Loading practices
Loading practices
Areas › Anger › Anger, alcohol and the body
That pairing is genuinely hard to put down, because giving it up means giving up more than a mood. It means not being the wronged one for a while. You can usually hear it in how the story gets retold, each version a little tidier, your own part in it quietly shrinking. The way through is not to fight the arousal but to loosen the certainty, and the simplest loosener is asking what your share was before anybody else asks you.
I do not pretend to be blameless, for man's very soul incites him to evil unless my Lord shows mercy (Quran 12:53). This is said by someone who really had been wronged, and he still declines the high ground.
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 of 18 studies found that self-compassion and self-forgiveness are related to lower risk of problem drinking and to better recovery, although the direction of cause is not clear. Being able to be at fault without falling apart appears to sit alongside better outcomes rather than worse ones. It is correlational work, so read it as encouragement to be gentler with yourself and not as proof that gentleness does the work.
Berg SJ, Zaso MJ, Biehler KM, Read JP. (2024). Self-Compassion and Self-Forgiveness in Alcohol Risk, Treatment and Recovery: A Systematic Review.. Clinical psychology & psychotherapy doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Two rewards at once, the physical lift and the feeling of being in the right, hold on harder than either would alone.
If drinking is anywhere in the picture, stopping will probably do more for your anger than any technique you could learn. That is not the interesting answer, it is just the one that moves the most.
Anger has a chemistry of its own. There is nothing to pour down the sink and nobody to stop selling it to you, which is why letting it go feels like losing something rather than putting something down.
Sleep, food, illness and the run of stress you have been carrying set the height of your fuse before anything has even happened. Sort those out and you are simply a calmer person that week, with no insight required.