Areas › Anger › Growing empathy
The thing worth admitting is not that you were angry. It is what you were frightened of underneath it: being made a fool of, being left, being counted as useless.
Anger is the easy half to say and it rarely lands well. The fear underneath is harder to say and it is the part that gets you heard. One sentence will do: I got loud because I thought you were about to write me off. Expect it to feel exposed for a few seconds, and expect the other face to soften more than you predicted.
Qur’an and Sunnah
and lower your wing in humility towards them in kindness (Quran 17:24). Saying the frightened thing instead of the furious one is what lowering a wing looks like in an argument.
وَٱخۡفِضۡ لَهُمَا جَنَاحَ ٱلذُّلِّ مِنَ ٱلرَّحۡمَةِ وَقُل رَّبِّ ٱرۡحَمۡهُمَا كَمَا رَبَّيَانِي صَغِيرࣰ ا
and lower your wing in humility towards them in kindness and say, ‘Lord, have mercy on them, just as they cared for me when I was little.’
Qur’an 17:24read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
In a randomised controlled trial with men in a batterer intervention programme, adding motivational strategies improved emotional decoding along with cognitive and emotional empathy. Naming what is actually going on emotionally is trainable, including among men whose anger has done real harm. It was one trial in one programme, and a better score is not yet a safer household.
Romero-Martínez Á, Lila M, Gracia E, Moya-Albiol L. (2019). Improving empathy with motivational strategies in batterer intervention programmes: Results of a randomized controlled trial.. The British journal of clinical psychology doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Anger makes people defend themselves, while fear said out loud brings them closer.
When not to
Leave it until you are both calm enough to hear it, because said mid row it usually comes out as another accusation.
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 real feeling usually crosses someone's face for less than a second before the polite version arrives. If your attention is elsewhere, the polite version is all you will ever meet.
When someone is telling you something hard, quietly let your body come closer to theirs. Similar posture, similar pace, your voice at their volume rather than your own.
Give yourself an instruction you can rehearse. Copy one thing about how the other person is holding themselves, once a day, and notice what follows.