Areas › Anger › The moment before you snap
Eventually the pen goes down and the finger stays still, and you simply notice what moves through you. That is the whole thing with the scaffolding taken away.
The props are there to teach you what noticing feels like, not to be carried around forever. Once you can tell the difference between being inside a thought and watching one pass, the marking has done its job. Some days you will want the pen back, and that is fine. Nobody graduates from this permanently.
Qur’an and Sunnah
those who are aware of God think of Him when Satan prompts them to do something and immediately they can see [straight] (Quran 7:201). The remembering has become quick and unaided, which is where the practice is heading.
إِنَّ ٱلَّذِينَ ٱتَّقَوۡاْ إِذَا مَسَّهُمۡ طَٰٓئِفࣱ مِّنَ ٱلشَّيۡطَٰنِ تَذَكَّرُواْ فَإِذَا هُم مُّبۡصِرُونَ
those who are aware of God think of Him when Satan prompts them to do something and immediately they can see [straight]
Qur’an 7:201read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
In a randomised controlled trial, brief therapist supported internet treatments teaching either mindful awareness of emotion or reinterpreting the situation both reduced problematic anger, with neither clearly ahead and no extra gain from combining them. Watching your own mind is a reasonable route, and not the only one. The treatments were short and delivered online, so they speak to direction more than to depth.
Bjureberg J, Ojala O, Berg A, Edvardsson E, Kolbeinsson Ö, Molander O, Morin E, Nordgren L, Palme K, Särnholm J, Wedin L, Rück C, Gross JJ, Hesser H. (2023). Targeting maladaptive anger with brief therapist-supported internet-delivered emotion regulation treatments: A randomized controlled trial.. Journal of consulting and clinical psychology doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Supports make a new skill learnable, and taking them away slowly is how it becomes yours.
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 river is a way of talking, not a scene to imagine. You are not trying to see water, you are looking inward and noticing what turns up.
Picture a quick accelerator and a sluggish brake. In the moment the useful question is not "am I right", it is "which pedal is my foot on".
If the language of mindfulness puts you off, drop the language. Call it noticing what your mind is doing, and use it anyway.