Areas › Anger › What anger actually is
Picture the part of you that scans for threat as a guard on the door. Loyal, suspicious, remembers everything, gives nobody the benefit of the doubt. Excellent in a crisis, difficult company at dinner.
It helps to know this is one character in you rather than the whole of you. When the categorical, unforgiving voice starts up, you can hear it as the guard doing its job and then decide whether the job needs doing right now. Often it does not, and saying so quietly takes some of the edge off.
Qur’an and Sunnah
leave no malice in our hearts towards those who believe (Quran 59:10). The prayer takes for granted that things stay in the heart unless something shifts them.
وَٱلَّذِينَ جَآءُو مِنۢ بَعۡدِهِمۡ يَقُولُونَ رَبَّنَا ٱغۡفِرۡ لَنَا وَلِإِخۡوَٰنِنَا ٱلَّذِينَ سَبَقُونَا بِٱلۡإِيمَٰنِ وَلَا تَجۡعَلۡ فِي قُلُوبِنَا غِلࣰّ ا لِّلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُواْ رَبَّنَآ إِنَّكَ رَءُوفࣱ رَّحِيمٌ
Those who came after them say, ‘Lord, forgive us our sins and the sins of our brothers who believed before us, and leave no malice in our hearts towards those who believe. Lord, You are truly compassionate and merciful.’
Qur’an 59:10read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
In three small experimental studies, dwelling on past provocations, guilty moments and sad times made those events feel as though they had happened more recently than they had. The part of you that keeps the file open also keeps it feeling current. They were small studies of remembered events, so treat this as an illustration rather than a measurement of grudges.
Siedlecka E, Capper MM, Denson TF. (2015). Negative emotional events that people ruminate about feel closer in time.. PloS one doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Hearing a reaction as one voice among several leaves you room to answer 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
Part of what makes anger attractive is how simple it makes everything. Working out who was right and what to do next is slow and uncertain, and anger hands you an answer straight away.
When somebody says they were not scared, they just do not like being disrespected, take the dislike seriously. We dislike what threatens us, and that is why we avoid it.
Darwin once stood with his face against the glass in front of a viper, quite determined not to move, and jumped backwards anyway when it struck. Deciding in advance does not govern a startle.