Loading practices
Loading practices
Areas › Anger › The fear underneath anger
If you can look at the reaction as an old protection rather than a defect, you can retire it without going to war with yourself, and wars with yourself are exhausting and slow. Being that generous about it can feel wrong at first, especially if you were raised to be hard on yourself. It gets easier with repetition, like most of this.
Safety to ward off fear (Quran 106:4). Safety is named as a basic provision, and it is what the old reaction was reaching for in its clumsy way.
قريش
ٱلَّذِيٓ أَطۡعَمَهُم مِّن جُوعࣲ وَءَامَنَهُم مِّنۡ خَوۡفِۭ
who provides them with food to ward off hunger, safety to ward off fear
Qur’an 106:4read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A review of attachment research describes how early experiences shape the strategies people bring to threat later on, some escalating distress to pull others closer, others shutting down. Your reaction fits a pattern that made sense somewhere. A meta-analysis across 22 samples also found that fear of receiving compassion or offering it to yourself was strongly associated with poorer mental health, so if kindness towards yourself feels threatening, that is common rather than odd.
Mario Mikulincer; Philip R. Shaver (2012). An attachment perspective on psychopathology. World Psychiatry doi
Kirby JN, Day J, Sagar V. (2019). The 'Flow' of compassion: A meta-analysis of the fears of compassion scales and psychological functioning.. Clinical psychology review doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Something you respect is far easier to change than something you are ashamed of.
Anger rescues you from an unbearable in between by handing you something to do. The relief is real, and that is exactly why it keeps coming back.
Picture two parts of you. One is fast and jumpy and does not take arguments; the other thinks things through but needs a moment to wake up.
The person roaring at you is very often the most frightened one in the room. Holding that in mind steadies you, and your steadiness is a good half of what settles them.