Areas › Anger › Choosing your response
Try counting what you did rather than how long you have gone. Days passing and acts practised are not the same currency.
A pilgrim crossing a long road measures it body length by body length, and the road still gets crossed. Keep the same sort of tally: today I caught it early once, today I went to the other room instead of answering, today I said the plain thing rather than the cutting one. A run of clean days can be ended by luck, whereas a list of things you actually did stays yours.
Qur’an and Sunnah
Who keep up the prayer; who give secretly and openly from what We have provided for them; who repel evil with good (Quran 13:22). Meeting harm with something better sits in a list of plain repeated habits, not among rare heroics.
وَٱلَّذِينَ صَبَرُواْ ٱبۡتِغَآءَ وَجۡهِ رَبِّهِمۡ وَأَقَامُواْ ٱلصَّلَوٰةَ وَأَنفَقُواْ مِمَّا رَزَقۡنَٰهُمۡ سِرࣰّ ا وَعَلَانِيَةࣰ وَيَدۡرَءُونَ بِٱلۡحَسَنَةِ ٱلسَّيِّئَةَ أُوْلَٰٓئِكَ لَهُمۡ عُقۡبَى ٱلدَّارِ
who remain steadfast through their desire for the face of their Lord; who keep up the prayer; who give secretly and openly from what We have provided for them; who repel evil with good. These will have the reward of the [true] home
Qur’an 13:22read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
Pooling 48 samples and more than 21,000 people, habitually reinterpreting situations went with more positive feeling and life satisfaction, while habitually holding expression in went with more depression and anxiety. The load bearing word there is habitual, meaning the thing repeated rather than the thing intended. These are associations across people, so they do not prove that adding repetitions will lift your mood.
Hu T, Zhang D, Wang J, Mistry R, Ran G, Wang X. (2014). Relation between emotion regulation and mental health: a meta-analysis review.. Psychological reports doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Counting your own actions shows you evidence that you are the one moving this.
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
You are not stuck with the temper you have had so far. Reactions are learnt, which is unglamorous news and also the hopeful kind.
When somebody's voice climbs, let yours stay where it is. Staying level is not backing down, and in the room it usually reads as the stronger position.
Treat this as playing a trick on your own mind rather than as another rule to obey. Confusing yourself on purpose is allowed to be funny.