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Areas › Anger › What anger actually is
Naming is not explaining and it is not excusing. It is a plain description: heat, chest, wanting to say something cutting. Often the intensity drops a little as you do it, and when it does not, you are still left standing slightly outside the thing rather than inside it.
and inspired it to know its own rebellion and piety (Quran 91:8). The capacity to read your own state is described as given, and naming is what puts it to use.
الشمس
فَأَلۡهَمَهَا فُجُورَهَا وَتَقۡوَىٰهَا
and inspired it [to know] its own rebellion and piety
Qur’an 91:8read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
Experimental work comparing negative states found that regret, guilt, shame, anger and sadness are experienced as distinct, with different appraisals behind each, which supports naming what you actually feel rather than settling for upset. Getting the word right is not fussiness. These were controlled comparisons of experience rather than tests of labelling as a technique.
van Tilburg WA, Igou ER. (2017). Boredom begs to differ: Differentiation from other negative emotions.. Emotion (Washington, D.C.) doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
A feeling you can describe is one you are observing, and observing puts a small gap between you and it.
Anger is a genuine body event, not a thought you can talk yourself out of mid-flow. Expect it to keep running for a while after you have decided it should stop.
Anger built on suspicion sits along a long line. At one end is sensible wariness that has kept people safe, and at the far end is a threat that is not there at all.
The hardest anger to put down is the kind that feels morally correct. It arrives with a rush of certainty and the sense of being on the right side, and that combination is very hard to argue with.