Areas › Anger › What anger actually is
There is a difference between being afraid and being seen as afraid, and it is usually the second one people are defending. Worth asking which of the two is actually the problem.
Once somebody can say the trouble is what others would make of it, the whole reputational job anger has been doing comes into view. Often the belief underneath is that once people know you are afraid, they will use it. That belief can then be looked at on its own, which is a good deal easier than looking at the fear.
Qur’an and Sunnah
I do not pretend to be blameless (Quran 12:53). Saying the unflattering thing out loud is presented as a strength rather than as an exposure.
۞وَمَآ أُبَرِّئُ نَفۡسِيٓۚ إِنَّ ٱلنَّفۡسَ لَأَمَّارَةُۢ بِٱلسُّوٓءِ إِلَّا مَا رَحِمَ رَبِّيٓۚ إِنَّ رَبِّي غَفُورࣱ رَّحِيمࣱ
I do not pretend to be blameless, for man’s very soul incites him to evil unless my Lord shows mercy: He is most forgiving, most merciful.’
Qur’an 12:53read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A meta-analysis of youth aggression found that low empathy had only a small relationship with aggressive behaviour, while callous and unemotional traits predicted it more strongly. The lesson worth carrying is that you cannot read what is going on inside somebody from the aggression you can see. The same caution applies here in reverse: the display and the inner state are separate things and need separating.
Ritchie MB, Neufeld RWJ, Yoon M, Li A, Mitchell DGV. (2022). Predicting youth aggression with empathy and callous unemotional traits: A Meta-analytic review.. Clinical psychology review doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Separating the feeling from how it looks to other people leaves you with two smaller problems instead of one defended one.
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
In long-running anger the alarm is not broken. It is set too sensitive and too loud, which is two things to adjust rather than a character to fix.
Muttering under your breath is not nothing. It is the quiet end of the same behaviour as raising your voice, a small warning shot that costs you almost nothing to fire.
Expect the fear underneath to be denied, and do not push against the denial. This idea has to be worked in gently rather than argued in.