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Areas › Anger › Equanimity and perspective
The first job is breathing, leaving the room, waiting before you reply. The second is slower and less dramatic: the practices that shift what you expect from people and how much any of it needs to matter. They do not replace each other, and the mistake most people make is doing only the first, then being surprised that the same things still set them off. Pick one small upstream practice to keep during the calm weeks.
Wealth and children are the attractions of this worldly life, but lasting good works have a better reward with your Lord and give better grounds for hope (Quran 18:46). What is built slowly is described as the thing with lasting value, which is what the upstream work is.
الكهف
ٱلۡمَالُ وَٱلۡبَنُونَ زِينَةُ ٱلۡحَيَوٰةِ ٱلدُّنۡيَاۖ وَٱلۡبَٰقِيَٰتُ ٱلصَّٰلِحَٰتُ خَيۡرٌ عِندَ رَبِّكَ ثَوَابࣰ ا وَخَيۡرٌ أَمَلࣰ ا
Wealth and children are the attractions of this worldly life, but lasting good works have a better reward with your Lord and give better grounds for hope
Qur’an 18:46read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
Pooling trials, mindfulness-based cognitive therapy reduced relapse in recurrent major depression, with the benefit clearest for people who had three or more previous episodes, and that is work done while well rather than at the worst moment. Separately, a randomised trial with 234 adults who had problems with anger found brief internet delivered emotion regulation treatments could shift it. So there is support for both the long slow kind and the short targeted kind, from different literatures, neither tested against the other.
Piet J, Hougaard E. (2011). The effect of mindfulness-based cognitive therapy for prevention of relapse in recurrent major depressive disorder: a systematic review and meta-analysis.. Clinical psychology review doi
Bjureberg J, Ojala O, Berg A, Edvardsson E, Kolbeinsson Ö, Molander O, Morin E, Nordgren L, Palme K, Särnholm J, Wedin L, Rück C, Gross JJ, Hesser H. (2023). Targeting maladaptive anger with brief therapist-supported internet-delivered emotion regulation treatments: A randomized controlled trial.. Journal of consulting and clinical psychology doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Handling a flare well leaves the thing that produced it exactly where it was.
Sitting practice teaches four useful things about anger: everything passes, the senses are calmer ground than the story, you do not have to attend to every thought, and you are not the words you use about yourself.
Not knowing what to make of something does not have to be an emergency. See if you can find it interesting instead, even for a moment.
When someone protests that swallowing their feelings is unnatural, agree with them, because it is. Then add the part they have not said: it is also necessary, and there are better ways to do it than swallowing.