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Areas › Anger › Choosing your response
Worth saying, because plenty of people believe the only options are swallowing it or letting it out. There is a third, which is saying the whole hard thing in an ordinary voice. It often lands harder rather than softer, because there is nothing in the delivery for the other person to argue with instead.
Tell My servants to say what is best. Satan sows discord among them (Quran 17:53). The better wording is treated as consequential, because the alternative on offer is discord.
الإسراء
وَقُل لِّعِبَادِي يَقُولُواْ ٱلَّتِي هِيَ أَحۡسَنُۚ إِنَّ ٱلشَّيۡطَٰنَ يَنزَغُ بَيۡنَهُمۡۚ إِنَّ ٱلشَّيۡطَٰنَ كَانَ لِلۡإِنسَٰنِ عَدُوࣰّ ا مُّبِينࣰ ا
[Prophet], tell My servants to say what is best. Satan sows discord among them: Satan is a sworn enemy of man
Qur’an 17:53read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
In a randomised trial of skills training informed by dialectical behaviour therapy for borderline personality disorder, the benefit was carried by a shift towards assertive anger rather than by anger being suppressed or exploded. That was a specific clinical group, so the numbers will not transfer. The mediation is the interesting part: what helped was how the anger was expressed, not whether it was felt.
Kramer U, Pascual-Leone A, Berthoud L, de Roten Y, Marquet P, Kolly S, Despland JN, Page D. (2016). Assertive Anger Mediates Effects of Dialectical Behaviour-informed Skills Training for Borderline Personality Disorder: A Randomized Controlled Trial.. Clinical psychology & psychotherapy doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
When your tone is not attacking, the other person can spend their attention on what you actually said.
A routine only helps you while you still mean it. Every so often, ask whether you are keeping a habit because you chose it or because you stopped noticing it.
Running on autopilot is not the problem in itself. Patience, letting things go and wishing people well can all become automatic, and then they are there without you having to summon them.
Your body gets up in the morning and your mind often does not. Half a day can go by in a sort of waking dream, and whatever meets you in it gets the sleepwalker's answer.