Areas › Anger › What you are actually defending
Demanding respect quietly puts you below the person you are demanding it from. You are asking for something only they can hand over, which makes you the one in need.
That is an odd position for a stance meant to prove you will not be pushed around. To anyone watching it usually reads as need rather than strength. The way out is not to demand harder but to stop making the request, and that only becomes possible once some of the regard is coming from somewhere you control.
Qur’an and Sunnah
The Home in the Hereafter goes to those who do not seek superiority on earth (Quran 28:83). Letting the ranking go is described as gain, which is not at all how it feels in the moment.
تِلۡكَ ٱلدَّارُ ٱلۡأٓخِرَةُ نَجۡعَلُهَا لِلَّذِينَ لَا يُرِيدُونَ عُلُوࣰّ ا فِي ٱلۡأَرۡضِ وَلَا فَسَادࣰ اۚ وَٱلۡعَٰقِبَةُ لِلۡمُتَّقِينَ
We grant the Home in the Hereafter to those who do not seek superiority on earth or spread corruption: the happy ending is awarded to those who are mindful of God
Qur’an 28:83read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
In a study of patients with borderline personality disorder, attachment style predicted which forms of hostility showed up, tying aggression to what a person felt was at stake in the relationship. Anger takes its shape from the standing you believe you have with someone, which is the same machinery as the demand for respect. It was a cross-sectional clinical sample, so it maps a pattern in one group rather than a rule for everybody.
Critchfield KL, Levy KN, Clarkin JF, Kernberg OF. (2008). The relational context of aggression in borderline personality disorder: using adult attachment style to predict forms of hostility.. Journal of clinical psychology doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Asking somebody to grant you standing hands them the power to withhold it.
When not to
Collective calls for respect, where a whole group is being treated as less, are a different matter from asking one person to think well of you.
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
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.
The aim is not to work out the answer. It is to keep moving while the answer is missing, and to find that the fear does not have to run the day.
A lizard's temperature is whatever the rock is. A mammal shivers, sweats and pants, and stays roughly the same whether it is a good day or not.