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Areas › Anger › Equanimity and perspective
Finishing people's sentences, deciding in advance what they meant, hearing the insult before it has been made: all of it feels like insight and most of it is invention. Ask instead, and ask plainly. Being asked to explain lowers the other person's guard as well, so you get a better answer along with a truer one.
He knows all that is in the land and sea. No leaf falls without His knowledge (Quran 6:59). Complete knowledge of what is going on belongs to God, so the honest move with another person is to ask.
الأنعام
۞وَعِندَهُۥ مَفَاتِحُ ٱلۡغَيۡبِ لَا يَعۡلَمُهَآ إِلَّا هُوَۚ وَيَعۡلَمُ مَا فِي ٱلۡبَرِّ وَٱلۡبَحۡرِۚ وَمَا تَسۡقُطُ مِن وَرَقَةٍ إِلَّا يَعۡلَمُهَا وَلَا حَبَّةࣲ فِي ظُلُمَٰتِ ٱلۡأَرۡضِ وَلَا رَطۡبࣲ وَلَا يَابِسٍ إِلَّا فِي كِتَٰبࣲ مُّبِينࣲ
He has the keys to the unseen: no one knows them but Him. He knows all that is in the land and sea. No leaf falls without His knowledge, nor is there a single grain in the darkness of the earth, or anything, fresh or withered, that is not written in a clear Record
Qur’an 6:59read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
In a randomised controlled trial, an attention-based treatment drawing on mindfulness-based cognitive therapy and dialectical behaviour therapy reduced aggression and improved anger coping in autistic school-aged children. Where attention is pointed does seem to matter for how anger goes. The trial did not test asking questions, and the participants were children, so treat this as background support rather than a test of the tip.
Clifford P, Gevers C, Jonkman KM, Boer F, Begeer S. (2022). The effectiveness of an attention-based intervention for school-aged autistic children with anger regulating problems: A randomized controlled trial.. Autism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
If you assume you know what someone meant, you end up arguing with a version of them you made up.
Nobody arrives with restraint already fitted. If holding your tongue feels like unnatural work, that is what it is for everyone, and it says nothing about what you are underneath.
Practising the perfect reply in your head feels like letting off steam. It works more like rehearsal, and what you rehearse gets easier to perform.
Some drawings can be seen two ways, an old woman or a young one, and neither reading is the correct one. Feeling the switch happen in your own eyes teaches something no explanation manages.