1Angry eyes are not unfocused, they are too focused. Everything funnels down onto the person or thing in front of you and the rest of the room goes missing.
That narrowing is part of why anger feels so certain. You are not seeing less because you are careless, you are seeing less because the state does that, and what drops out is usually the context that would have complicated the story. Knowing this in advance is useful, because it gives you a reason to distrust the clarity rather than to trust it.
Islamic evidence
Did they not see that We gave them the night for rest, and the day for light? (Quran 27:86). The question is about what people fail to see while looking straight at it, which is what a narrowed field does to a person.
“Did they not see that We gave them the night for rest, and the day for light? There truly are signs in this for those who believe”
Qur'an 27:86
Psychological evidence
The narrowing itself is a clinical description rather than a trial finding, and it should be held that way. What has been tested nearby is that compared with a waitlist, a mindfulness-based stress reduction course reduced difficulty in identifying and describing feelings and lowered self-reported hostile and aggressive expression. That fits training attention as a route into anger, without proving anything specific about tunnel vision.
Robins CJ, Keng SL, Ekblad AG, Brantley JG. (2012). Journal of clinical psychology · doi
Review detail
Why it works. A threatened body narrows the field to the threat, and a narrow field makes a partial story look like the whole one.
Feedback
none yet2When one thing fills your view, everything around it stops registering. You can be staring hard and taking in almost nothing.
This is why an angry judgement can feel so sharp and turn out to be so poor. The person in front of you has become the whole picture, and the details that would soften or complicate the story are still there, just not being seen. The useful move is not to argue with yourself about them. It is to change what your eyes are doing, and let the rest come back on its own.
Islamic evidence
The daylight so that you can see (Quran 10:67). Light is given so that a whole scene becomes visible, and not only the one thing you were staring at.
“It is He who made the night so that you can rest in it and the daylight so that you can see- there truly are signs in this for those who hear”
Qur'an 10:67
Psychological evidence
Be careful not to promise much here. A meta-analysis of meditation programmes found only small improvements in anxiety, depression and pain when compared with active controls, and no clear benefit for mood, attention, sleep or substance use. Attention practices are worth trying and are not a strong treatment on their own. The account of the narrowed visual field is a description of experience rather than a result from those trials.
Goyal M, Singh S, Sibinga EM, Gould NF, Rowland-Seymour A, Sharma R, Berger Z, Sleicher D, Maron DD, Shihab HM, Ranasinghe PD, Linn S, Saha S, Bass EB, Haythornthwaite JA. (2014). JAMA internal medicine · doi
Review detail
Why it works. What surrounds a thing is what tells you how to read it, and anger is very good at deleting the surroundings.
Feedback
none yet3Find something with nothing in it to look at: sky, a blank wall, a ceiling, a stretch of grass. Do not concentrate on it. Let your attention spread out over it.
Hostile thinking needs something to grip, and it will use whatever the eyes hand it. An expanse with no features gives it nothing, so the replay tends to lose its footing after a minute or so. If you catch yourself picking out a mark on the wall and studying it, you have gone back to concentrating; ease off and let the whole surface be there at once.
Islamic evidence
It is God who has given you the night in which to rest and the day in which to see (Quran 40:61). Seeing is named as a gift alongside rest, and this is a way of using the eyes that rests rather than hunts.
“It is God who has given you the night in which to rest and the day in which to see. God is truly bountiful to people, but most people do not give thanks”
Qur'an 40:61
Psychological evidence
A randomised controlled trial found that self-guided physical activity, mindfulness meditation and heart rate variability biofeedback all reduced stress and improved wellbeing to a similar degree, which suggests the choice between routes can follow preference. Open gazing was not one of the arms, so it has not been shown to work in its own right. Use that finding as permission to pick what suits you rather than as evidence for this one.
van der Zwan JE, de Vente W, Huizink AC, Bögels SM, de Bruin EI. (2015). Applied psychophysiology and biofeedback · doi
Review detail
Why it works. Rehearsing a grievance needs something to hold on to, and a blank expanse offers nothing to hold.