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Areas › Anger › Righteous anger and perfectionism
The word should keeps you in the courtroom, where the only available outcome is a verdict. Asking why moves you into how the thing actually happened, which is the only place anything can change. Nobody is asking you to approve of it. You can hold that it is wrong and still get curious about how it came about, and most people notice the heat drop a little once they are explaining rather than sentencing.
Make a just and even-handed reconciliation between the two of them (Quran 49:9). Even where wrongdoing is named plainly, the destination given is a settlement rather than a verdict.
الحجرات
وَإِن طَآئِفَتَانِ مِنَ ٱلۡمُؤۡمِنِينَ ٱقۡتَتَلُواْ فَأَصۡلِحُواْ بَيۡنَهُمَاۖ فَإِنۢ بَغَتۡ إِحۡدَىٰهُمَا عَلَى ٱلۡأُخۡرَىٰ فَقَٰتِلُواْ ٱلَّتِي تَبۡغِي حَتَّىٰ تَفِيٓءَ إِلَىٰٓ أَمۡرِ ٱللَّهِۚ فَإِن فَآءَتۡ فَأَصۡلِحُواْ بَيۡنَهُمَا بِٱلۡعَدۡلِ وَأَقۡسِطُوٓاْۖ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ يُحِبُّ ٱلۡمُقۡسِطِينَ
If two groups of the believers fight, you [believers] should try to reconcile them; if one of them is [clearly] oppressing the other, fight the oppressors until they submit to God’s command, then make a just and even-handed reconciliation between the two of them: God loves those who are even-handed
Qur’an 49:9read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
In a randomised writing experiment with 182 students who had been hurt by someone, those assigned to write about it in a concrete, experiential way became less unforgiving and less distressed, and it buffered the effect of stewing on the event. How they went back over it mattered, not merely whether they did. It was a single writing study with students, so hold it lightly.
Liao KY, Wei M, Russell DW, Abraham WT. (2012). Experiential self-focus writing as a facilitator of processing an interpersonal hurt.. Journal of clinical psychology doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Working out how something happened runs in a different gear from judging it, and that gear is cooler.
Anger that your friends, your feed or your workplace rewards is the hardest kind to put down, because letting it go costs you something socially.
Anger runs on the word should, and should is a word about debt. Write out what you believe this person owes you, then mark which of those they ever actually agreed to.
If you are simmering most days and cannot point to what set it off, look at the standards you are running rather than at the day itself. A rule that is never quite met keeps producing small failures for you to react to.