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Areas › Anger › The fear underneath anger
So the spike itself is not a decision, and there is no point arguing with it or feeling ashamed of it. What you can do is give the slower part of you a moment to catch up: breathe out, drop your eyes, say nothing for a count of five. The rest of the information does arrive, just late.
He is fretful when misfortune touches him (Quran 70:20). That first exposed reaction is named for what it is, before anything hardens over the top of it.
المعارج
إِذَا مَسَّهُ ٱلشَّرُّ جَزُوعࣰ ا
he is fretful when misfortune touches him
Qur’an 70:20read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A review of imaging research found that adult attachment style is associated with differences in how threat and reward get processed during social interaction. The early stages of reading a situation are shaped by history and run below deliberate thought. It is a narrative review rather than a single experiment, so it gathers the picture rather than pinning down any one step.
Vrtička P, Vuilleumier P. (2012). Neuroscience of human social interactions and adult attachment style.. Frontiers in human neuroscience doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Threat detection runs faster than judgement, so the only part under your control is what comes after.
When someone comes at you angry, listen for the fear in it. It changes what you say next, and it changes what their anger does to you.
There are two kinds of work on anger, and the order matters. Plain skills for the moment come first, and the larger questions about what your life is for can wait.
When anger turns up, in you or in front of you, two questions do most of the work: what is the fear underneath this, and what would make that fear bearable without the anger?