Areas › Anger › Making it stick
The old angry route does not get deleted. What you are building is a rival route beside it, and at the start the new one is small.
Expect the old path to show up when you are tired, ill or caught off guard, because it is still there and it is well worn. That is not proof the work has failed. It is the ordinary shape of learning something over the top of something older, which is also why the practice carries on after you feel better.
Qur’an and Sunnah
God does not let the rewards of those who do good go to waste (Quran 11:115). Worth having on the day the old temper returns and it feels as though nothing you did counted.
وَٱصۡبِرۡ فَإِنَّ ٱللَّهَ لَا يُضِيعُ أَجۡرَ ٱلۡمُحۡسِنِينَ
Be steadfast: God does not let the rewards of those who do good go to waste
Qur’an 11:115read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A meta-analysis found that mindfulness-based cognitive therapy reduced relapse in people with recurrent depression, and the programme is built around people continuing the practice themselves. The evidence is for relapse prevention in depression rather than anger, and it says nothing directly about brain tissue. What carries across is the design: the thing you keep doing is what holds the gain.
Piet J, Hougaard E. (2011). The effect of mindfulness-based cognitive therapy for prevention of relapse in recurrent major depressive disorder: a systematic review and meta-analysis.. Clinical psychology review doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
New learning sits alongside the old habit rather than wiping it, so it stays strong only by being used.
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 the word mindfulness makes you wince, leave the word out. Paying attention to your breath, or to the sounds in the room, is the whole of it.
Sit still, choose a position, and hold it. Within seconds your body will be asking to move the chin or scratch the neck, and each of those small urges is a free repetition of letting an impulse pass.
Rehearsing a calmer response is not thinking about change, it is the change. Each repetition makes that route slightly quicker to reach for.