Areas › Anger
Anger
Almost nobody wants to be the person who says the thing they cannot take back. The window between the surge and the words is short and it can be widened. That is most of what this area is about, along with the fear or hurt that anger is usually protecting.
What works for this
Anger control, with distress tolerance
Anger has a runway, and the earlier you step onto it the less force you need. The work is in the seconds before, not in the explosion, and it starts with the body rather than the thought.
One move, today
Name the first physical sign you get. Jaw, chest, hands, heat in the face. That sign is your only warning, and noticing it is the whole skill.
What matches
6 practicesAsk the question twice. What do you see, and what else do you see. What do you think, and what else do you think. The second one does all the work.
The second question takes for granted that another answer exists, so instead of defending the first you go looking. Used on yourself it works just as…
When someone tells the story with every detail, the exact words, the way the door shut, what she was wearing, they are not wandering off the point. The detail is telling you how unsafe it felt.
Steering them back to the summary usually lands as being told their experience is a nuisance. Let it run a while and hear the detail as a reading of…
You cannot argue anybody out of certainty, yourself included. What loosens a grip is play: a puzzle, a small experiment, a question where nobody has to lose.
If you want someone to hold a view more lightly, resist correcting it. Give them something to look at that shows them their own mind at work, and let…
If the word mindfulness makes you wince, leave the word out. Paying attention to your breath, or to the sounds in the room, is the whole of it.
A lot of people turn the practice down before trying it, because the label sounds like it belongs to somebody else's religion or somebody else's sort…
When you offer a practice to someone, use their words for it rather than yours. Keep the fuller version ready for the day they ask where it comes from.
A plain, unmystical version suits most people and costs them nothing to accept. Anyone who gets curious can have all of it, and they will take more…
If the language of mindfulness puts you off, drop the language. Call it noticing what your mind is doing, and use it anyway.
Some people hear anything that sounds spiritual and close the door, and then a useful skill goes unused over a word. There is nothing here you have…