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Areas › Anger › The fear underneath anger
Understanding anger as fear changes how you approach somebody and what you try. It does not change what the problem is called, what gets written down, or what anyone is accountable for. Confusing a gentler formulation with a softer verdict helps nobody, least of all the person who has to live with the consequences.
I do not pretend to be blameless, for man's very soul incites him to evil unless my Lord shows mercy (Quran 12:53). Mercy and an honest account of what is going on are held in the same sentence.
يوسف
۞وَمَآ أُبَرِّئُ نَفۡسِيٓۚ إِنَّ ٱلنَّفۡسَ لَأَمَّارَةُۢ بِٱلسُّوٓءِ إِلَّا مَا رَحِمَ رَبِّيٓۚ إِنَّ رَبِّي غَفُورࣱ رَّحِيمࣱ
I do not pretend to be blameless, for man’s very soul incites him to evil unless my Lord shows mercy: He is most forgiving, most merciful.’
Qur’an 12:53read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A systematic review found that harsh self-criticism runs across many different conditions rather than belonging to one, behaving as a general vulnerability. That is a good reason to hold the gentler formulation alongside the accurate one, since contempt is not a treatment. The review says nothing about how any problem should be labelled, which is a separate question of clinical and legal record keeping.
Werner AM, Tibubos AN, Rohrmann S, Reiss N. (2019). The clinical trait self-criticism and its relation to psychopathology: A systematic review - Update.. Journal of affective disorders doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
An explanation tells you where to work, while the accurate name tells you what you are dealing with, and you need both.
A piece of cloth, an accent, a surname has been enough for people to decide who counts as one of us and who does not. The sorting happens fast, it feels like seeing rather than choosing, and it has cost lives.
If you never raise your voice but spend your evenings arguing with strangers on a screen, that is anger too, and your body is paying the same bill.
Anger and fear are not two separate weathers. They run through much of the same equipment in the body, which is why the two can feel almost identical from the inside.