Areas › Anger › Equanimity and perspective
When someone insults you they are aiming at a description of you: your job, your name, your reputation. The more loosely you hold those, the less of you is standing in the way.
Ask who you would be if the description came off. Not as a trick, and not to erase yourself, only to notice that you were never only that word. Some practitioners do a version of this in the room, asking a client who they are and gently declining each answer, which needs care and a reason. On your own, keep it light and keep it short.
Qur’an and Sunnah
Everything will perish except His Face (Quran 28:88). What lasts was never the title someone just took aim at.
وَلَا تَدۡعُ مَعَ ٱللَّهِ إِلَٰهًا ءَاخَرَۘ لَآ إِلَٰهَ إِلَّا هُوَۚ كُلُّ شَيۡءٍ هَالِكٌ إِلَّا وَجۡهَهُۥۚ لَهُ ٱلۡحُكۡمُ وَإِلَيۡهِ تُرۡجَعُونَ
Do not call out to any other god beside God, for there is no god but Him. Everything will perish except His Face. His is the Judgement and to Him you shall all be brought back
Qur’an 28:88read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
In a randomised trial comparing mindfulness-based cognitive therapy with cognitive therapy for preventing depressive relapse, both prevented relapse, and decentering showed up as a process marker tied to the mindfulness arm. The study was about relapse in depression, not about insults, so the link to what happens when someone takes a swing at you is reasoning rather than a result.
Norman A. S. Farb; Adam K. Anderson; Arun Ravindran; Lance L. Hawley; Julie Irving; Enza Mancuso (2017). Prevention of relapse/recurrence in major depressive disorder with either mindfulness-based cognitive therapy or cognitive therapy.. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
An insult can only land on the part of you that you were holding out for judgement.
When not to
If your sense of who you are already feels unsteady, leave this one for a session with someone who knows you rather than trying it alone.
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
The old reaction does not get erased. You lay a new one over the top of it, and on a tired or unfamiliar day the old one can still come through.
The same cup is a drinking cup at home and contraband in a prison, because the role you are standing in has already decided what you are looking at.
Have three or four openers ready before you need them. For what it is worth. Can I run something by you. You might not like this, so give me the benefit of the doubt.