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Areas › Anger › The fear underneath anger
Plain frustration counts. So does anger that has become a habit, or one that keeps going because it gets results. If you go looking for a fear and honestly cannot find one, do not manufacture one to fit the idea. Ask instead what this anger is getting you, and whether there is a slower way to get the same thing.
Have they not thought about their own selves? (Quran 30:8). The instruction is to look honestly at what is actually there, which is not the same as applying a rule you were handed.
الروم
أَوَلَمۡ يَتَفَكَّرُواْ فِيٓ أَنفُسِهِمۗ مَّا خَلَقَ ٱللَّهُ ٱلسَّمَٰوَٰتِ وَٱلۡأَرۡضَ وَمَا بَيۡنَهُمَآ إِلَّا بِٱلۡحَقِّ وَأَجَلࣲ مُّسَمࣰّ ىۗ وَإِنَّ كَثِيرࣰ ا مِّنَ ٱلنَّاسِ بِلِقَآيِٕ رَبِّهِمۡ لَكَٰفِرُونَ
Have they not thought about their own selves? God did not create the heavens and earth and everything between them without a serious purpose and an appointed time, yet many people deny that they will meet their Lord
Qur’an 30:8read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
One theoretical account of post-traumatic distress argues that it is not all fear-based, and that numbing and dissociation follow a separate route with a different pattern behind them. The wider point applies here: a single emotional mechanism rarely covers a whole category. It is a proposed model rather than a settled finding, offered as a caution against neat single explanations.
Lanius RA, Frewen PA, Vermetten E, Yehuda R. (2010). Fear conditioning and early life vulnerabilities: two distinct pathways of emotional dysregulation and brain dysfunction in PTSD.. European journal of psychotraumatology doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
A tool that fits most cases will mislead you in the ones it does not, unless you keep checking.
When a conversation is getting hot, change the geometry. A step back, sitting down instead of standing, ending up side by side rather than face on, all of it lowers how much threat your body is taking in.
When someone comes at you angry, listen for the fear in it. It changes what you say next, and it changes what their anger does to you.
The gap between your car and the one in front belongs to nobody at all, and still, somebody moving into it lands like a break-in.