Loading practices
Loading practices
Areas › Low mood and hard feelings › Tolerate distress
For anyone who learned that their anger made them dangerous or unlovable, it now arrives with shame attached, and the shame is what turns it into either an explosion or nothing at all. Reclassifying it takes repetition rather than one good insight. Anger is information about a boundary, and once it is welcome in the room it tends to get quieter and clearer.
even their messenger and the believers with him cried, When will God's help arrive (Quran 2:214). Strong feeling said out loud by the best of people is not treated there as a failing.
البقرة
أَمۡ حَسِبۡتُمۡ أَن تَدۡخُلُواْ ٱلۡجَنَّةَ وَلَمَّا يَأۡتِكُم مَّثَلُ ٱلَّذِينَ خَلَوۡاْ مِن قَبۡلِكُمۖ مَّسَّتۡهُمُ ٱلۡبَأۡسَآءُ وَٱلضَّرَّآءُ وَزُلۡزِلُواْ حَتَّىٰ يَقُولَ ٱلرَّسُولُ وَٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُواْ مَعَهُۥ مَتَىٰ نَصۡرُ ٱللَّهِۗ أَلَآ إِنَّ نَصۡرَ ٱللَّهِ قَرِيبࣱ
Do you suppose that you will enter the Garden without first having suffered like those before you? They were afflicted by misfortune and hardship, and they were so shaken that even [their] messenger and the believers with him cried, ‘When will God’s help arrive?’ Truly, God’s help is near
Qur’an 2:214read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A randomised trial of skills training for borderline personality disorder found that it worked partly by moving people from destructive or bottled-up anger towards assertive anger, meaning anger that states a need instead of attacking. The aim in the research was not less anger but a different form of it. This was a single trial examining how the treatment worked, in one clinical group.
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.
A feeling that is allowed in does not have to shout to be heard.
If a movement keeps cutting a feeling short, work with the movement rather than the feeling. Stay with the dabbing of the eyes itself, slowly, and see what turns up.
A hard feeling is not damage and it is not a bad attitude. It is a feeling, meant to be felt, and the only real question is at what pace.
Say it out loud before you start: you decide how much of this you feel, and when. Stopping for a bit is part of the plan, not a failure of it.