Areas › Anger › What anger actually is
Most outbursts are a last try at getting something across. Underneath the noise there is usually a need that has gone unmet for a long time.
It rarely arrives as a message, though. It arrives as volume, and the other person hears the volume and misses the content entirely. Treating it as a failed attempt to be understood gives both people the same job, which is getting the message into a form that can be received.
Qur’an and Sunnah
My people, did your Lord not make you a gracious promise? Was my absence too long for you? (Quran 20:86). Musa comes back angry and puts it as a question about a promise, which is the message the anger was carrying.
فَرَجَعَ مُوسَىٰٓ إِلَىٰ قَوۡمِهِۦ غَضۡبَٰنَ أَسِفࣰ اۚ قَالَ يَٰقَوۡمِ أَلَمۡ يَعِدۡكُمۡ رَبُّكُمۡ وَعۡدًا حَسَنًاۚ أَفَطَالَ عَلَيۡكُمُ ٱلۡعَهۡدُ أَمۡ أَرَدتُّمۡ أَن يَحِلَّ عَلَيۡكُمۡ غَضَبࣱ مِّن رَّبِّكُمۡ فَأَخۡلَفۡتُم مَّوۡعِدِي
Moses returned to his people, angry and aggrieved. He said, ‘My people, did your Lord not make you a gracious promise? Was my absence too long for you? Did you want anger to fall on you from your Lord and so broke your word to me?’
Qur’an 20:86read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
In a randomised controlled trial of skills training for borderline personality disorder, the benefit ran partly through a shift from destructive or suppressed anger towards assertive anger, meaning anger that states a need rather than attacks. What changed was the form, not whether the anger was there. One trial in one clinical group, so take it as encouraging rather than settled.
Kramer U, Pascual-Leone A, Berthoud L, de Roten Y, Marquet P, Kolly S, Despland JN, Page D. (2016). Assertive Anger Mediates Effects of Dialectical Behaviour-informed Skills Training for Borderline Personality Disorder: A Randomized Controlled Trial.. Clinical psychology & psychotherapy doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
If the goal was being understood, there are better routes to it, and that is something two people can work on together.
This one is still a draft. It is waiting on a scholar and a clinician to read it before it is published.
Near this one
Anger moves from person to person in a house, and so does steadiness. Working on your own reactions was never a private project.
Before treating a temper as a character problem, check the body. Poor sleep, hunger, a new medication, drinking, a head injury and a number of neurological conditions all show up as a short fuse.
Anger is not a state you sit inside. It is the opening move of a sequence, and a sequence can be interrupted.