Areas › Anger › Equanimity and perspective
Under most anger sits a refusal: this should not be happening. Letting the fact stand as a fact, without agreeing that it is fine, takes a surprising amount of heat out of it.
Accepting is not approving, and it does not mean dropping your case. It means giving up the argument with the part that is already settled: the train has gone, the message was sent, the person said what they said. What is left is the useful question of what you want to do now.
Qur’an and Sunnah
We shall certainly test you with fear and hunger, and loss of property, lives, and crops. But give good news to those who are steadfast (Quran 2:155). Difficulty is named in advance, so it can be met rather than treated as a violation.
وَلَنَبۡلُوَنَّكُم بِشَيۡءࣲ مِّنَ ٱلۡخَوۡفِ وَٱلۡجُوعِ وَنَقۡصࣲ مِّنَ ٱلۡأَمۡوَٰلِ وَٱلۡأَنفُسِ وَٱلثَّمَرَٰتِۗ وَبَشِّرِ ٱلصَّٰبِرِينَ
We shall certainly test you with fear and hunger, and loss of property, lives, and crops. But [Prophet], give good news to those who are steadfast
Qur’an 2:155read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
Acceptance and mindfulness based programmes have been tested most thoroughly in chronic pain, where an updated meta-analytic review found small to moderate improvements in mental and physical health. Pain is a fair test case, because the thing itself often cannot be argued away. The effects are real and they are not large.
Veehof MM, Trompetter HR, Bohlmeijer ET, Schreurs KM. (2016). Acceptance- and mindfulness-based interventions for the treatment of chronic pain: a meta-analytic review.. Cognitive behaviour therapy doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Arguing with something that has already happened keeps your body braced with nowhere to put the effort.
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
Some reactions really do just happen, like a wind up toy pointed forwards, banging into whatever is in the way. That is a description of the problem rather than an excuse for it.
Stoics, Cynics, Buddhist teachers and your own grandmother were all working on the same problem: how to stay steady when life leans on you. You are allowed to use the version that is already yours.
Their account makes sense from where they are standing. So does yours. Granting the first does not cost you the second.