Areas › Anger › When anger turns to harm
Before anything else, take seriously what self-injury is doing for a person. Pain in the body can be easier to hold than pain in the mind, and a hurt you chose yourself can feel like control coming back.
There are other honest reasons too. It can switch the world off for a while, or hold up a kind of armour: nobody can hurt me worse than I already do, so there is nothing left to be frightened of. That last one sits very close to the anger material, since it is another way of ending fear by doing something. Each reason points to a different replacement, and none of them get found while a person feels judged for having reasons at all.
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
Do not neglect your rightful share in this world (Quran 28:77). There is a portion of good in this life that is genuinely yours, and going without it was never the price of anything.
وَٱبۡتَغِ فِيمَآ ءَاتَىٰكَ ٱللَّهُ ٱلدَّارَ ٱلۡأٓخِرَةَۖ وَلَا تَنسَ نَصِيبَكَ مِنَ ٱلدُّنۡيَاۖ وَأَحۡسِن كَمَآ أَحۡسَنَ ٱللَّهُ إِلَيۡكَۖ وَلَا تَبۡغِ ٱلۡفَسَادَ فِي ٱلۡأَرۡضِۖ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ لَا يُحِبُّ ٱلۡمُفۡسِدِينَ
Seek the life to come by means of what God has granted you, but do not neglect your rightful share in this world. Do good to others as God has done good to you. Do not seek to spread corruption in the land, for God does not love those who do this,’
Qur’an 28:77read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
In 101 adults who had recently committed at least two acts of partner aggression, group acceptance and commitment therapy reduced aggressive behaviour compared with a support and discussion control. That approach works on how a person carries painful inner states rather than on getting rid of them, which is the shape of what is needed here. It was tested for aggression towards others, so read it as a related idea and not as direct evidence about self-injury.
Zarling A, Lawrence E, Marchman J. (2015). A randomized controlled trial of acceptance and commitment therapy for aggressive behavior.. Journal of consulting and clinical psychology doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Something is only given up when the job it was doing is being done some other way.
When not to
If someone is injuring themselves now, they need proper clinical support, not only a conversation about what it is for.
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
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.
Harm that comes out of feeling threatened and harm that is done coldly, to get something, are not one problem wearing two faces. Before deciding what would help, work out which one you are looking at.
Ask it plainly. Do you think you are a threat to anyone you love? A vague anger problem turns into something workable the moment it has a name attached to it.