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Areas › Anger › Equanimity and perspective
This is meant to take the shame out, not the responsibility. Harm still needs repairing and apologies still need making. But if some part of you believes a normal person would find this easy, that belief is false and it is making the work heavier than it needs to be.
There truly are signs in the creation of the heavens and earth, and in the alternation of night and day, for those with understanding (Quran 3:190). Widening the view is a practice in itself, and your own struggle looks different at that scale.
آل عمران
إِنَّ فِي خَلۡقِ ٱلسَّمَٰوَٰتِ وَٱلۡأَرۡضِ وَٱخۡتِلَٰفِ ٱلَّيۡلِ وَٱلنَّهَارِ لَأٓيَٰتࣲ لِّأُوْلِي ٱلۡأَلۡبَٰبِ
There truly are signs in the creation of the heavens and earth, and in the alternation of night and day, for those with understanding
Qur’an 3:190read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
In a cross-sectional study using structural equation modelling, people higher in trait mindfulness reported less anger, hostility and aggression, and less rumination accounted for part of that link. Going over it again seems to be the piece that matters most. Everyone was measured at a single point in time, so it cannot show that less rumination causes less anger.
Borders A, Earleywine M, Jajodia A. (2010). Could mindfulness decrease anger, hostility, and aggression by decreasing rumination?. Aggressive behavior doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Shame turns the mind back onto itself, and that churning is what keeps anger warm.
Anger has a shape before it has words. The body turns half away, a hand comes up, and the whole posture is saying no to something that has already happened.
Think about the last person who shouted at you. Were they angry with you, or were they afraid? The honest answer is usually both, and both is allowed.
When someone tells the story with every detail, the exact words, the way the door shut, what she was wearing, they are not wandering off the point. The detail is telling you how unsafe it felt.