Areas › Anger › When anger turns to harm
Ask whether the anger is really about this person at all, or whether it is contempt for a whole category of people that happens to have someone standing nearby.
It sounds different once you listen for it. The complaints come out in the plural, about how women are or what wives do, and the particular person in the story keeps vanishing from her own story. Treating that as a relationship difficulty misses it completely, because there is no conflict between two people waiting to be resolved. What has to be met is the belief itself, which is slower work and needs somebody willing to say it out loud.
If anger in your home has become frightening for anyone, self help is not the right tool. Please reach for real help.
Qur’an and Sunnah
God commands justice, doing good, and generosity towards relatives and He forbids what is shameful, blameworthy, and oppressive (Quran 16:90). Domination itself sits among the forbidden things, not only the temper that carries it out.
۞إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ يَأۡمُرُ بِٱلۡعَدۡلِ وَٱلۡإِحۡسَٰنِ وَإِيتَآيِٕ ذِي ٱلۡقُرۡبَىٰ وَيَنۡهَىٰ عَنِ ٱلۡفَحۡشَآءِ وَٱلۡمُنكَرِ وَٱلۡبَغۡيِۚ يَعِظُكُمۡ لَعَلَّكُمۡ تَذَكَّرُونَ
God commands justice, doing good, and generosity towards relatives and He forbids what is shameful, blameworthy, and oppressive. He teaches you, so that you may take heed
Qur’an 16:90read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
In a cluster randomised trial across 64 Ethiopian villages, a gender transformative participatory intervention delivered to men, women and couples reduced intimate partner violence. That is evidence that working at the level of what people believe about men and women can change what happens at home. It was one trial in one setting, and how far it travels is an open question.
Sharma V, Leight J, Verani F, Tewolde S, Deyessa N. (2020). Effectiveness of a culturally appropriate intervention to prevent intimate partner violence and HIV transmission among men, women, and couples in rural Ethiopia: Findings from a cluster-randomized controlled trial.. PLoS medicine doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
If the driver is a view about a whole group of people, nothing that repairs one relationship will touch it.
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
When someone introduces themselves as an abuser, take the word seriously without treating it as the finding. A label names a category of offence, not what is actually going on in them.
Whatever is driving it, behaviour that frightens someone is frightening. The reason behind it does not soften what it was like to stand on the other side of it.
Working out what someone meant by hurting another person is a conversation for the person who did it. Said to the one who was harmed, they were not really trying to hurt you lands as being talked out of your own experience.