Areas › Anger › The fear underneath anger
Anger is often a bluff, a show of size put on by something that feels small. Knowing that is not an insult to you, it is probably the most useful thing you can know about it.
The bluff works on other people, and it works on you too, which is why the voice gets biggest right at the moment you feel most exposed. You do not have to announce the fear to anybody. Simply stopping believing your own display takes a surprising amount of fuel out of it.
Qur’an and Sunnah
Man was created weak (Quran 4:28). It is said as a plain fact about being human, not as an accusation to be hidden behind a raised voice.
يُرِيدُ ٱللَّهُ أَن يُخَفِّفَ عَنكُمۡۚ وَخُلِقَ ٱلۡإِنسَٰنُ ضَعِيفࣰ ا
God wishes to lighten your burden; man was created weak
Qur’an 4:28read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A conceptual account of shame and guilt after trauma argued that shame in particular drives withdrawal and damage to a person's sense of who they are, though that account is theoretical rather than tested. Alongside it, a trial with 65 patients found that higher shame and guilt at the start predicted more severe symptoms, and that weekly falls in shame were followed by falls in symptoms. Small study, but it points the same way.
Wilson JP, Drozdek B, Turkovic S. (2006). Posttraumatic shame and guilt.. Trauma, violence & abuse doi
Øktedalen T, Hoffart A, Langkaas TF. (2015). Trauma-related shame and guilt as time-varying predictors of posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms during imagery exposure and imagery rescripting--A randomized controlled trial.. Psychotherapy research : journal of the Society for Psychotherapy Research doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
A show of strength can make a threat back off without a fight, so the body reaches for it exactly when it feels outmatched.
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
Keep a line ready for the moment somebody tells you something you did not want to hear. Something like: I did not know that, I would have had to learn it sooner or later, and now I do.
There are two kinds of work on anger, and the order matters. Plain skills for the moment come first, and the larger questions about what your life is for can wait.
Triggers come in different kinds. Some are about life and limb, some are things you learned to dread such as criticism or being shown up, and some are abstractions like unfairness. What helps depends on which kind you are dealing with.