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Areas › Anger › The fear underneath anger
Instead of the usual round of apology and self-disgust, get curious. What exactly set it off, what did it seem to put at risk, why that today and not the same thing yesterday. Written down, a few episodes start to rhyme, and most people find two or three themes running through nearly all of them. That is a much smaller problem than a temper.
We are well aware that your heart is weighed down by what they say (Quran 15:97). The hurt under the reaction is already seen, so looking at it honestly exposes nothing shameful.
الحجر
وَلَقَدۡ نَعۡلَمُ أَنَّكَ يَضِيقُ صَدۡرُكَ بِمَا يَقُولُونَ
We are well aware that your heart is weighed down by what they say
Qur’an 15:97read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A prospective study of adolescents found that difficulty managing emotion predicted later symptoms, and symptoms predicted later difficulty, so the influence ran in both directions. Left alone the loop feeds itself, which is an argument for looking at episodes rather than turning away. It followed adolescents, so the numbers do not carry straight over to adults.
McLaughlin KA, Hatzenbuehler ML, Mennin DS, Nolen-Hoeksema S. (2011). Emotion dysregulation and adolescent psychopathology: a prospective study.. Behaviour research and therapy doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
An episode you can examine gives you something to change, while one you only regret gives you nothing.
Not every threat needs answering. A knock to your pride is not a danger to your safety, and it does not require a defence.
Losing your temper is the easy move. Staying with the fear underneath is the hard one, in the way that dropping something is easier than holding it steady on your fingertip.
People do not only defend their bodies. We defend our reputations, our ideas, our sense of what is fair, and the body handles those as though something with teeth were on its way.