Areas › Anger › The fear underneath anger
Losing your temper is the easy move. Staying with the fear underneath is the hard one, in the way that dropping something is easier than holding it steady on your fingertip.
This matters most if some part of you is proud of the temper. Nothing about it is strong, it is simply quicker, and quick is what you reach for when a feeling has become unbearable. The strength is in the other thing, the staying, and almost nobody claps for it.
Qur’an and Sunnah
There will be no fear for those who follow My guidance nor will they grieve (Quran 2:38). The settled state is promised on the harder road, not on the shortcut.
قُلۡنَا ٱهۡبِطُواْ مِنۡهَا جَمِيعࣰ اۖ فَإِمَّا يَأۡتِيَنَّكُم مِّنِّي هُدࣰ ى فَمَن تَبِعَ هُدَايَ فَلَا خَوۡفٌ عَلَيۡهِمۡ وَلَا هُمۡ يَحۡزَنُونَ
We said, ‘Get out, all of you! But when guidance comes from Me, as it certainly will, there will be no fear for those who follow My guidance nor will they grieve
Qur’an 2:38read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A study of anxiety sensitivity and intolerance of uncertainty found the two strongly related but separable, both resting on a fear of unknown harmful outcomes. Some of what people are escaping is their own internal state, not the situation at all. It measured everything at one point in time, so it describes how these fears sit together rather than showing what escape does to them.
Carleton RN, Sharpe D, Asmundson GJ. (2007). Anxiety sensitivity and intolerance of uncertainty: requisites of the fundamental fears?. Behaviour research and therapy doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Letting go of control takes no effort, so it wins whenever the effort of holding on feels too expensive.
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
Picture two parts of you. One is fast and jumpy and does not take arguments; the other thinks things through but needs a moment to wake up.
Every incident you get through without looking at it leaves something behind, a charge that goes off a bit quicker next time. Asking for help early is not making a drama of it, it is cheaper than the version that comes later.
Nobody punches a cliff edge. Pure physical fear makes you back away, so when anger turns up instead, there is almost always a person or a meaning tangled into it somewhere.