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Areas › Anger › Growing empathy
Company loses its flavour when there is never a break in it, and irritation fills the gap. A deliberate stretch alone, a day or a weekend, lets you miss people again. Come back on purpose rather than drifting back, and notice how much more room you have for the person you were snapping at on Friday.
He watered their flocks for them, withdrew into the shade, and prayed (Quran 28:24). Moses helps and then steps back into the shade, so the stepping back belongs to the pattern rather than breaking it.
القصص
فَسَقَىٰ لَهُمَا ثُمَّ تَوَلَّىٰٓ إِلَى ٱلظِّلِّ فَقَالَ رَبِّ إِنِّي لِمَآ أَنزَلۡتَ إِلَيَّ مِنۡ خَيۡرࣲ فَقِيرࣱ
He watered their flocks for them, withdrew into the shade, and prayed, ‘My Lord, I am in dire need of whatever good thing You may send me,’
Qur’an 28:24read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
The research here is about the practice rather than the solitude. A wait-list randomised trial found that a loving-kindness programme reduced self-criticism in 38 highly self-critical people, so time set aside deliberately for a warmth practice has some support. That was a small trial in a particular group, and nothing in it says that being alone helps by itself.
Shahar B, Szsepsenwol O, Zilcha-Mano S, Haim N, Zamir O, Levi-Yeshuvi S, Levit-Binnun N. (2015). A wait-list randomized controlled trial of loving-kindness meditation programme for self-criticism.. Clinical psychology & psychotherapy doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Time apart restores the appetite for company that constant contact wears down.
If you already tend to withdraw when things get hard, or you are low and avoiding people, this one is not for you: reach for company instead.
If you can do a cutting impression of someone, you already own the machinery for empathy. It is the same copying, pointed somewhere else.
When someone is telling you something hard, quietly let your body come closer to theirs. Similar posture, similar pace, your voice at their volume rather than your own.
Underneath both versions sits the same small dread: somebody being displeased with you. That is the thing to practise surviving, and it does get easier.