Areas › Anger › Choosing your response
You are not stuck with the temper you have had so far. Reactions are learnt, which is unglamorous news and also the hopeful kind.
People say things like "I have always been this way" as though it settles the matter, when what it usually describes is a lot of practice. Look for one place where you already respond differently than you did five years ago, even a small one. That is your evidence, and it will convince you more than anything anyone else can tell you.
Qur’an and Sunnah
Only those who are steadfast in patience, only those who are blessed with great righteousness, will attain to such goodness (Quran 41:35). Steadiness is described as something attained, which means it was not there at the start.
وَمَا يُلَقَّىٰهَآ إِلَّا ٱلَّذِينَ صَبَرُواْ وَمَا يُلَقَّىٰهَآ إِلَّا ذُو حَظٍّ عَظِيمࣲ
but only those who are steadfast in patience, only those who are blessed with great righteousness, will attain to such goodness
Qur’an 41:35read 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 with 234 adults whose anger was causing them trouble, short therapist supported online programmes teaching emotion awareness or reappraisal reduced anger. The programmes were brief and delivered over the internet, so this shows that movement is possible rather than how far anyone gets. A measurable shift in a few weeks is still hard to square with anger being fixed.
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
Believing your reactions can move is what makes you bother to practise, and the practice is what moves them.
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
There is a difference between stepping out and storming out, and most of it sits in whether the other person knows you are coming back.
If someone can predict how you drew those circles, they are not reading your mind. We are all running much the same small programmes.
A new response cannot be laid on top of a cycle that is still turning. Break the circle first, even clumsily, and the room for something else appears.