Areas › Anger › Practising under provocation
You do not need to get rid of your pride to stop being ruled by it. Having a sense of yourself is ordinary and useful, and the trouble starts only when every exchange has to feed it.
Introductions, small talk, the way you tell someone what you do, all of that runs on a bit of self presentation and there is nothing wrong with it. What you are practising is being able to set it down when it is costing you something. A fair test is whether you can let a small correction pass without needing to restore the balance afterwards.
Qur’an and Sunnah
Those who do not give false testimony, and who, when they see some frivolity, pass by with dignity (Quran 25:72). Dignity is kept by walking on, not by making the point.
وَٱلَّذِينَ لَا يَشۡهَدُونَ ٱلزُّورَ وَإِذَا مَرُّواْ بِٱللَّغۡوِ مَرُّواْ كِرَامࣰ ا
[The servants of the Lord of Mercy are] those who do not give false testimony, and who, when they see some frivolity, pass by with dignity
Qur’an 25:72read 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 forensic psychiatric patients, anger management training built on this way of relating to your own thoughts reduced both anger rumination and impulsivity. The setting was secure and the participants were far from typical, so how large the effect is elsewhere remains open. What it does support is that the skill can be taught rather than being a matter of temperament.
Polat H, Asi Karakaş S. (2021). The effect of acceptance and commitment therapy orientated anger management training on anger ruminations and impulsivity levels in forensic psychiatric patients: A randomized controlled trial.. Perspectives in psychiatric care doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
You can only put something down if you were holding it rather than being it.
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
Wear something slightly odd for a day. A strange tie, a shirt you would normally think twice about, nothing that would embarrass anybody else.
Run the same moment twice. The second time, change nothing except what you do with it, and let yourself not mind what the other person might be thinking.
The shape of the whole thing is simple. Find the judgement that stings, meet it, talk it through, meet it again with a different intention, talk it through, then mark that you did it.