Areas › Anger › What anger actually is
Skills rehearsed in total calm tend to vanish at the moment you need them. Practise on something still slightly warm, a real incident from this week, close enough that you feel a little of it.
Bring the scene back in enough detail that your chest tightens a bit, then do the work right there. What you read into it, what else it might have been, what you would want from your first ten seconds. The aim is not to stir yourself up. It is to step out of the calm room briefly so the new response gets attached to the actual feeling.
Qur’an and Sunnah
who forgive when they are angry (Quran 42:37). The work is placed inside the anger rather than after it has drained away.
وَٱلَّذِينَ يَجۡتَنِبُونَ كَبَٰٓئِرَ ٱلۡإِثۡمِ وَٱلۡفَوَٰحِشَ وَإِذَا مَا غَضِبُواْ هُمۡ يَغۡفِرُونَ
who shun great sins and gross indecencies; who forgive when they are angry
Qur’an 42:37read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
In laboratory experiments, recalling an anger-provoking event was not itself the problem. Dwelling on it kept the anger going and raised blood pressure, while reinterpreting the same memory brought both down. So returning to a real incident is safe enough if what you do there is re-read it rather than rehearse it. These were controlled laboratory tasks, not weeks of practice at home.
Ray RD, Wilhelm FH, Gross JJ. (2008). All in the mind's eye? Anger rumination and reappraisal.. Journal of personality and social psychology doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
What you learn while the feeling is present is more likely to come back when the feeling does.
When not to
If bringing the memory back tips you into distress you cannot come out of, stop and do this with someone alongside you.
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 is not something to get round to next month. One bad half hour can cost a job, a marriage or a criminal record.
One clear explanation is rarely enough. Say the important part again later in different words, and expect to say it again after that.
Some of what you will hear about anger is solid, and some is a teacher's own theory delivered with the same confidence. It is fair to ask which one you are getting.