Loading practices
Loading practices
Areas › Anger › The moment before you snap
Some people hear anything that sounds spiritual and close the door, and then a useful skill goes unused over a word. There is nothing here you have to believe. You sit, you watch what passes, you mark it. If you are offering this to someone who would sneer at it, use their words rather than the ones from the book.
tell My servants to say what is best (Quran 17:53). How a thing is said decides whether it can be received at all.
الإسراء
وَقُل لِّعِبَادِي يَقُولُواْ ٱلَّتِي هِيَ أَحۡسَنُۚ إِنَّ ٱلشَّيۡطَٰنَ يَنزَغُ بَيۡنَهُمۡۚ إِنَّ ٱلشَّيۡطَٰنَ كَانَ لِلۡإِنسَٰنِ عَدُوࣰّ ا مُّبِينࣰ ا
[Prophet], tell My servants to say what is best. Satan sows discord among them: Satan is a sworn enemy of man
Qur’an 17:53read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A randomised trial with forensic psychiatric patients found that an acceptance based anger management programme reduced anger rumination and impulsivity compared with a control group. That is not a population that arrives enthusiastic, which is part of why it is worth knowing. It was a single site trial with a modest sample, so the result is promising rather than settled.
Polat H, Asi Karakaş S. (2021). The effect of acceptance and commitment therapy orientated anger management training on anger ruminations and impulsivity levels in forensic psychiatric patients: A randomized controlled trial.. Perspectives in psychiatric care doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Something rejected on the sound of it never gets tried, so the wording decides whether the skill gets used at all.
You will hear tidy explanations of what your brain does when you get angry. Take the useful part and hold the neat story loosely.
If you want to start noticing what goes on inside you, start with the urges. The pull to speak, to stand up, to say the cutting thing: those have a push behind them that thoughts and moods do not.
The hidden finger tap is weaker than a mark on paper. Better to know that now than to find it out when it fails you.