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Areas › Anger › Equanimity and perspective
There is a version of this practice that aims at a self with no fixed content at all. For some people that is freeing and for others it is frightening, and halfway in is a bad place to find out which you are. Set a short time, rest your eyes on something ordinary in the room afterwards, and keep a phrase you return to. If you work with clients, screen for dissociation and identity instability before going anywhere near it.
We belong to God and to Him we shall return (Quran 2:156). When your descriptions of yourself come loose, that is the ground still under you.
البقرة
ٱلَّذِينَ إِذَآ أَصَٰبَتۡهُم مُّصِيبَةࣱ قَالُوٓاْ إِنَّا لِلَّهِ وَإِنَّآ إِلَيۡهِ رَٰجِعُونَ
those who say, when afflicted with a calamity, ‘We belong to God and to Him we shall return.’
Qur’an 2:156read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A systematic review of mindfulness-based interventions for people with schizophrenia spectrum disorders found few programmes had been explicitly adapted for psychosis and that what was actually delivered varied widely. That is a reason for care with strong contemplative material in vulnerable people rather than evidence of harm. It also means there is no tested protocol to fall back on here.
Sabé M, Kohler R, Perez N, Sauvain-Sabé M, Sentissi O, Jermann F, Prada P, Perroud N, Böge K. (2024). Mindfulness-based interventions for patients with schizophrenia spectrum disorders: A systematic review of the literature.. Schizophrenia research doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
A settled place to come back to is what makes it safe to let go of anything.
Skip this if you live with dissociation, psychosis or a shaky sense of self, and do not run it with a client without a stability check and a step back to ordinary ground.
The hand you put up to fend someone off is already halfway to a fist. There is no clean place to stop once the movement is underway, which is why the early moment is the one worth having.
Not all anger is a reaction to something. Sometimes a person goes looking, standing exactly where someone is likely to snap, and it is worth being honest with yourself if that is you.
Their account makes sense from where they are standing. So does yours. Granting the first does not cost you the second.