Areas › Anger › What you are actually defending
Here is an uncomfortable way to look at it. To value someone is often to find them useful, and paying respect is a bit like looking after your tools: being nice to you is nice for me.
It is not the whole truth about people and it is not meant unkindly. It is useful because it makes generic respect a strange thing to organise a life around. If a good deal of what you are chasing is other people maintaining their own equipment, the chase loses some of its pull, and the fury when it does not arrive loses some of its case.
Qur’an and Sunnah
In God's eyes, the most honoured of you are the ones most mindful of Him (Quran 49:13). Honour is placed somewhere that no exchange between people can grant or withdraw.
يَٰٓأَيُّهَا ٱلنَّاسُ إِنَّا خَلَقۡنَٰكُم مِّن ذَكَرࣲ وَأُنثَىٰ وَجَعَلۡنَٰكُمۡ شُعُوبࣰ ا وَقَبَآئِلَ لِتَعَارَفُوٓاْۚ إِنَّ أَكۡرَمَكُمۡ عِندَ ٱللَّهِ أَتۡقَىٰكُمۡۚ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ عَلِيمٌ خَبِيرࣱ
People, We created you all from a single man and a single woman, and made you into races and tribes so that you should recognize one another. In God’s eyes, the most honoured of you are the ones most mindful of Him: God is all knowing, all aware
Qur’an 49:13read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A systematic review and meta-analysis in adults found that perfectionistic concerns consistently went with lower self-esteem, which fits the idea that staking your worth on meeting a standard tends to leave it low rather than high. Respect earned by usefulness is a standard like any other. The pooled studies were cross-sectional, so this is a consistent association rather than a demonstrated cause.
Khossousi V, Greene D, Shafran R, Callaghan T, Dickinson S, Egan SJ. (2024). The relationship between perfectionism and self-esteem in adults: a systematic review and meta-analysis.. Behavioural and cognitive psychotherapy doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Respect that is really a transaction is a thin thing to stake your worth on.
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
If you can see yourself, you need other people to do it far less. That is really the whole aim, and it is what takes the sting out of being misjudged.
Righteous anger pays you something. It burns off doubt, hands back a sense of being in charge, and can feel very close to intoxicating.
Your mind is always slightly behind what is happening. Reality moves and you are the response, which leaves you permanently a step late and permanently not quite sure.