Areas › Anger › Practising under provocation
Treat these as experiments rather than instructions. You are not obeying a programme, you are finding out what happens, and that difference changes how it feels to do them.
People who are quick to anger are often also quick to bristle at being told what to do, and a challenge sits far better with that than a homework sheet does. Pick the one that makes you smile slightly and dread it slightly. Then report back to yourself afterwards, in the spirit you would tell someone about a dare you took.
Qur’an and Sunnah
Be steadfast, more steadfast than others; be ready (Quran 3:200). There is a competitive edge in the wording, and it is pointed at your own steadiness rather than at anyone else.
يَٰٓأَيُّهَا ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُواْ ٱصۡبِرُواْ وَصَابِرُواْ وَرَابِطُواْ وَٱتَّقُواْ ٱللَّهَ لَعَلَّكُمۡ تُفۡلِحُونَ
You who believe, be steadfast, more steadfast than others; be ready; always be mindful of God, so that you may prosper
Qur’an 3:200read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
In a cluster randomised evaluation across matched middle schools, a social and emotional skills programme in which pupils rehearsed the skills reduced some forms of peer aggression. Rehearsal in a light, structured format did something, though not to everything that was measured. Those were school children rather than adults choosing their own challenges.
Espelage DL, Low S, Polanin JR, Brown EC. (2013). The impact of a middle school program to reduce aggression, victimization, and sexual violence.. The Journal of adolescent health : official publication of the Society for Adolescent Medicine doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
A challenge you set yourself gets done, while an instruction you were handed tends not to.
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
Almost everyone says the same thing afterwards, that the waiting was worse than the thing itself. Say it out loud in your own words, because your own words land differently from anyone else's reassurance.
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.
Going silent and hard is not a neutral act. A fixed stare and a set brow land on the other person's body as threat, even though you have not said a word.