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Areas › Anger › The moment before you snap
The question is not whether you appraise but how coarsely. Angry appraisal is fast and sweeping: he is against me, this always happens. Slower appraisal is specific: he cut across me twice in that meeting and I felt small. Getting more specific is a skill you can practise, and it is a far more realistic aim than trying to feel nothing.
Believers, if you remain mindful of God, He will give you a criterion [to tell right from wrong] (Quran 8:29). A standard held in advance is what lets you sort a moment instead of being sorted by it.
الأنفال
يَٰٓأَيُّهَا ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُوٓاْ إِن تَتَّقُواْ ٱللَّهَ يَجۡعَل لَّكُمۡ فُرۡقَانࣰ ا وَيُكَفِّرۡ عَنكُمۡ سَيِّـَٔاتِكُمۡ وَيَغۡفِرۡ لَكُمۡۗ وَٱللَّهُ ذُو ٱلۡفَضۡلِ ٱلۡعَظِيمِ
Believers, if you remain mindful of God, He will give you a criterion [to tell right from wrong] and wipe out your bad deeds, and forgive you: God’s favour is great indeed
Qur’an 8:29read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A systematic review across anxiety, depression, substance use, eating disorders and borderline personality disorder found that improvement in emotion regulation went alongside symptom improvement in all five groups, which supports treating regulation as a shared skill rather than something particular to one problem. How a person handles feeling appears to matter widely. The review pooled treatment studies, so it shows an association and not a guarantee for any one person.
Sloan E, Hall K, Moulding R, Bryce S, Mildred H, Staiger PK. (2017). Emotion regulation as a transdiagnostic treatment construct across anxiety, depression, substance, eating and borderline personality disorders: A systematic review.. Clinical psychology review doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
A specific description gives you something you can respond to, while a sweeping one only gives you an enemy.
Scratching an itch makes it itch more. Acting on anger works the same way, and each round leaves you needing the next one.
If steady sounds like soft to you, notice who actually holds a room. It is not the one who goes off first.
The hidden finger tap is weaker than a mark on paper. Better to know that now than to find it out when it fails you.