Loading practices
Loading practices
Areas › Anger › The fear underneath anger
There is good news buried in that. An abstract threat can be taken apart in a way a charging animal cannot. What would it actually cost me if this person is wrong about me? Who else would have to agree with them before it became true? Questions like that let the air out of the threat without pretending it was nothing.
True believers are those whose hearts tremble with awe when God is mentioned (Quran 8:2). There is a trembling that fits its object, which is worth comparing with what we let ourselves be shaken by.
الأنفال
إِنَّمَا ٱلۡمُؤۡمِنُونَ ٱلَّذِينَ إِذَا ذُكِرَ ٱللَّهُ وَجِلَتۡ قُلُوبُهُمۡ وَإِذَا تُلِيَتۡ عَلَيۡهِمۡ ءَايَٰتُهُۥ زَادَتۡهُمۡ إِيمَٰنࣰ ا وَعَلَىٰ رَبِّهِمۡ يَتَوَكَّلُونَ
true believers are those whose hearts tremble with awe when God is mentioned, whose faith increases when His revelations are recited to them, who put their trust in their Lord
Qur’an 8:2read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A meta-analysis across 26 studies of adults with generalised anxiety found that psychological treatment produced large reductions in intolerance of uncertainty, and that those reductions tracked improvement in symptoms. Fears that live in ideas do shift with talking work. It covered one diagnosis, and two things moving together is not proof that one moved the other.
Wilson EJ, Abbott MJ, Norton AR. (2023). The impact of psychological treatment on intolerance of uncertainty in generalized anxiety disorder: A systematic review and meta-analysis.. Journal of anxiety disorders doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
The alarm cannot tell a threat to your body from a threat to your standing, but you can.
If anger runs on the fear system, then the things that settle fear are worth trying on anger: staying in the room a bit longer, letting your body come down before you speak, going back over the story you told yourself about what was happening.
Treat a flare-up as a reading rather than a failure. It is telling you where something is sore.
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.