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Areas › Anger › Practising under provocation
Keeping the situation identical is the point, because then the only thing that moved was you. In a session that means the same silence and the same held judgement, with the client asked this time to relax into not caring. On your own it can be the same phone call or the same walk past the same neighbour, with a different intention carried in. The aim is not to feel nothing, only to notice that you had a say.
Their father said, 'No! Your souls have prompted you to do wrong! But it is best to be patient' (Quran 12:83). He makes the same choice a second time under the same pressure, which is what practice actually looks like.
يوسف
قَالَ بَلۡ سَوَّلَتۡ لَكُمۡ أَنفُسُكُمۡ أَمۡرࣰ اۖ فَصَبۡرࣱ جَمِيلٌۖ عَسَى ٱللَّهُ أَن يَأۡتِيَنِي بِهِمۡ جَمِيعًاۚ إِنَّهُۥ هُوَ ٱلۡعَلِيمُ ٱلۡحَكِيمُ
Their father said, ‘No! Your souls have prompted you to do wrong! But it is best to be patient: may God bring all of them back to me- He alone is the All Knowing, the All Wise,’
Qur’an 12:83read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
In a laboratory experiment, people who had just been made angry and were then told to reappraise, or to distract themselves, finished in a different emotional state from those told to think it over analytically. The event was the same for everyone and the instruction was what differed. It was one lab task using a recalled event, so it shows that the instruction matters without telling you how much it will shift a real grievance.
Denson TF, Moulds ML, Grisham JR. (2012). The effects of analytical rumination, reappraisal, and distraction on anger experience.. Behavior therapy doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
When everything else stays the same, you find out the response was yours to choose.
If you have someone safe to do it with, ask them to say the thing you dread being thought about you, on purpose, while you practise staying level.
You cannot install a new response, and you do not need to. If you have lived one moment of it, the trace is already in you, and the work now is repetition.
Go to the gym without the getting ready. No mirror check, no fixing your hair, just train and come home.