Areas › Anger › Making it stick
When something is genuinely alive for the person in front of you, work with that. Whatever you had planned to cover keeps until a quieter week.
Teaching over the top of live feeling does not land, and it tells the other person that your agenda outranks their week. When there is heat, follow the heat. When there is not, that is your opening for something new, because there is finally room to take it in.
Qur’an and Sunnah
Do not say of anything, 'I will do that tomorrow,' (Quran 18:23). What is in front of you today is the material, and the plan can wait.
وَلَا تَقُولَنَّ لِشَاْيۡءٍ إِنِّي فَاعِلࣱ ذَٰلِكَ غَدًا
do not say of anything, ‘I will do that tomorrow,’
Qur’an 18:23read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A randomised trial in panic disorder with agoraphobia compared exposure the therapist guided in the real situation against exposure simply prescribed for the patient to carry out alone, and the guided version had more pervasive and longer lasting effects. That is a specific anxiety treatment rather than a general rule about how to structure a session. The overlap is the principle that the work goes better attached to the live situation than to a description of one.
Gloster AT, Wittchen HU, Einsle F, Lang T, Helbig-Lang S, Fydrich T, Fehm L, Hamm AO, Richter J, Alpers GW, Gerlach AL, Ströhle A, Kircher T, Deckert J, Zwanzger P, Höfler M, Arolt V. (2011). Psychological treatment for panic disorder with agoraphobia: a randomized controlled trial to examine the role of therapist-guided exposure in situ in CBT.. Journal of consulting and clinical psychology doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
People can take in something new when they are calm, and can only be met when they are not.
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
One move to interrupt, one to settle. Open your hand, then take the slow breaths: the first buys you the gap and the second gives you something to do with it.
Reaching for your water at dinner is a chance to practise. Stop your hand for a second, notice that you want it, then go ahead and drink.
Nobody sees the times you did not say the cutting thing, including you a week later. Put them somewhere you can look at: one sticky note on the wall for each.