Areas › Anger › Choosing your response
Hardly any of us were taught how to acquire a habit. You can know which one you want, agree it is a good idea, and still have no procedure, which is a different problem from not caring.
A procedure is boring and specific: one behaviour, one cue that sets it off, one time of day, and some way of noticing whether it happened. If you have stalled again and again on something you genuinely want, the missing piece is usually here rather than in your motivation. Choose one habit and give it a fortnight before you judge it.
Qur’an and Sunnah
If a person is patient and forgives, this is one of the greatest things (Quran 42:43). Something spoken of as among the greatest things is not something you would expect to manage by deciding to.
وَلَمَن صَبَرَ وَغَفَرَ إِنَّ ذَٰلِكَ لَمِنۡ عَزۡمِ ٱلۡأُمُورِ
though if a person is patient and forgives, this is one of the greatest things
Qur’an 42:43read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
In a randomised trial of skills training informed by dialectical behaviour therapy, the benefit ran through one specific change: people expressing anger directly and assertively rather than swallowing it or exploding. What helped was a skill that had been taught and rehearsed, not a general resolve to do better. The trial was in people with borderline personality disorder, so the group is a particular one.
Kramer U, Pascual-Leone A, Berthoud L, de Roten Y, Marquet P, Kolly S, Despland JN, Page D. (2016). Assertive Anger Mediates Effects of Dialectical Behaviour-informed Skills Training for Borderline Personality Disorder: A Randomized Controlled Trial.. Clinical psychology & psychotherapy doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Method is a separate thing from willingness, and most people are short of the first rather than the second.
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
Aim for the cat rather than the dog. The dog goes off the second the door knocks, while the cat waits, watches, and still moves decisively when it decides to move.
Keep a short phrase you can actually reach for. Two or three words you already know: not now, or this can wait, or let it go past.
If you are helping someone set up a practice like this, ask them for ideas before you offer yours. Keep a few in your back pocket for when they run dry.