Areas › Anger › What anger actually is
Not every bit of anger is a problem to be solved. Two people squaring up over something that matters, or a mother going hard at whatever threatens her child, is anger doing exactly what it is for.
Having somewhere to put ordinary anger stops you treating all of it as damage. If it fits what happened, says something true, and ends when the matter ends, it is probably fine. Save the work for the anger that outstays the event or lands on the wrong person.
Qur’an and Sunnah
Who restrain their anger and pardon people (Quran 3:134). Restraint is what gets listed as the virtue, which quietly assumes there is anger to restrain and that having it is not the fault.
ٱلَّذِينَ يُنفِقُونَ فِي ٱلسَّرَّآءِ وَٱلضَّرَّآءِ وَٱلۡكَٰظِمِينَ ٱلۡغَيۡظَ وَٱلۡعَافِينَ عَنِ ٱلنَّاسِۗ وَٱللَّهُ يُحِبُّ ٱلۡمُحۡسِنِينَ
who give, both in prosperity and adversity, who restrain their anger and pardon people- God loves those who do good
Qur’an 3:134read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
In a randomised trial of skills training for people with borderline personality disorder, part of what the treatment did was move people away from destructive and bottled up anger and towards assertive anger, meaning anger that states a need. The goal there was not the absence of anger but a better form of it. It is one trial in one clinical group, so read it as a direction of travel rather than a general rule.
Kramer U, Pascual-Leone A, Berthoud L, de Roten Y, Marquet P, Kolly S, Despland JN, Page D. (2016). Assertive Anger Mediates Effects of Dialectical Behaviour-informed Skills Training for Borderline Personality Disorder: A Randomized Controlled Trial.. Clinical psychology & psychotherapy doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Anger that fits the situation and stops when the situation stops is doing its job.
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
Anger feels righteous while it lasts. The useful moment comes later, when the regret shows up and the story has gone quiet.
Anger runs through all of you at once, in the breath, the muscles, the gut and the thinking. Which means there is more than one door into it.
People say true things when they are angry, even when they say them badly. Listen past the delivery for what is being defended.