InInshirahislamically integrated self-help
ThemeCool the body first
ApproachCore
Time20 minutes
1Anger numbs. If it is doing the work of a painkiller for you, it will be hard to put down while the pain underneath is still untreated.
CoreCool the body first20 minutesQur'an 94:1

Ask what tends to be there in the half hour before you flare: a bit of shame, feeling small, an old fear about being left. The anger often arrives to stop you feeling that. Tending to the ache underneath does more for a temper than any amount of discipline aimed at the temper itself.

Islamic evidence

Did We not relieve your heart for you (Quran 94:1). The pressure in the chest is spoken to directly, which is a gentler place to start from than blaming yourself for the temper.

Did We not relieve your heart for you [Prophet]

Qur'an 94:1

Psychological evidence

In a small controlled study of people with depersonalisation, physiological arousal was blunted, and deliberately raising it with biofeedback reduced the feelings of numbness and disembodiment. That is a different condition, a small sample, and not a study of anger at all. It is here only as a reminder that numbing is a physiological event rather than a character flaw.

Schoenberg PL, Sierra M, David AS. (2012). Journal of trauma & dissociation : the official journal of the International Society for the Study of Dissociation (ISSD) · doi

Review detail

Why it works. Nothing gets given up while it is still the only thing making the pain bearable.

When not to. If what sits under the anger is trauma or a loss you have never been able to look at, that is work to do with someone alongside you.

angerEverydayscholar review pendinganger-0157-what-the-anger-is-numbing

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