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Areas › Anger › What anger actually is
Temperament is real and some people do run hotter than others. What is not fixed is what you do in the ten seconds after something lands, and that is nearly all of what anyone else experiences of your anger. Notice how differently you already behave with a boss, a small child, a stranger at a counter. That range is the evidence.
We shall remove any bitterness from their hearts (Quran 15:47). Long held anger is spoken of as something that can be taken out of a person, not as part of the person.
الحجر
وَنَزَعۡنَا مَا فِي صُدُورِهِم مِّنۡ غِلٍّ إِخۡوَٰنًا عَلَىٰ سُرُرࣲ مُّتَقَٰبِلِينَ
and We shall remove any bitterness from their hearts: [they will be like] brothers, sitting on couches, face to face
Qur’an 15:47read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A prospective study of adolescents found that difficulty managing emotion predicted later increases in symptoms and that symptoms also predicted later difficulty, so the relationship ran in both directions over time. Both sides moved, which is not what you would see if either were simply fixed. It was observational and set in adolescence, a period of unusual change, so it does not show how far anyone can shift on purpose.
McLaughlin KA, Hatzenbuehler ML, Mennin DS, Nolen-Hoeksema S. (2011). Emotion dysregulation and adolescent psychopathology: a prospective study.. Behaviour research and therapy doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
If part of it is a habit rather than a fact about you, that part can be practised.
Anger works by sorting the world into me and not me. Once someone has landed on the wrong side of that line, everything they do starts reading as evidence.
A cut heals and stops being news. An insult from years ago can still get your heart going, because the part of the brain that keeps threats on file does not heal in the same way.
A lot of anger carries a hidden demand: you damaged how I feel about myself, so now you restore it. That leaves your steadiness in somebody else's hands.