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
7 practicesAnger pulls your attention towards whatever provoked it, the way a vacuum cleaner pulls at a curtain. Naming it that way makes it something happening to you rather than something wrong with you.
Rumination is an accurate word and a heavy one, and people who already feel judged tend to close up when it appears. A picture does the same job…
Ask 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…
Try putting a qualifier on the front of your strongest claims. In some ways this is true. In some ways it is not. In some ways I cannot tell from here.
Jain thinkers built a whole grammar out of that, seven careful ways of stating a thing, precisely so assertion stayed honest. Used well, a qualifier…
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…
What you are doing when you sit on the bank has a name. Researchers call it metacognitive distancing, and it has been studied for decades.
Knowing the name matters more than it should. Plenty of people, and especially people who were sent to get help rather than choosing it, quietly file…
If a river on a summer afternoon does nothing for you, use something plainer. Counting the traffic from a porch, or standing outside a shop counting how many people walk past, does the same job.
Metaphors are personal and there is no prize for liking the poetic one. Some people take to it straight away when it is a road and a stopwatch…
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…