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Areas › Anger › Equanimity and perspective
Each run through lays the same track again: the same heat, the same script, a little more automatic. When you catch yourself at it, name it as practice you did not mean to book, then put yourself somewhere else. Hands busy, a walk, a dull conversation about something else all work better than trying to win the imaginary version.
whoever does evil does it against his own soul (Quran 41:46). The revenge you stage in your head lands nowhere near the other person.
فصلت
مَّنۡ عَمِلَ صَٰلِحࣰ ا فَلِنَفۡسِهِۦۖ وَمَنۡ أَسَآءَ فَعَلَيۡهَاۗ وَمَا رَبُّكَ بِظَلَّٰمࣲ لِّلۡعَبِيدِ
Whoever does good does it for his own soul and whoever does evil does it against his own soul: your Lord is never unjust to His creatures
Qur’an 41:46read 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 stand back from repetitive thoughts and react to them less negatively. Repetitive thought is the target here, and relaxing the body was not what shifted it. A single short session in a laboratory is a narrow test of that.
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.
Repeating a response makes it more available later, whether you repeat it out loud or only in your head.
Their account makes sense from where they are standing. So does yours. Granting the first does not cost you the second.
Try putting a qualifier on the front of your strongest claims. In some ways this is true. In some ways it is not. In some ways I cannot tell from here.
If you are still polishing the reply weeks afterwards, the argument is not still running. The injury is, and that needs a different kind of care.