Areas › Anger › The fear underneath anger
If anger is fear in armour, then what works on fear is what works on anger: go towards the thing in small doses, stay a little longer each time, and let your body collect evidence.
That is a different project from clamping down, and it moves in a different direction. The situations you have quietly organised your life around avoiding are the ones worth approaching on purpose, slowly, starting with the easiest. Progress looks like smaller reactions and a shorter recovery, not like never feeling anything.
Qur’an and Sunnah
Truly it is in the remembrance of God that hearts find peace (Quran 13:28). The settling comes through something returned to again and again, which is the shape of this work too.
ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُواْ وَتَطۡمَئِنُّ قُلُوبُهُم بِذِكۡرِ ٱللَّهِۗ أَلَا بِذِكۡرِ ٱللَّهِ تَطۡمَئِنُّ ٱلۡقُلُوبُ
those who have faith and whose hearts find peace in the remembrance of God- truly it is in the remembrance of God that hearts find peace
Qur’an 13:28read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
Across mixed anxiety and depressive diagnoses, difficulty tolerating uncertainty was elevated at the start of treatment, fell during it, and its reduction was associated with better outcomes, which supports working on a shared process rather than a label. Separately, in a cohort of 103 veterans, high anger at intake predicted poorer response to trauma treatment nine months later. Both are observational in part, so they point the direction rather than prove the route.
James F. Boswell; Johanna Thompson‐Hollands; Todd J. Farchione; David H. Barlow (2013). Intolerance of Uncertainty: A Common Factor in the Treatment of Emotional Disorders. Journal of Clinical Psychology doi
Forbes D, Parslow R, Creamer M, Allen N, McHugh T, Hopwood M. (2008). Mechanisms of anger and treatment outcome in combat veterans with posttraumatic stress disorder.. Journal of traumatic stress doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Approaching something in bearable doses is how a nervous system learns it is survivable, and no amount of talking does that job.
When not to
If what you would be approaching is a person who has hurt you or a memory that floors you, do it with a professional rather than alone.
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
Follow the chain. The anger points at a fear, and the fear points at what you believe is at stake. That last thing is what you are actually dealing with.
A small child is not humiliated by being ignored. The fear of looking foolish, of being criticised, of being misunderstood, all of that arrives later, which means you learned it and it is not a fixed part of you.
Anger itself is standard issue. Handling it well is not, and nobody is born knowing how.