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.

Narrowed down

5 practices

The fear underneath anger Twenty minutes Any ordinary day Clear all

Theme · The fear underneath anger

What anger actually is 8 The fear underneath anger 5 The moment before you snap 5 When anger turns to harm 4 Righteous anger and perfectionism 4 Growing empathy 3 Practising under provocation 3 Equanimity and perspective 2 Anger, alcohol and the body 2 Choosing your response 2 Making it stick 2 Cool the body first 2 What you are actually defending 1

How long you have · Twenty minutes

A minute 5 Five minutes 17 Twenty minutes 5 Longer 4

Approach

Core 4 Trauma informed 1

When · Any ordinary day

Any ordinary day 5 After a row 1

If anger runs on the fear system, then the things that settle fear are worth trying on anger: staying in the room a bit longer, letting your body come down before you speak, going back over the story you told yourself about what was happening.

Most anger advice is about clamping down, and clamping down on something frightened rarely holds for long. Treating it as fear gives you gentler…

Twenty minutesThe fear underneath angerCoreQur’an 20:68

Think of the reaction as a small program sitting quietly, waiting for one particular condition. It is not running all the time, and which condition wakes it is a question with an answer.

Keep a short list for a few weeks. Only what was happening in the ten seconds before: a tone of voice, being interrupted, somebody standing over you…

Twenty minutesThe fear underneath angerTrauma informedQur’an 30:8

Triggers come in different kinds. Some are about life and limb, some are things you learned to dread such as criticism or being shown up, and some are abstractions like unfairness. What helps depends on which kind you are dealing with.

Real danger needs a plan and usually other people, not a breathing exercise. A learned dread tends to ease by going near it more often in small doses…

Twenty minutesThe fear underneath angerCoreQur’an 20:112

Some of the fights you take up for other people are your own old fight, unfinished, borrowed onto somebody else's ground.

The signs are recognisable: the heat is out of proportion, you cannot let it go afterwards, and the person you were defending never asked you to.…

Twenty minutesThe fear underneath angerCoreQur’an 28:10

Ask what has been done to this person, not only what they have done. Old harm decides which ordinary things now register as a threat.

Reactions that look wildly out of proportion usually are not, once you know what the moment resembled. A hand raised near a face, a certain tone,…

Twenty minutesThe fear underneath angerCoreQur’an 33:58