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Areas › Anger › The moment before you snap
The picture is not killing the anger off. It is closer to getting a big animal under control and walking it home: still strong, still yours, going roughly where you point it. Plenty of people only ever do this once. If that turns out to be you, the thing worth keeping is the memory of the moment you had hold of it.
who shun great sins and gross indecencies; who forgive when they are angry (Quran 42:37). The forgiving happens while the anger is still live, so the anger itself is not the thing being got rid of.
الشورى
وَٱلَّذِينَ يَجۡتَنِبُونَ كَبَٰٓئِرَ ٱلۡإِثۡمِ وَٱلۡفَوَٰحِشَ وَإِذَا مَا غَضِبُواْ هُمۡ يَغۡفِرُونَ
who shun great sins and gross indecencies; who forgive when they are angry
Qur’an 42:37read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
In a randomised controlled trial, brief therapist supported internet treatments teaching either mindful awareness of emotion or reinterpreting a situation both reduced problematic anger, and combining the two added nothing clear. Short does appear to do something. Those were still structured programmes with support, so a single sitting has rather less behind it than that.
Bjureberg J, Ojala O, Berg A, Edvardsson E, Kolbeinsson Ö, Molander O, Morin E, Nordgren L, Palme K, Särnholm J, Wedin L, Rück C, Gross JJ, Hesser H. (2023). Targeting maladaptive anger with brief therapist-supported internet-delivered emotion regulation treatments: A randomized controlled trial.. Journal of consulting and clinical psychology doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Having felt yourself hold anger once makes it believable that you could do it again.
If the page is covered in dots, that is not a mind that failed to settle. That is the number of times you came back.
Afterwards, ask what that was like rather than whether it worked. Every answer is usable, including the ones that sound like complaints.
There was a moment when the urge came up and you watched it instead of acting. Notice that, mark the date if you can, because that is your proof it is possible.