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Areas › Anger › Practising under provocation
Practitioners run this on purpose. Half a minute or so of held silence, with the client asked to notice what happens inside them. Since nothing is actually said, there is no argument to be had about what the other person meant. On your own you can get something similar by staying in a small silence you would normally rush to fill, then writing down what you assumed was being thought about you.
If a troublemaker brings you news, check it first, in case you wrong others unwittingly and later regret what you have done (Quran 49:6). Checking before acting fits a mind that has quietly supplied its own report.
الحجرات
يَٰٓأَيُّهَا ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُوٓاْ إِن جَآءَكُمۡ فَاسِقُۢ بِنَبَإࣲ فَتَبَيَّنُوٓاْ أَن تُصِيبُواْ قَوۡمَۢا بِجَهَٰلَةࣲ فَتُصۡبِحُواْ عَلَىٰ مَا فَعَلۡتُمۡ نَٰدِمِينَ
Believers, if a troublemaker brings you news, check it first, in case you wrong others unwittingly and later regret what you have done
Qur’an 49:6read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
Extinction research is as much a caution here as a support. New learning does not wipe out the old association, so the old reaction can come back, and the answer is repeating the practice in more than one setting. One good round will not settle this for good. That literature is mostly about fear rather than wounded pride, so the parallel is partial.
Craske MG, Hermans D, Vervliet B. (2018). State-of-the-art and future directions for extinction as a translational model for fear and anxiety.. Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
When nothing has been said, whatever you feel is clearly your own work, and your own work is easier to change than another person.
Only run this with someone who has agreed to it and can stop it at any point, and not with a person who is already very distressed.
Wear something slightly odd for a day. A strange tie, a shirt you would normally think twice about, nothing that would embarrass anybody else.
If the room decides how you feel about yourself, anyone in a bad mood can set your whole day. A quiet part of this work is moving that judgement back inside.
Whatever line you plan to use on yourself in a hard moment, say it in your own words rather than tidy ones. Polished phrasing tends to evaporate exactly when you need it.