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Areas › Anger › When anger turns to harm
The question can be asked kindly and straight. Do you ever get angry enough with them to want to hurt yourself so that they feel it. People often say yes with some relief, because they have known it about themselves for a long time and had nowhere to put it. What follows is finding words that reach the same person without the cost, since anger sent out sideways is rarely received as anger at all.
If anger in your home has become frightening for anyone, self help is not the right tool. Please reach for real help.
Let harm be requited by an equal harm, though anyone who forgives and puts things right will have his reward from God Himself (Quran 42:40). Harm turned back on yourself is equal to nothing, since the whole of it stays with you.
الشورى
وَجَزَٰٓؤُاْ سَيِّئَةࣲ سَيِّئَةࣱ مِّثۡلُهَاۖ فَمَنۡ عَفَا وَأَصۡلَحَ فَأَجۡرُهُۥ عَلَى ٱللَّهِۚ إِنَّهُۥ لَا يُحِبُّ ٱلظَّٰلِمِينَ
Let harm be requited by an equal harm, though anyone who forgives and puts things right will have his reward from God Himself––He does not like those who do wrong
Qur’an 42:40read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A randomised controlled trial found that motivational strategies improved empathy among men in batterer intervention programmes, a capacity closely tied to violence. It suggests that how something is raised affects what a person becomes able to feel about the others involved. It was one trial in a very particular setting, and empathy improving is not the same as behaviour changing.
Romero-Martínez Á, Lila M, Gracia E, Moya-Albiol L. (2019). Improving empathy with motivational strategies in batterer intervention programmes: Results of a randomized controlled trial.. The British journal of clinical psychology doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
A message with no other route out will keep using the body to send itself.
Naming this function never replaces asking about risk, and it must never be used to decide that someone is not serious.
Some of what a person does to a partner is not defence and not temper. It is a script they watched at home, absorbed as ordinary, and never once held up to the light.
Harm that comes out of feeling threatened and harm that is done coldly, to get something, are not one problem wearing two faces. Before deciding what would help, work out which one you are looking at.
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.