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…

A break only counts if you come back. Notice the anger, leave the room, actually settle yourself, then return and finish the conversation.

Most people manage the leaving and skip the settling, so they spend twenty minutes rehearsing their case and come back more wound up than when they…

You may need to leave and come back two or three times before one conversation is finished. That is normal, not a sign that the skill is not working.

Bodies come down slowly. You can feel steady enough to return, sit down, hear one sentence and be right back at the top again. Knowing that in…

Squeeze the hand, hold it for a few seconds, then let it go slowly. The letting go is where the calm is, and it works better once you have practised the long version.

Full muscle relaxation, working through the body group by group, takes about twenty minutes and is worth doing a handful of times. Once your body…

Movement can settle you or wind you further up, and the difference is mostly what your mind is doing while you move.

Pacing the kitchen while you build the case against someone keeps the whole system revved. The same twenty minutes spent counting breaths or noticing…

The aim is not to become someone with no force in them. It is to get a harness on the force and point it at something worth doing.

Anger usually knows something true: this was unfair, this matters to me, this cannot carry on. Keep that part and drop the delivery. The energy can…

Knowing something calmly and feeling it are two separate achievements, and the second takes longer. If you can say the reasonable thing but it does not touch how you feel, you are partway, not failing.

The gap does not close by arguing with yourself harder. It closes by living it: doing the practice in real situations, in your body, while the…