Areas › Anger › Practising under provocation
Call the practice whatever fits you. Stress inoculation, rolling with the punches, a Teflon mind, the art of not giving a damn: the name changes nothing about what you do, and a name you can stand makes you likelier to do it.
People come to this with different histories and some of them have been lectured before. If the language sounds like a self help poster to you, use plainer words. If it sounds too clinical, borrow from sport or from the mosque or from whatever you already trust. The one thing not to change is the practice underneath the label.
Qur’an and Sunnah
We shall be sure to guide to Our ways those who strive hard for Our cause (Quran 29:69). What is promised is met to the striving, whatever you happen to call it.
وَٱلَّذِينَ جَٰهَدُواْ فِينَا لَنَهۡدِيَنَّهُمۡ سُبُلَنَاۚ وَإِنَّ ٱللَّهَ لَمَعَ ٱلۡمُحۡسِنِينَ
But We shall be sure to guide to Our ways those who strive hard for Our cause: God is with those who do good
Qur’an 29:69read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
Anger management training built on this approach reduced anger rumination and impulsivity in a randomised trial with forensic psychiatric patients, a group not known for arriving keen. So the method can land with people who are wary of being told what to do. The setting was secure and specialised, and the trial says nothing about how much the wording contributed.
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 keep doing something that sounds like the kind of person you already are.
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
You can be genuinely indignant and still say the thing evenly. The feeling does not have to travel in your voice.
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.
A good deal of what stings in a tense moment is what you imagine the other person is thinking. Sitting inside a silence and watching your own mind fill it shows you that plainly.