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Areas › Anger › Choosing your response
Two things happen at once when you start this way. The other person stops preparing a defence, because nothing has been thrown at them yet. And you have to sit with your own discomfort for a moment instead of converting it into heat, which is the harder half. Then say the thing plainly. The opener is a door, not the message.
Argue with them in the most courteous way (Quran 16:125). The instruction covers how you disagree, not only whether you are right.
النحل
ٱدۡعُ إِلَىٰ سَبِيلِ رَبِّكَ بِٱلۡحِكۡمَةِ وَٱلۡمَوۡعِظَةِ ٱلۡحَسَنَةِۖ وَجَٰدِلۡهُم بِٱلَّتِي هِيَ أَحۡسَنُۚ إِنَّ رَبَّكَ هُوَ أَعۡلَمُ بِمَن ضَلَّ عَن سَبِيلِهِۦ وَهُوَ أَعۡلَمُ بِٱلۡمُهۡتَدِينَ
[Prophet], call [people] to the way of your Lord with wisdom and good teaching. Argue with them in the most courteous way, for your Lord knows best who has strayed from His way and who is rightly guided
Qur’an 16:125read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A systematic review found that people with social anxiety or depression report hiding what they feel more, and reframing situations less, than other people do. It draws on cross sectional and treatment studies, so it cannot say which came first. Saying the difficult thing out loud, difficulty included, at least runs the other way from the habit of concealment that this pattern describes.
Dryman MT, Heimberg RG. (2018). Emotion regulation in social anxiety and depression: a systematic review of expressive suppression and cognitive reappraisal.. Clinical psychology review doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
People can listen when they are not defending themselves, and admitting your own nerves gives them nothing to defend against.
If someone can predict how you drew those circles, they are not reading your mind. We are all running much the same small programmes.
If your break turned into disappearing for the night, look at it as fear rather than as a discipline problem. Anger is often a way out of feeling afraid, and so is running.
Having the capacity to choose and actually using it are separate questions, and only the second one changes your evening. The useful work all sits in the gap between them.