Areas › Anger › Practising under provocation
Practice gets more useful when someone is really watching. It also gets harder, so agree that part before you begin instead of adding it once the person is already in the middle of it.
An audience raises the stakes in a way that makes the rehearsal more like life, which is exactly why it helps. It is also where consent gets slippery, particularly in a training room or anywhere a recording is running. Say what the conditions will be up front, and leave the person a way to decline the bigger version without losing face.
Qur’an and Sunnah
If a troublemaker brings you news, check it first, in case you wrong others unwittingly and later regret what you have done (Quran 49:6). Checking before you act is what protects the other person from what you had not thought through.
يَٰٓأَيُّهَا ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُوٓاْ إِن جَآءَكُمۡ فَاسِقُۢ بِنَبَإࣲ فَتَبَيَّنُوٓاْ أَن تُصِيبُواْ قَوۡمَۢا بِجَهَٰلَةࣲ فَتُصۡبِحُواْ عَلَىٰ مَا فَعَلۡتُمۡ نَٰدِمِينَ
Believers, if a troublemaker brings you news, check it first, in case you wrong others unwittingly and later regret what you have done
Qur’an 49:6read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
Reviews of exposure practice recommend making rehearsal harder on purpose: varying the setting, combining cues, taking away the props that make it comfortable. Those choices cost something in the moment and pay off in how long the learning lasts. The evidence comes from anxiety treatment rather than anger work, so it is a well grounded principle borrowed across.
Craske MG, Treanor M, Conway CC, Zbozinek T, Vervliet B. (2014). Maximizing exposure therapy: an inhibitory learning approach.. Behaviour research and therapy doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Practice carries over better when it resembles the situation you actually struggle in.
When not to
Anything that raises the difficulty should be agreed in advance rather than sprung on someone part way through.
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
Knowing why you are guarded rarely lowers the guard. What changes it is doing something different while the feeling is actually running.
Before you go looking for practice at staying steady, make sure you already have something to do instead of your usual reaction. Practising with nothing to put in its place mostly rehearses the old response.
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.