Areas › Anger › What anger actually is
Try giving your anger a character. Not a monster, more like a short tempered friend who genuinely believes he is helping.
Once it has a personality you can ask it things: what set you off, what are you protecting, what do you actually want here. Children take to this easily and adults often find it a relief, because you are no longer trying to cut a part of yourself out. You are negotiating with somebody who means well and has poor timing.
Qur’an and Sunnah
Who forgive when they are angry (Quran 42:37). The anger is allowed to be present and still be spoken to.
وَٱلَّذِينَ يَجۡتَنِبُونَ كَبَٰٓئِرَ ٱلۡإِثۡمِ وَٱلۡفَوَٰحِشَ وَإِذَا مَا غَضِبُواْ هُمۡ يَغۡفِرُونَ
who shun great sins and gross indecencies; who forgive when they are angry
Qur’an 42:37read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A systematic comparison of negative emotions found that regret, guilt, shame, anger and sadness are experienced as genuinely distinct states, each with a different reading of the situation behind it. That is the case for naming carefully instead of treating it all as one bad feeling. The studies were experimental and small, and they say nothing about giving an emotion a character, which is a practical device rather than a tested one.
van Tilburg WA, Igou ER. (2017). Boredom begs to differ: Differentiation from other negative emotions.. Emotion (Washington, D.C.) doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Something you can talk to is easier to handle than something you are trying to get rid of.
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
You can be patient all day at work and lose it inside ten minutes at home. That is not hypocrisy, it is different situations pulling different reactions out of you.
Name what kind of anger it is and you have usually named the fear as well. Each sort of anger points at something the person is trying not to lose.
If you swallow it all day at work and it comes out at home, home is not where the problem is. It is just the safest place to put it down.