Practices

Anger sends people back to the thing they had stopped, and the thing they had stopped makes the anger worse. Any plan that treats these as two separate projects tends to come apart.

Write anger into the relapse plan by name, alongside the parties, the old friends and the difficult anniversary. Then when you look at the anger, ask…

Twenty minutesAnger, alcohol and the bodyMedical and treatmentQur’an 2:168

Hormones are part of this for everyone, not only for men and not only in adolescence. If your flares seem to arrive with a rhythm, that rhythm is worth writing down.

Episodes that look random from close up often turn out to have a shape once there is a record of them: a point in a monthly cycle, a change of…

Twenty minutesAnger, alcohol and the bodyMedical and treatmentQur’an 32:9

Anger has a chemistry of its own. There is nothing to pour down the sink and nobody to stop selling it to you, which is why letting it go feels like losing something rather than putting something down.

The lift is real. Heat, clarity, energy, a body that suddenly knows exactly what to do. Take that away and leave a gap where it was, and within a…

Twenty minutesAnger, alcohol and the bodyMedical and treatmentQur’an 13:28

You cannot decide to feel closer to people. You can decide to eat with them, walk with them, sit near them and say one true thing, and the closeness tends to follow.

The chemistry gets talked about a great deal and it is the least useful part. What you can act on is the diary: a standing meal with someone, a hand…

Twenty minutesGrowing empathyMedical and treatmentQur’an 30:21

Go long enough without company and almost anyone will do. That is worth knowing about yourself, and worth watching for in someone who lives alone.

Loneliness does not make you a poor judge of character on purpose. It just lowers the bar until whoever turns up seems fine. The steadier answer is…

Twenty minutesGrowing empathyMedical and treatmentQur’an 4:8

Four ordinary things take the edge off a hot temper: being touched by someone you trust, eating with people, moving your body hard enough to breathe, and sitting still for a few minutes a day.

None of them are about anger directly, which is the point. Exercise lowers what you are already carrying before the argument starts. A shared meal…

Twenty minutesGrowing empathyMedical and treatmentQur’an 76:8

If eating together helps, it is the together that is helping. Being full is not a route to feeling close, and treating it as one goes wrong quickly for some people.

Sit down with somebody once a week and eat whatever you were going to eat anyway. That is the whole practice. If you notice yourself reaching for…

Twenty minutesGrowing empathyMedical and treatmentQur’an 90:14

There is more about anger than the practices: the anger area has the themes and the courses too.