Areas › Anger › Practising under provocation
The jolt you feel when someone humiliates you is very old machinery. Where standing decided whether you ate, reacting hard to a public slight made sense. In traffic it makes none.
This is an explanation and not an excuse, and it is a story about where the reflex came from rather than a proven account of what your brain is doing. Its use is practical. If the pull feels far stronger than the situation deserves, that is expected, and you do not have to treat the size of the feeling as evidence that something serious is happening.
Qur’an and Sunnah
Repel evil with what is better and your enemy will become as close as an old and valued friend (Quran 41:34). A better reply is presented as achievable, with a result attached, which is the opposite of treating the reflex as fate.
وَلَا تَسۡتَوِي ٱلۡحَسَنَةُ وَلَا ٱلسَّيِّئَةُۚ ٱدۡفَعۡ بِٱلَّتِي هِيَ أَحۡسَنُ فَإِذَا ٱلَّذِي بَيۡنَكَ وَبَيۡنَهُۥ عَدَٰوَةࣱ كَأَنَّهُۥ وَلِيٌّ حَمِيمࣱ
Good and evil cannot be equal. [Prophet], repel evil with what is better and your enemy will become as close as an old and valued friend
Qur’an 41:34read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
There is decent evidence the response can be trained rather than only endured. Aggressive preadolescent boys randomised to a structured coping skills programme showed less covert delinquent behaviour a year later, with the strongest results when their parents were trained too. That is children rather than adults, and delinquency rather than the feeling of insult, so the encouragement it offers is a general one.
John E. Lochman; Karen C. Wells (2004). The Coping Power Program for Preadolescent Aggressive Boys and Their Parents: Outcome Effects at the 1-Year Follow-Up.. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Knowing the surge is old and automatic makes it easier to let it pass without obeying 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
Let yourself be five minutes late to something that does not matter. Then ask how you would feel if a friend were five minutes late to you.
Pick the calm memory with some care. Sun on a beach, a bike ride, someone cleaning up a scraped knee: what matters is that it is genuinely safe ground for you.
Working on anger is not meant to leave you with nothing to say. The aim is to keep the objection and let go of the force it was riding on.