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Areas › Anger › Righteous anger and perfectionism
Those are the two ways it usually falls over. Either the temper goes and the point is lost, or the confidence goes and you find yourself agreeing with things you do not think. Once you know which way you tend to fall, you can plan for it. A slower breath and a shorter sentence for the first. For the second, a line you have decided on beforehand and can say even while your voice shakes.
Command what is right; forbid what is wrong; bear anything that happens to you steadfastly (Quran 31:17). Speaking up and absorbing the friction that follows are given as one instruction, not as two options.
لقمان
يَٰبُنَيَّ أَقِمِ ٱلصَّلَوٰةَ وَأۡمُرۡ بِٱلۡمَعۡرُوفِ وَٱنۡهَ عَنِ ٱلۡمُنكَرِ وَٱصۡبِرۡ عَلَىٰ مَآ أَصَابَكَۖ إِنَّ ذَٰلِكَ مِنۡ عَزۡمِ ٱلۡأُمُورِ
Keep up the prayer, my son; command what is right; forbid what is wrong; bear anything that happens to you steadfastly: these are things to be aspired to
Qur’an 31:17read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A systematic review and meta-analysis found that compassion based interventions improved self-esteem, which is exactly the resource the second failure mode runs out of. The reviewers noted the trial base was small, so this is an encouraging line rather than a settled one.
Thomason S, Moghaddam N. (2021). Compassion-focused therapies for self-esteem: A systematic review and meta-analysis.. Psychology and psychotherapy doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Losing your temper and losing your nerve both end the conversation, just in opposite directions.
When something is genuinely wrong, try saying the whole sentence: this is wrong, it should not be like this, and it is. Then ask how it came to be, before asking what to do.
Some anger is really an expectation that will not be put down. The other person has moved on, the thing is over, and you are still holding the version of how it should have gone.
If you are simmering most days and cannot point to what set it off, look at the standards you are running rather than at the day itself. A rule that is never quite met keeps producing small failures for you to react to.