Areas › Anger › Choosing your response
Your mind sorts fast and rough. It matches what is happening now against something it has met before, and in a bad moment it rounds a raised eyebrow up to contempt.
Most rows start with a misreading rather than with faulty reasoning, which is why picking your conclusions apart afterwards changes so little. The useful moment is when the match is being made: this looks like the time she brushed me off, but is it actually? Stopping there costs a second and saves an hour.
Qur’an and Sunnah
You are sure to hear much that is hurtful (Quran 3:186). Being told in advance takes some of the shock out, and shock is what makes a fast reading feel like certainty.
۞لَتُبۡلَوُنَّ فِيٓ أَمۡوَٰلِكُمۡ وَأَنفُسِكُمۡ وَلَتَسۡمَعُنَّ مِنَ ٱلَّذِينَ أُوتُواْ ٱلۡكِتَٰبَ مِن قَبۡلِكُمۡ وَمِنَ ٱلَّذِينَ أَشۡرَكُوٓاْ أَذࣰ ى كَثِيرࣰ اۚ وَإِن تَصۡبِرُواْ وَتَتَّقُواْ فَإِنَّ ذَٰلِكَ مِنۡ عَزۡمِ ٱلۡأُمُورِ
you are sure to be tested through your possessions and persons; you are sure to hear much that is hurtful from those who were given the Scripture before you and from those who associate others with God. If you are steadfast and mindful of God, that is the best course
Qur’an 3:186read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
In a randomised laboratory experiment, people who had recalled an anger-provoking event ended up in different places depending on how they thought about it, with reappraisal reducing anger and going over it keeping the anger alive. The reading you settle on does real work, then, and not only the event itself. It was a recalled memory in a laboratory, a mild version of the real thing.
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
The mistake is usually in what you recognised, not in what you concluded, so that is where to look.
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
To be compelled is to be driven, the way cattle are driven along a road. It makes a quick test in the moment: am I choosing this, or am I being moved?
You cannot let something pass that you never let arrive. Allowing the anger in, along with the grab that comes with it, is the part that takes courage.
You can tell someone they have hurt you without your voice showing it. The message and the heat come apart, and it is usually the heat that stops the message being heard.