Areas › Anger › Equanimity and perspective
When someone protests that swallowing their feelings is unnatural, agree with them, because it is. Then add the part they have not said: it is also necessary, and there are better ways to do it than swallowing.
Arguing that calm comes naturally costs you your credibility in a single sentence. Conceding the true half leaves nothing to defend, and the conversation can move on to what to do with the feeling, which is the part that actually helps.
Qur’an and Sunnah
These will be given blessings and mercy from their Lord, and it is they who are rightly guided (Quran 2:157). What is asked here is costly, and what is attached to it is not small.
أُوْلَٰٓئِكَ عَلَيۡهِمۡ صَلَوَٰتࣱ مِّن رَّبِّهِمۡ وَرَحۡمَةࣱۖ وَأُوْلَٰٓئِكَ هُمُ ٱلۡمُهۡتَدُونَ
These will be given blessings and mercy from their Lord, and it is they who are rightly guided
Qur’an 2:157read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A meta-analysis of randomised trials of mindfulness based programmes with university students found improvements in mental health, with small to moderate effects and variable trial quality. That is worth saying plainly to someone sceptical: these approaches help somewhat, and nobody serious claims they make restraint effortless. Honest numbers survive a challenge better than enthusiasm does.
Dawson AF, Brown WW, Anderson J, Datta B, Donald JN, Hong K, Allan S, Mole TB, Jones PB, Galante J. (2020). Mindfulness-Based Interventions for University Students: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Randomised Controlled Trials.. Applied psychology. Health and well-being doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
People stop defending a position once someone has agreed with the true part of it.
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
If you are still polishing the reply weeks afterwards, the argument is not still running. The injury is, and that needs a different kind of care.
Sitting practice teaches four useful things about anger: everything passes, the senses are calmer ground than the story, you do not have to attend to every thought, and you are not the words you use about yourself.
Practising the perfect reply in your head feels like letting off steam. It works more like rehearsal, and what you rehearse gets easier to perform.