Areas › Anger › Equanimity and perspective
Being steady about something does not mean you approve of it, and it does not mean you have dropped your claim. It means you have stopped fighting the fact that it happened.
People hear acceptance and think they are being asked to say it was alright. Nothing of the sort. You can be perfectly clear that it was wrong and still put down the part of you that keeps insisting it should not have occurred. That second argument is the one that eats the whole day, and it is never won.
Qur’an and Sunnah
so you need not grieve for what you miss or gloat over what you gain (Quran 57:23). An even keel is asked for in both directions, not only when things go badly.
لِّكَيۡلَا تَأۡسَوۡاْ عَلَىٰ مَا فَاتَكُمۡ وَلَا تَفۡرَحُواْ بِمَآ ءَاتَىٰكُمۡۗ وَٱللَّهُ لَا يُحِبُّ كُلَّ مُخۡتَالࣲ فَخُورٍ
so you need not grieve for what you miss or gloat over what you gain
Qur’an 57:23read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A meta-analytic review found acceptance and mindfulness based treatments improve mental and physical health in chronic pain, with small to moderate effects. What is useful here is that these approaches work on a person's relationship to the pain rather than on removing it, which is the same distinction being drawn. The evidence is from pain rather than from provocation.
Veehof MM, Trompetter HR, Bohlmeijer ET, Schreurs KM. (2016). Acceptance- and mindfulness-based interventions for the treatment of chronic pain: a meta-analytic review.. Cognitive behaviour therapy doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Arguing with what has already happened costs energy you need for what happens next.
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
A raised voice at home gets heard as disrespect long before anyone checks. Sometimes the person simply cannot hear how loud they are over their headphones.
Faces in the curtains, a figure in the dark: the part of you that spots danger would rather be wrong ten times than miss once. It reads people the same way.
Listen to how you narrate it to yourself. What on earth is this nonsense keeps the heat on. I am puzzled, what might this be does not.