Areas › Anger › Equanimity and perspective
Not all anger is a reaction to something. Sometimes a person goes looking, standing exactly where someone is likely to snap, and it is worth being honest with yourself if that is you.
The signs are small: replying to a comment you could have scrolled past, holding your ground where nothing is at stake, choosing the route where the argument lives. Usually something heavier is going on elsewhere, at home or at work, and strangers are the cheap place to spend it.
Qur’an and Sunnah
It is not people's eyes that are blind, but their hearts within their breasts (Quran 22:46). The stranger on the escalator is rarely the actual trouble.
أَفَلَمۡ يَسِيرُواْ فِي ٱلۡأَرۡضِ فَتَكُونَ لَهُمۡ قُلُوبࣱ يَعۡقِلُونَ بِهَآ أَوۡ ءَاذَانࣱ يَسۡمَعُونَ بِهَاۖ فَإِنَّهَا لَا تَعۡمَى ٱلۡأَبۡصَٰرُ وَلَٰكِن تَعۡمَى ٱلۡقُلُوبُ ٱلَّتِي فِي ٱلصُّدُورِ
Have these people [of Mecca] not travelled through the land with hearts to understand and ears to hear? It is not people’s eyes that are blind, but their hearts within their breasts
Qur’an 22:46read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
Reviews of mindfulness based stress reduction in healthy people report reductions in stress and improvements in wellbeing, alongside frank notes about weak methods in many of the trials included. Lowering the background load is a reasonable first move when the fights you pick are being fuelled from somewhere else. Treat the size of the effect as uncertain.
Chiesa A, Serretti A. (2009). Mindfulness-based stress reduction for stress management in healthy people: a review and meta-analysis.. Journal of alternative and complementary medicine (New York, N.Y.) doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Feeling with nowhere safe to go finds easier targets than the thing that is actually hurting.
When not to
If what sits underneath is a situation you cannot change on your own, a home you dread returning to or somebody's drinking, that needs real support rather than a self help tip.
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
Holding your tongue is expensive. It is fairer to admit that than to pretend the calmer version of you comes free.
Bring to mind someone easy to love, a person or a pet, and let the warmth actually arrive in your body. Then send the same warmth outward in stages: a stranger, a colleague, someone who irritates you.
A story that grips one person can harm another. Before reaching for something graphic to make a point, be sure you know who is in front of you.