Areas › Anger › What anger actually is
The years you spent angry are not written off. The drive that wrecked things is the same drive available now for putting things right.
This is not a way of saying the damage was worth it. It is about what is still in your hands. People who have hurt others through their temper often make unusually good use of the experience later, in how carefully they handle their own children, or in the patience they can offer someone else who is at the start of it.
Qur’an and Sunnah
anyone who forgives and puts things right will have his reward from God (Quran 42:40). Putting things right is given its own weight, counted separately from what came before.
وَجَزَٰٓؤُاْ سَيِّئَةࣲ سَيِّئَةࣱ مِّثۡلُهَاۖ فَمَنۡ عَفَا وَأَصۡلَحَ فَأَجۡرُهُۥ عَلَى ٱللَّهِۚ إِنَّهُۥ لَا يُحِبُّ ٱلظَّٰلِمِينَ
Let harm be requited by an equal harm, though anyone who forgives and puts things right will have his reward from God Himself––He does not like those who do wrong
Qur’an 42:40read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
In a substudy of a cardiac trial, hostility and anger predicted poorer health-related quality of life, and part of that was explained by a weaker sense that life is comprehensible and manageable. Meaning was doing some of the work in that link, which is a reason to take the search for a use seriously. It was cross-sectional, so the direction of the relationship is not established.
Julkunen J, Ahlström R. (2006). Hostility, anger, and sense of coherence as predictors of health-related quality of life. Results of an ASCOT substudy.. Journal of psychosomatic research doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Having somewhere worthwhile for the effort to go makes the effort easier to keep up.
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
A certain wariness is standard equipment. Nothing in this work is trying to leave you soft and open to whatever comes along.
Anger that shows up when you are running late, when plans change, or when somebody will not do it your way is usually anxiety in a louder coat.
Some anger arrives with an argument already inside it: that they disrespected you, that this is not how you are meant to be treated. It burns cooler than the sudden kind and it lasts much longer.