Areas › Anger › What anger actually is
If you have been told all your life that you are too negative, some of that is standard human wiring. Bad news gets more attention than good, in everyone, because it always did.
That does not make pessimism pleasant to live with, and it does not mean nothing can shift. It does mean the second layer, where you tell yourself off for how you are, is optional and expensive. Drop that layer and there is usually more room to work on the first.
Qur’an and Sunnah
Man was truly created anxious (Quran 70:19). The tendency is named as part of the making, which is a poor reason to hold it against yourself.
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A case-control study found people with depression showed a specific bias towards blaming themselves rather than others, rather than simply feeling more of everything negative. Self-blame can run as its own habit, distinct from how much distress a person is carrying. It compared groups at a single point in time, so it describes a pattern rather than telling you where your own blame is landing.
Green S, Moll J, Deakin JF, Hulleman J, Zahn R. (2013). Proneness to decreased negative emotions in major depressive disorder when blaming others rather than oneself.. Psychopathology doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Criticising yourself for a normal tendency adds a problem without removing one.
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 have been told that anger passes quickly, that is only half true. Roughly half of episodes do settle inside the hour, which also means the other half are still going.
A lot of anger carries a hidden demand: you damaged how I feel about myself, so now you restore it. That leaves your steadiness in somebody else's hands.
Your family had its own rules about anger, quite apart from anything cultural. Those are the ones that shaped you, and they can be renegotiated.