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Areas › Anger › Practising under provocation
People often leave a good session or a good day wishing they could keep hold of it somehow, as though it might drain away overnight. What keeps it is doing it again, in ordinary conditions, before the memory of it goes cold. Small and frequent beats one heroic effort.
Bear everything they say with patience; celebrate the praise of your Lord before the rising and setting of the sun (Quran 50:39). Patience is tied here to something repeated at set times rather than to one good day.
ق
فَٱصۡبِرۡ عَلَىٰ مَا يَقُولُونَ وَسَبِّحۡ بِحَمۡدِ رَبِّكَ قَبۡلَ طُلُوعِ ٱلشَّمۡسِ وَقَبۡلَ ٱلۡغُرُوبِ
So [Prophet], bear everything they say with patience; celebrate the praise of your Lord before the rising and setting of the sun
Qur’an 50:39read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A randomised trial tested adding a mobile application to anger treatment for veterans, specifically as a way of keeping people practising between sessions. That the question is worth asking reflects how much the repetition is thought to matter. The trial was in a particular group using an app, and it is not a general measure of how much repetition adds.
Mackintosh MA, Niehaus J, Taft CT, Marx BP, Grubbs K, Morland LA. (2017). Using a Mobile Application in the Treatment of Dysregulated Anger Among Veterans.. Military medicine doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
A response you have actually performed is easier to find again than one you have only understood.
Nearly every everyday flare up comes from one small family of stings: being disrespected, disapproved of, invalidated, misunderstood, or brushed aside. Learning the family is easier than learning a thousand separate grievances.
Run the same moment twice. The second time, change nothing except what you do with it, and let yourself not mind what the other person might be thinking.
Treat these as experiments rather than instructions. You are not obeying a programme, you are finding out what happens, and that difference changes how it feels to do them.