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Areas › Anger › When anger turns to harm
Two people can do something that looks identical from outside and mean quite different things by it. That difference matters for what will help the one doing it, and it changes nothing at all about the fear in the room. Hold both: the account of why, and the plain fact of the effect. If you notice yourself using one to cancel out the other, you have lost the thread.
If anger in your home has become frightening for anyone, self help is not the right tool. Please reach for real help.
You thought it was trivial but to God it was very serious (Quran 24:15). The gap between how an act feels to the one doing it and how it lands on someone else is exactly what is being named.
النور
إِذۡ تَلَقَّوۡنَهُۥ بِأَلۡسِنَتِكُمۡ وَتَقُولُونَ بِأَفۡوَاهِكُم مَّا لَيۡسَ لَكُم بِهِۦ عِلۡمࣱ وَتَحۡسَبُونَهُۥ هَيِّنࣰ ا وَهُوَ عِندَ ٱللَّهِ عَظِيمࣱ
When you took it up with your tongues, and spoke with your mouths things you did not know [to be true], you thought it was trivial but to God it was very serious
Qur’an 24:15read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
Who gets harmed by a partner is not always who people picture. A systematic review and meta-analysis found transgender people experience a disproportionate burden of intimate partner violence compared with cisgender groups. Reading a situation by whether it matches the expected shape leaves real people out of view. The review pools prevalence studies, so it establishes that the burden is heavier without settling why.
Peitzmeier SM, Malik M, Kattari SK, Marrow E, Stephenson R, Agénor M, Reisner SL. (2020). Intimate Partner Violence in Transgender Populations: Systematic Review and Meta-analysis of Prevalence and Correlates.. American journal of public health doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Explaining a behaviour and excusing it are two different acts, and keeping them apart is what lets you do either one well.
When someone introduces themselves as an abuser, take the word seriously without treating it as the finding. A label names a category of offence, not what is actually going on in them.
Hurting yourself is not always about coping. Sometimes it is aimed at somebody else, and until you know which it is you cannot know what would help.
If the harm has only ever happened when someone had been drinking, the drinking is not the background to an anger problem. It is the anger problem.