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Areas › Anger › Equanimity and perspective
It explains why replaying feels so compelling and does so much quiet damage. Every rehearsal lays the same track down again. Catching the replay as it begins, and moving yourself somewhere with something else to attend to, does more than trying to argue the memory down.
We send water down from the skies and the earth's vegetation absorbs it, but soon the plants turn to dry stubble scattered about by the wind (Quran 18:45). What feels this vivid now is not fixed in place either.
الكهف
وَٱضۡرِبۡ لَهُم مَّثَلَ ٱلۡحَيَوٰةِ ٱلدُّنۡيَا كَمَآءٍ أَنزَلۡنَٰهُ مِنَ ٱلسَّمَآءِ فَٱخۡتَلَطَ بِهِۦ نَبَاتُ ٱلۡأَرۡضِ فَأَصۡبَحَ هَشِيمࣰ ا تَذۡرُوهُ ٱلرِّيَٰحُۗ وَكَانَ ٱللَّهُ عَلَىٰ كُلِّ شَيۡءࣲ مُّقۡتَدِرًا
Tell them, too, what the life of this world is like: We send water down from the skies and the earth’s vegetation absorbs it, but soon the plants turn to dry stubble scattered about by the wind: God has power over everything
Qur’an 18:45read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
In a randomised laboratory experiment comparing mindful breathing, progressive muscle relaxation and loving kindness meditation, only mindful breathing led people to step back from repetitive thoughts and react to them less negatively. Repetitive thought is exactly the problem here. It was a single short session in a laboratory, so it says little about weeks of going over the same scene.
Feldman G, Greeson J, Senville J. (2010). Differential effects of mindful breathing, progressive muscle relaxation, and loving-kindness meditation on decentering and negative reactions to repetitive thoughts.. Behaviour research and therapy doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
A body under threat records in high detail, so the sharpness of a memory tells you about the alarm rather than about its importance.
Loosening your grip on who you take yourself to be can go further than you meant it to. Go a little way, then come back to something solid.
Bring to mind someone easy to love, a person or a pet, and let the warmth actually arrive in your body. Then send the same warmth outward in stages: a stranger, a colleague, someone who irritates you.
There is a way of meeting a charge that does not involve charging back. You let it arrive, you move, and the force goes past you.