Areas › Anger › Making it stick
Knowing something calmly and feeling it are two separate achievements, and the second takes longer. If you can say the reasonable thing but it does not touch how you feel, you are partway, not failing.
The gap does not close by arguing with yourself harder. It closes by living it: doing the practice in real situations, in your body, while the feeling is actually present. More explanation at the kitchen table will not get you there.
Qur’an and Sunnah
We shall show you the easy way (Quran 87:8). The route from knowing to feeling gets easier by being walked, not by being studied.
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A randomised trial in panic disorder with agoraphobia compared exposure carried out with the therapist there in the real situation against exposure simply prescribed for the patient to do alone. The guided version produced more pervasive and longer lasting effects. That is one anxiety trial rather than a general law, but it favours doing the thing in the real setting over discussing it.
Gloster AT, Wittchen HU, Einsle F, Lang T, Helbig-Lang S, Fydrich T, Fehm L, Hamm AO, Richter J, Alpers GW, Gerlach AL, Ströhle A, Kircher T, Deckert J, Zwanzger P, Höfler M, Arolt V. (2011). Psychological treatment for panic disorder with agoraphobia: a randomized controlled trial to examine the role of therapist-guided exposure in situ in CBT.. Journal of consulting and clinical psychology doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Feelings shift with the experience of doing something, not with agreeing to it.
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 brain is less a single organ than a crowd of billions of cells working out what to do next. The angry pull you feel is one voice in that crowd, not the whole of you.
If a practice looks pointless, you will have dropped it by Thursday. Before you take on anything new, get clear on what it is meant to be building in you.
Reaching for your water at dinner is a chance to practise. Stop your hand for a second, notice that you want it, then go ahead and drink.