Areas › Anger › Equanimity and perspective
The useful part of this kind of practice is not the calm. It is noticing that the angry commentary running in your head is commentary, and that you are not obliged to follow it.
You are not arguing with the content or proving it wrong. You take half a step back: there goes that thought again, and here I am hearing it. Relaxation is a pleasant thing and a different job, and expecting it to be the point is why people give this up too early.
Qur’an and Sunnah
The life of this world is merely an amusement and a diversion; the true life is in the Hereafter, if only they knew (Quran 29:64). The running commentary is a diversion too, however urgent it sounds while it is playing.
وَمَا هَٰذِهِ ٱلۡحَيَوٰةُ ٱلدُّنۡيَآ إِلَّا لَهۡوࣱ وَلَعِبࣱۚ وَإِنَّ ٱلدَّارَ ٱلۡأٓخِرَةَ لَهِيَ ٱلۡحَيَوَانُۚ لَوۡ كَانُواْ يَعۡلَمُونَ
The life of this world is merely an amusement and a diversion; the true life is in the Hereafter, if only they knew
Qur’an 29:64read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
In a multilevel study, both trait and state mindfulness predicted lower aggressiveness, and anger rumination mediated both paths. The mediator is the interesting part: what mattered was how much the event got turned over, rather than how relaxed anyone felt. The work is observational, so which way the causation runs is not settled.
Eisenlohr-Moul TA, Peters JR, Pond RS, DeWall CN. (2016). Both trait and state mindfulness predict lower aggressiveness via anger rumination: A multilevel mediation analysis.. Mindfulness doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
The provocation is over in seconds while the replaying can run for days, so the replaying is the thing to aim at.
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
Nobody has to send kind wishes to the person who hurt them, least of all on somebody else's schedule. If that step is being pushed on you, you can decline it and keep the rest of the practice.
Light bounces off a face, lands at the back of your eye, and becomes a signal your brain assembles into a person. What you see is a reconstruction, a very good one, and never quite the thing itself.
Listen to how you narrate it to yourself. What on earth is this nonsense keeps the heat on. I am puzzled, what might this be does not.