Areas › Anger
Anger
Almost nobody wants to be the person who says the thing they cannot take back. The window between the surge and the words is short and it can be widened. That is most of what this area is about, along with the fear or hurt that anger is usually protecting.
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5 practicesHow long you have · A minute
When · Any ordinary day
Catch the reflex on something small. A one-word reply to your message, and the first question your mind asks is what have I done.
That first question is the reflex, and it is far easier to see when nothing much is at stake. Practise there: notice the accusation your mind reached…
Before you practise something exposing with someone, say out loud what is not at risk. I will not think less of you, and nothing between us changes here.
It sounds obvious and it does a great deal of work. If the relationship really is on the line, then the discomfort is not symbolic and no amount of…
Call the practice whatever fits you. Stress inoculation, rolling with the punches, a Teflon mind, the art of not giving a damn: the name changes nothing about what you do, and a name you can stand makes you likelier to do it.
People come to this with different histories and some of them have been lectured before. If the language sounds like a self help poster to you, use…
Be careful with the language about growing a thicker skin. Before anyone is asked to mind less, someone has to check that what they are minding really is only a slight.
Where the insults are discrimination, bullying or the run up to abuse, telling a person to toughen up is telling them to distrust an accurate reading…
Treat these as experiments rather than instructions. You are not obeying a programme, you are finding out what happens, and that difference changes how it feels to do them.
People who are quick to anger are often also quick to bristle at being told what to do, and a challenge sits far better with that than a homework…