Areas › Anger › The fear underneath anger
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.
Telling someone that nobody else would have them is that fear turned into a weapon, and it usually arrives when the person feels furthest away. Understanding this changes where the work goes, from a longer list of rules towards the panic underneath. It does not soften what the behaviour does to the person on the receiving end of it.
Qur’an and Sunnah
God will be enough for those who put their trust in Him (Quran 65:3). The dread of being left without anyone is answered at its root, which is the only place it can be answered.
وَيَرۡزُقۡهُ مِنۡ حَيۡثُ لَا يَحۡتَسِبُۚ وَمَن يَتَوَكَّلۡ عَلَى ٱللَّهِ فَهُوَ حَسۡبُهُۥٓۚ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ بَٰلِغُ أَمۡرِهِۦۚ قَدۡ جَعَلَ ٱللَّهُ لِكُلِّ شَيۡءࣲ قَدۡرࣰ ا
and will provide for them from an unexpected source; God will be enough for those who put their trust in Him. God achieves His purpose; God has set a due measure for everything
Qur’an 65:3read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A meta-analysis found that insecure attachment related to depression largely through processes in between, such as self-criticism and unhelpful ways of handling emotion, rather than directly. Fear about closeness does its damage through what people do with it, which is where the work has to go. The pooled studies were mostly measured at one time point, so the ordering of those steps is inferred.
Cortés-García L, Takkouche B, Rodriguez-Cano R, Senra C. (2020). Mediational mechanisms involved in the relation between attachment insecurity and depression: A meta-analysis.. Journal of affective disorders doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Control is a way of trying to make someone unable to leave, which is a fear about losing them rather than a wish to run them.
When not to
If you are frightened of your partner, your safety comes first and none of this is a reason to stay somewhere dangerous while you understand them better.
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
Anger is often a bluff, a show of size put on by something that feels small. Knowing that is not an insult to you, it is probably the most useful thing you can know about it.
When anger turns up, in you or in front of you, two questions do most of the work: what is the fear underneath this, and what would make that fear bearable without the anger?
Holding yourself in is effortful for everybody, every time. When it slips you have not uncovered a permanent fault in yourself.