Areas › Anger › Choosing your response
If they made you feel this, then only they can undo it. That is the quiet trap inside taking things personally.
You end up waiting on an apology that may never arrive, and while you wait you go over the scene, which keeps it warm. Taking the repair back into your own hands is not letting them off. It is deciding that your evening will not hang on whether they turn out to be sorry.
Qur’an and Sunnah
Let them pardon and forgive. Do you not wish that God should forgive you? (Quran 24:22). The reason to release it is put on your side of the account rather than on whether they have earned it.
وَلَا يَأۡتَلِ أُوْلُواْ ٱلۡفَضۡلِ مِنكُمۡ وَٱلسَّعَةِ أَن يُؤۡتُوٓاْ أُوْلِي ٱلۡقُرۡبَىٰ وَٱلۡمَسَٰكِينَ وَٱلۡمُهَٰجِرِينَ فِي سَبِيلِ ٱللَّهِۖ وَلۡيَعۡفُواْ وَلۡيَصۡفَحُوٓاْۗ أَلَا تُحِبُّونَ أَن يَغۡفِرَ ٱللَّهُ لَكُمۡۚ وَٱللَّهُ غَفُورࣱ رَّحِيمٌ
Those who have been graced with bounty and plenty should not swear that they will [no longer] give to kinsmen, the poor, those who emigrated in God’s way: let them pardon and forgive. Do you not wish that God should forgive you? God is most forgiving and merciful
Qur’an 24:22read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
In a laboratory experiment, repeatedly rehearsing an angry episode kept cardiovascular arousal raised across trials, while a competing visual task interrupted the imagery and the physical load along with it. Waiting for an apology usually means rehearsing, and the rehearsing carries a cost. These were short laboratory trials, so anything about the long run is inference.
McClelland AB, Jones KV, Douglas Gregg ME. (2009). Psychological and cumulative cardiovascular effects of repeated angry rumination and visuospatial suppression.. International journal of psychophysiology : official journal of the International Organization of Psychophysiology doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Whoever you decide caused the feeling is who you will wait on to end 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
Those first three circles were reactions rather than actions. Something old moved your hand, and you learned what it had decided at the same moment everyone else did.
To be compelled is to be driven, the way cattle are driven along a road. It makes a quick test in the moment: am I choosing this, or am I being moved?
You are free in principle and a good deal less free at half past eleven at night in the middle of a row. Freedom is a capacity that rises and falls, which also means it can be built.