The moment before you snapStep 1 of 8

Before you read on

Read this before you start. If someone in your home is frightened of you, or has changed how they behave to keep you calm, or if you have hurt a person or broken something in anger, then this is a safety matter and not a self help matter. Carrying on with an anger course is itself a risk in that situation. Get specialist help, and go to the course Recognising harm at home instead of this one. Nothing here may be used to justify frightening, threatening or striking anyone, in any relationship, and no ruling permitting any of that is given or implied on this platform. Where a fiqh question comes up in the lessons you will be sent to a qualified mufti rather than to a search engine.

Lesson 1 of 6

It is faster than you are

Ask anyone what happened and they will tell you about the other person. He said this. She did that again. The kettle. The tone.

Ask them what happened in their own body in the two seconds before they spoke, and almost nobody can answer. That is the part that got skipped, and it is the only part you have any say over.

Anger is quick. The appraisal, the surge and the words are close enough together that they feel like one event. They are not one event. There is a gap in there, and this whole course is about making that gap wide enough to stand in.