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Areas › Anger › The fear underneath anger
That gives you a sorting question for afterwards: was anything actually threatening my body here? If the answer is no, then look for what was being said about you, or what you took it to mean. That is where the work sits, and it is also why the size of a reaction so often has nothing to do with the size of the event.
Have they not thought about their own selves (Quran 30:8). The question sends attention inward, which is exactly where a threat with no physical shape has to be looked for.
الروم
أَوَلَمۡ يَتَفَكَّرُواْ فِيٓ أَنفُسِهِمۗ مَّا خَلَقَ ٱللَّهُ ٱلسَّمَٰوَٰتِ وَٱلۡأَرۡضَ وَمَا بَيۡنَهُمَآ إِلَّا بِٱلۡحَقِّ وَأَجَلࣲ مُّسَمࣰّ ىۗ وَإِنَّ كَثِيرࣰ ا مِّنَ ٱلنَّاسِ بِلِقَآيِٕ رَبِّهِمۡ لَكَٰفِرُونَ
Have they not thought about their own selves? God did not create the heavens and earth and everything between them without a serious purpose and an appointed time, yet many people deny that they will meet their Lord
Qur’an 30:8read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A systematic review of experimental exclusion studies found that being shut out produced stronger and longer-lasting distress in people with psychiatric diagnoses than in others. Social threat is not a soft version of a real one, it registers as a real one. The experiments used mild, artificial exclusion, so they show the sensitivity rather than the full weight of being cast out in life.
Reinhard MA, Dewald-Kaufmann J, Wüstenberg T, Musil R, Barton BB, Jobst A, Padberg F. (2020). The vicious circle of social exclusion and psychopathology: a systematic review of experimental ostracism research in psychiatric disorders.. European archives of psychiatry and clinical neuroscience doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Physical danger asks you to get away from it, while a threat to your standing asks you to answer it.
When a conversation is getting hot, change the geometry. A step back, sitting down instead of standing, ending up side by side rather than face on, all of it lowers how much threat your body is taking in.
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.
Let yourself be frightened. People who cannot stand the feeling tend to do something reckless to make it stop, and it is the recklessness that gets them hurt.