Areas › Anger › The moment before you snap
The black and white thinking that shows up in anger is not proof that something in you is broken. It is what a threat detector does, and threat detectors are built to be crude.
Calling it a distortion invites shame, and shame usually feeds the next flare rather than shrinking it. It helps more to say the thinking did its job too well. Then the question stops being what is wrong with me and becomes what do I do while my mind is running in this mode.
Qur’an and Sunnah
Who restrain their anger and pardon people (Quran 3:134). Restraint is the quality named, which assumes the anger is present and does not treat its arrival as the failure.
ٱلَّذِينَ يُنفِقُونَ فِي ٱلسَّرَّآءِ وَٱلضَّرَّآءِ وَٱلۡكَٰظِمِينَ ٱلۡغَيۡظَ وَٱلۡعَافِينَ عَنِ ٱلنَّاسِۗ وَٱللَّهُ يُحِبُّ ٱلۡمُحۡسِنِينَ
who give, both in prosperity and adversity, who restrain their anger and pardon people- God loves those who do good
Qur’an 3:134read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
In a randomised controlled trial, skills training worked partly by shifting people from destructive or bottled up anger towards assertive anger, meaning anger expressed as a statement of a need rather than an attack. The aim in that work was never the absence of anger but a change in its shape. It was a trial with patients diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, so the population is specific even where the principle travels.
Kramer U, Pascual-Leone A, Berthoud L, de Roten Y, Marquet P, Kolly S, Despland JN, Page D. (2016). Assertive Anger Mediates Effects of Dialectical Behaviour-informed Skills Training for Borderline Personality Disorder: A Randomized Controlled Trial.. Clinical psychology & psychotherapy doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Shame makes people defend a reaction, while an ordinary explanation lets them examine 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
The river is a way of talking, not a scene to imagine. You are not trying to see water, you are looking inward and noticing what turns up.
If watching your mind feels too open, rest your attention on your breathing instead. Do not deepen it or slow it down. Just feel the breath you are already taking.
This started as a way to stop yourself snapping, and it will do that. It also happens to be a way of noticing your whole life while you are in it.