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Areas › Anger › Practising under provocation
Next time you are angrier than the event seems to deserve, ask which of those just landed. Most people find one or two do the bulk of the work in their life, and the same one keeps turning up in different clothes. Knowing yours means you can see it coming instead of being surprised by your own heat every time.
If Satan should prompt you to do something, seek refuge with God (Quran 7:200). One rehearsed move covers the whole family of stings, whichever of them arrives.
الأعراف
وَإِمَّا يَنزَغَنَّكَ مِنَ ٱلشَّيۡطَٰنِ نَزۡغࣱ فَٱسۡتَعِذۡ بِٱللَّهِۚ إِنَّهُۥ سَمِيعٌ عَلِيمٌ
If Satan should prompt you to do something, seek refuge with God- He is all hearing, all knowing
Qur’an 7:200read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
Four experiments found that being provoked did two things at once. It used up self control and set off angry rumination, and together those explained much of the move from provocation to aggression. That is why the sting is worth naming, since it is doing more than making you cross. These were laboratory provocations with student participants, so how large this is in ordinary life is uncertain.
Denson TF, Pedersen WC, Friese M, Hahm A, Roberts L. (2011). Understanding impulsive aggression: Angry rumination and reduced self-control capacity are mechanisms underlying the provocation-aggression relationship.. Personality & social psychology bulletin doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
A trigger you can name in the moment is already half a step away from you.
Call the practice whatever fits you. Stress inoculation, rolling with the punches, a Teflon mind, the art of not giving a damn: the name changes nothing about what you do, and a name you can stand makes you likelier to do it.
If your skin is very thin at the moment, do the first rounds in your head. Picture the slight, picture how you want to meet it, and let the real thing wait a while.
A good deal of what stings in a tense moment is what you imagine the other person is thinking. Sitting inside a silence and watching your own mind fill it shows you that plainly.