Areas › Anger › Practising under provocation
Here is a small one to practise on. Take the time you need to park properly, even with somebody waiting, instead of driving on to find an easier spot.
The stakes are close to nothing and the discomfort is real, which makes it good material. You are not trying to hold anyone up, so no dawdling and no point being made. You are simply letting yourself be mildly disapproved of by a stranger for half a minute, and finding out that you can.
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 something carried past a moment, not something the moment hands you.
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
Work on extinction shows that new learning does not erase the old reaction, which is why the old one can return, and why the answer is repeating the practice across different settings. One parking space is not the point, the collection of small ordinary moments is. That research is largely about fear rather than pride, so the transfer is an assumption.
Craske MG, Hermans D, Vervliet B. (2018). State-of-the-art and future directions for extinction as a translational model for fear and anxiety.. Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Small doses of being disapproved of, met on purpose, are what take the charge out of 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
Ask yourself what you would least like the person in front of you to be thinking about you right now. Whatever surfaces is usually what your anger has been guarding.
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.
Before you practise something exposing with someone, say out loud what is not at risk. I will not think less of you, and nothing between us changes here.