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Areas › Anger › When anger turns to harm
The tell is that it does not feel like a decision. There was no rush of heat and no sense of crossing a line, because at some level this is simply how things go between people. A pattern like that responds to being named and questioned rather than to fear work, and the naming is often most of it: this was the house you grew up in, and it is not the only way a house can be run. Expect grief when it lands, since seeing it clearly usually means seeing what was done to you as well.
If anger in your home has become frightening for anyone, self help is not the right tool. Please reach for real help.
Live with them in accordance with what is fair and kind (Quran 4:19). The standard set here does not depend on what anyone happened to see modelled at home.
النساء
يَٰٓأَيُّهَا ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُواْ لَا يَحِلُّ لَكُمۡ أَن تَرِثُواْ ٱلنِّسَآءَ كَرۡهࣰ اۖ وَلَا تَعۡضُلُوهُنَّ لِتَذۡهَبُواْ بِبَعۡضِ مَآ ءَاتَيۡتُمُوهُنَّ إِلَّآ أَن يَأۡتِينَ بِفَٰحِشَةࣲ مُّبَيِّنَةࣲۚ وَعَاشِرُوهُنَّ بِٱلۡمَعۡرُوفِۚ فَإِن كَرِهۡتُمُوهُنَّ فَعَسَىٰٓ أَن تَكۡرَهُواْ شَيۡـࣰٔ ا وَيَجۡعَلَ ٱللَّهُ فِيهِ خَيۡرࣰ ا كَثِيرࣰ ا
You who believe, it is not lawful for you to inherit women against their will, nor should you treat your wives harshly, hoping to take back some of the bride-gift you gave them, unless they are guilty of something clearly outrageous. Live with them in accordance with what is fair and kind: if you dislike them, it may well be that you dislike something in which God has put much good
Qur’an 4:19read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
In a randomised prevention trial with 272 Head Start families, combined parent and teacher training reduced conduct problems and promoted social competence in four year olds. Change the adults around a child and what the child takes in changes with them, which is this same mechanism running forwards instead of back. It was early prevention with young children, so it does not directly test undoing a script in a grown adult.
Carolyn Webster‐Stratton; M. Jamila Reid; Mary A. Hammond (2001). Preventing Conduct Problems, Promoting Social Competence: A Parent and Teacher Training Partnership in Head Start. Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Something learned as normal stays in place until somebody points at it and calls it what it is.
Imagining revenge is ordinary and on its own tells you very little. What matters is whether it has started collecting details: a particular person, a method, a time, something bought or moved.
Ask whether the anger is really about this person at all, or whether it is contempt for a whole category of people that happens to have someone standing nearby.
See what you made me do to myself. When self-harm is carrying a message like that, naming the message is not dismissing it, it is looking for the thing that could be said instead.