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Areas › Anger › What anger actually is
The belief usually sits below the level anyone talks about, so it is worth checking honestly. Someone who takes their anger as a character defect tends to hide it, and the hiding is the part that goes badly. The alarm account gives you somewhere to go instead: what set it off, what it read as a threat, what to do with the seconds afterwards.
who restrain their anger and pardon people (Quran 3:134). Restraint is listed among the qualities of those who do good, which puts the anger itself outside the fault.
آل عمران
ٱلَّذِينَ يُنفِقُونَ فِي ٱلسَّرَّآءِ وَٱلضَّرَّآءِ وَٱلۡكَٰظِمِينَ ٱلۡغَيۡظَ وَٱلۡعَافِينَ عَنِ ٱلنَّاسِۗ وَٱللَّهُ يُحِبُّ ٱلۡمُحۡسِنِينَ
who give, both in prosperity and adversity, who restrain their anger and pardon people- God loves those who do good
Qur’an 3:134read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A meta-analysis combining 241 effect sizes found habitual rumination, avoidance and suppression more strongly tied to anxiety, depression, eating and substance problems than reappraisal, problem solving and acceptance were protective. The strategies that follow naturally from a shaming account of anger are the ones associated with more trouble. Those relationships are correlational, so this is a pattern across many samples and not proof that changing the account changes the outcome.
Aldao A, Nolen-Hoeksema S, Schweizer S. (2010). Emotion-regulation strategies across psychopathology: A meta-analytic review.. Clinical psychology review doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
An explanation you can act on hands you a next step, while a verdict on your character hands you nowhere to stand.
If somebody insists they were not afraid of the disrespect, agree with them. Good, because if there was nothing to fear then the words were safe, and safe things can be left alone.
Most anger episodes are over within minutes, which is no comfort at all. Nearly everything irreversible happens in the first few seconds.
The cooler, story-shaped anger is not the safer one. It lasts, it gets rehearsed, and it has time to make plans.