Areas › Anger › The fear underneath anger
Let yourself be frightened. People who cannot stand the feeling tend to do something reckless to make it stop, and it is the recklessness that gets them hurt.
Old soldiers say the same thing about who survived: not the ones who felt nothing, but the ones who could admit they were terrified and stay careful with it. Fear makes you look twice, keep your distance, wait. Treating it as shameful is what turns it into a sudden move you cannot take back.
Qur’an and Sunnah
Do not be afraid, and do not grieve (Quran 28:7). It was said to a mother in genuine danger, which names the fear without pretending the threat was imaginary.
وَأَوۡحَيۡنَآ إِلَىٰٓ أُمِّ مُوسَىٰٓ أَنۡ أَرۡضِعِيهِۖ فَإِذَا خِفۡتِ عَلَيۡهِ فَأَلۡقِيهِ فِي ٱلۡيَمِّ وَلَا تَخَافِي وَلَا تَحۡزَنِيٓۖ إِنَّا رَآدُّوهُ إِلَيۡكِ وَجَاعِلُوهُ مِنَ ٱلۡمُرۡسَلِينَ
We inspired Moses’ mother, saying, ‘Suckle him, and then, when you fear for his safety, put him in the river: do not be afraid, and do not grieve, for We shall return him to you and make him a messenger.’
Qur’an 28:7read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A meta-analysis across 22 samples found that fear of receiving compassion, or of offering it to yourself, was strongly associated with poorer mental health. Allowing yourself a soft feeling is a form of self-kindness, and for some people that itself feels unsafe. These were associations between questionnaires rather than trials, so they show a link and not a direction.
Kirby JN, Day J, Sagar V. (2019). The 'Flow' of compassion: A meta-analysis of the fears of compassion scales and psychological functioning.. Clinical psychology review doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Fear you are allowed to feel makes you careful, while fear you refuse to feel comes out as something rash.
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 gap between your car and the one in front belongs to nobody at all, and still, somebody moving into it lands like a break-in.
When somebody manages a partner through anger, it is worth asking what the control is guarding. Very often the answer is a fear of being left.
Anger and anguish grew from the same old root, and angst, anxiety and danger belong to the same family of words. The language has been saying this for about a thousand years.