Loading practices
Loading practices
Areas › Anger › Equanimity and perspective
Shame closes the subject. You stop looking at what happened, and what happened is precisely the material you need. Try a short unglamorous review instead: what was going on in the hour before, what you said first, what you would like to have said.
so you need not grieve for what you miss or gloat over what you gain (Quran 57:23). The same even keel applies to your own record: no collapse after a bad day, no victory lap after a good one.
الحديد
لِّكَيۡلَا تَأۡسَوۡاْ عَلَىٰ مَا فَاتَكُمۡ وَلَا تَفۡرَحُواْ بِمَآ ءَاتَىٰكُمۡۗ وَٱللَّهُ لَا يُحِبُّ كُلَّ مُخۡتَالࣲ فَخُورٍ
so you need not grieve for what you miss or gloat over what you gain
Qur’an 57:23read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
In a randomised trial with students, three sessions of either the attention training technique or mindful self compassion reduced depression and anxiety symptoms, with neither clearly ahead of the other. Being kinder to yourself did as much work as training your attention, so the gentler route is not the soft option. It was a short course in a student sample, which limits what can be read into it.
Haukaas RB, Gjerde IB, Varting G, Hallan HE, Solem S. (2018). A Randomized Controlled Trial Comparing the Attention Training Technique and Mindful Self-Compassion for Students With Symptoms of Depression and Anxiety.. Frontiers in psychology doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Shame makes you look away from the episode, and the episode is where the learning is.
This kind of change is slow, and saying so at the start is a kindness. A goal you can actually reach beats a promise that turns the first bad week into proof of failure.
There is a way of meeting a charge that does not involve charging back. You let it arrive, you move, and the force goes past you.
One bad experience with someone in a uniform, or from any group, tells you something real about that encounter. It is not a verdict on everybody who resembles them.