is a God who always listens to his complaints (Bastaman, 2011). The participant reads the holy Qur’an and understands the meaning of the verse (tadabbur), and follows Islamic studies (ta’leem) to listen to the advice of Islamic scholars (ulamaa) in order to help in the discovery of meaning. All of these activities can calm the heart and raise awareness about God’s destiny and the ability to adapt or accept the participant to his life. This is in line with the findings of Tirodkar et al. (2010) in their research on South Asian American, showing that Muslim participants who consistently pray, zikr, and read the holy Qur’an claim to be able to improve their physical and psychological health.

A small number of participants (P3, P6) were unable to connect the incident to the religion concept, specifically the concept of destiny. Participants only focus on the incident and suffering. Participants do not widen their perspective to interpret incidents with positive religious meanings. This happens because the participant is not connected to Islamic values during his life even though the individual claims to be a Muslim. The participant was angry with the situation, even the participant was angry with God because he was considered to have done something unfair. The inability of the participant to link the incident with the destiny concept makes his heart restless (Al Ghazali, 2004), feeling alone, pessimistic, stressed, and depressed (Gall & Guirguis-Younger, 2013). The inability of participants to manage these conditions makes it difficult for individuals to adapt to circumstances and develop (Spina, 1998), in other words individuals are difficult to resilience.

Families and people who have close relationships have an important role to achieve the level of resilience (Coyle, 2011). The participant claimed that the parents’ advice about the concept of destiny had awakened him. In addition, parental advice also shows that they have good acceptance of their children’s calamity. Parents also facilitate participants with various facilities such as wheelchairs, help find activities, and so on. In addition to parents, several other family members, such as brother and sister, also have an important role in motivating participants. Black and Lobo (2008) explains that the attention, warmth, advice, and facilities provided by parents and other family members allow individuals to adapt to the situation. Coyle (2011) added that families who are flexible, supportive, and have spiritual beliefs can help individuals to adapt to stressors and support individuals to continue to develop. Further support came from teachers and also people at the social rehabilitation center whose condition is worse than himself. After the participant meets the people, it making them feel grateful and more optimistic in looking at his future (Takdir, 2017), by being grateful can reduce anxiety and depression (Petrocchi & Couyoumdjian, 2015).

In the case of P4, suffering from accidents is easier to deal with than his wife’s response after knowing that P4 is physically disabled. P4 suffered a serial trauma, namely one traumatic event caused another traumatic event. This condition causes individuals to have high distress (Green et al., 2000). P4ʹs wife and family could not accept the situation of P4 and decided to leave P4, then married with another man. Suffering from being abandoned by his wife and wife remarries, is felt more severe than suffering due to the accident. P4 takes approximately one year to recover from the second suffering. This multiple trauma will result in the individual having a cumulative emotional effect which at some point can cause emotional outbursts (Williams et al., 2007). So the more traumatic events experienced by individuals the greater the potential for having relevant clinical disorders.

There are some major limitations in this study that could be addressed in future research. First, the small sample size cannot adequately support the results of this study. For further research is needed to enlarge the number of participants. Second, the participant selection was carried out by purposive non random sampling. It means that the results cannot be generalized beyond that particular group. Third, this study only uses qualitative research design, for next study mix research methods can be used to give a better understanding of the problem and yield more complete evidence. For practitioners, these findings can be utilized to improve the resilience of people with disabilities by understanding that every calamity is part of His scenario and seeing that the disability as a destiny that must be accepted patiently.

5. Conclusion

The participants who have an understanding of the concept of destiny are likely to experience resilience faster (P1, P2, P5, P7, P8) than participants who do not understand the concept of destiny (P3, P6). Understanding of the concept of destiny made the participants realize that everything that happened to them had been determined by God, the participants lived through it. Besides that, every belief that is determined by God appears to have good goals for the participant. This belief makes the participant calm, and can live his condition more positively and develop.

Participants who have an understanding of the destiny concept and they are supported by families can achieve resilience more quickly (P1, P2, P5, P7, P8) than participants who have the concept of destiny but are not supported by families (P4). Participant P4 experiences multiple trauma, where one trauma causes two or more subsequent trauma. Follow-up traumatic events result in the emergence of traumatic accumulative so participants feel that the second and third events are more painful than the first event.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The authors received no direct funding for this research.

Notes on contributors

Taufik Taufik

Taufik is a professor at the Department of Psychology, Universitas Muhammadiyah Surakarta (UMS), Indonesia. His areas of specialization include Islamic Psychology, Positive Psychology, and Social Psychology. In 2006, he got award as a finalist of Indonesian Junior Researcher Selection which was conducted by the Indonesian Institute of Science (LIPI), and by the end of 2020 Ministry of Research and Technology and National Research and Innovation Agency of Indonesia gave him award as a high quality scientific articles author on health and medicine. Ajeng Nova Dumpratiwi is a lecturer at the Department of Psychology, UMS, Indonesia. Her primary research focuses on cross-culture psychology and clinical psychology. Desviana Herlien Ramadhanti is a researcher at the Department of Psychology, UMS, Indonesia. Her research interests include resilience and motivational psychology. Hardani Widhiastuti is a professor at the Department of Psychology, Universitas Semarang, Indonesia. Her focus research on industrial and organizational psychology.

Guide interview

1. If you don’t mind, please tell me about the incident?

2. Please describe the situation when you realized that your body has changed? What did you do?

3. Could you describe a time you got really stressed post-accident? After that what did you do?

4. How do you cope with pressure?

5. How to boost confidence after you realized that your body has been disabled?

6. What are the causes of your stress? How did you cope with it?

7. What did you learn from the incident? Did your Islamic knowledge help you in dealing with this situation?

8. How do you accept reality?

9. How do you give meaning to this calamity?

10. What would you do in the future?

11. How does your family accept your condition?

12. How does your family support you and how can it help you?