Loading practices
Loading practices
Areas › Anger › Choosing your response
Telling yourself to stay calm gives you nothing to do, and the ready-made sharp line is still the only thing in your mouth. A plain request gives all that energy somewhere to go. It is also much harder to argue with, so the conversation you actually wanted has a chance of happening.
Believers, be mindful of God, speak in a direct fashion and to good purpose (Quran 33:70). Direct and purposeful is set as the standard, which rules out the swallowed version as well as the cutting one.
الأحزاب
يَٰٓأَيُّهَا ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُواْ ٱتَّقُواْ ٱللَّهَ وَقُولُواْ قَوۡلࣰ ا سَدِيدࣰ ا
Believers, be mindful of God, speak in a direct fashion and to good purpose
Qur’an 33:70read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
In a randomised trial of dialectical behaviour informed skills training for borderline personality disorder, what carried the benefit was change in assertive anger rather than in anger that was swallowed or exploded. Saying the thing plainly looks like the useful middle. It was one trial in a particular group, so treat the mediation as suggestive.
Kramer U, Pascual-Leone A, Berthoud L, de Roten Y, Marquet P, Kolly S, Despland JN, Page D. (2016). Assertive Anger Mediates Effects of Dialectical Behaviour-informed Skills Training for Borderline Personality Disorder: A Randomized Controlled Trial.. Clinical psychology & psychotherapy doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Putting a different sentence in works better than trying to hold one back.
Keep a short phrase you can actually reach for. Two or three words you already know: not now, or this can wait, or let it go past.
A routine only helps you while you still mean it. Every so often, ask whether you are keeping a habit because you chose it or because you stopped noticing it.
One walker keeps a small pebble in his sock on walks he would otherwise take in a daze. Every few steps it says the same thing: you are here, this is now.