Areas › Anger › Choosing your response
Gritting your teeth works right up until you are tired, hungry or already stretched. Watching the anger from a small distance is the steadier option, because it does not need holding up.
Keeping a lid down costs effort, and the effort runs out at the end of a long day, which is exactly when you need it. The observing stance is cheaper: you are not wrestling the feeling, you are standing next to it while it does what it does. It feels far less impressive and it lasts much longer.
Qur’an and Sunnah
Bear with them graciously (Quran 15:85). What is asked for is a gracious carrying of the thing rather than a clenched one.
وَمَا خَلَقۡنَا ٱلسَّمَٰوَٰتِ وَٱلۡأَرۡضَ وَمَا بَيۡنَهُمَآ إِلَّا بِٱلۡحَقِّۗ وَإِنَّ ٱلسَّاعَةَ لَأٓتِيَةࣱۖ فَٱصۡفَحِ ٱلصَّفۡحَ ٱلۡجَمِيلَ
We did not create the heavens and the earth and everything between them without a true purpose: the Hour will certainly come, so [Prophet] bear with them graciously
Qur’an 15:85read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
In an experiment with 200 police recruits, a demanding task that drained self control raised their stated intention to use force in a video scenario, which fits the idea that restraint is spendable in the moment. Separately, across two samples, people higher in trait mindfulness reported less anger, hostility and aggression, with less rumination partly explaining the link, though that design cannot show which came first. One experiment and one cross sectional study is thin ground, so hold the conclusion loosely.
Staller MS, Müller M, Christiansen P, Zaiser B, Körner S, Cole JC. (2019). Ego depletion and the use of force: Investigating the effects of ego depletion on police officers' intention to use force.. Aggressive behavior doi
Borders A, Earleywine M, Jajodia A. (2010). Could mindfulness decrease anger, hostility, and aggression by decreasing rumination?. Aggressive behavior doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Effort drains away, whereas a place to stand does not have to be held.
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
The aim is to become more exact rather than more serene. Is this rudeness or tiredness, a slight or a coincidence, this person or the whole category they remind you of?
Thinking about your own thinking sounds abstract until you try it. It is the difference between being angry and noticing that you are angry.
You are not stuck with the temper you have had so far. Reactions are learnt, which is unglamorous news and also the hopeful kind.