Areas › Anger › Practising under provocation
Knowing why you are guarded rarely lowers the guard. What changes it is doing something different while the feeling is actually running.
Most therapy asks where a pattern came from, and that question has its place. The reflex, though, was learned in moments and it gets relearned in moments. So the useful question shifts from why you flare to what you are going to practise the next time the heat is there.
Qur’an and Sunnah
Bear anything that happens to you steadfastly: these are things to be aspired to (Quran 31:17). Bearing is put among the things to aim at and grow into, which is the language of practice.
يَٰبُنَيَّ أَقِمِ ٱلصَّلَوٰةَ وَأۡمُرۡ بِٱلۡمَعۡرُوفِ وَٱنۡهَ عَنِ ٱلۡمُنكَرِ وَٱصۡبِرۡ عَلَىٰ مَآ أَصَابَكَۖ إِنَّ ذَٰلِكَ مِنۡ عَزۡمِ ٱلۡأُمُورِ
Keep up the prayer, my son; command what is right; forbid what is wrong; bear anything that happens to you steadfastly: these are things to be aspired to
Qur’an 31:17read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
In 107 distressed employees, two brief skills courses improved distress compared with a waitlist, and two quite different approaches did about as well as each other. What they had in common was practice rather than explanation. These were workplace volunteers over a short course, so it supports rehearsal without saying much about severe or long standing anger.
Flaxman PE, Bond FW. (2010). A randomised worksite comparison of acceptance and commitment therapy and stress inoculation training.. Behaviour research and therapy doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
A new response sticks when it is learned in the state it has to work in.
When not to
Understanding where a pattern came from still matters, especially where there is trauma, so this is about what changes the reflex and not about never looking back.
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
Practise not needing the praise, not only the approval. If a compliment can lift you that much, the same dial is being turned when somebody criticises you.
If the room decides how you feel about yourself, anyone in a bad mood can set your whole day. A quiet part of this work is moving that judgement back inside.
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.