Areas › Your marriage › Staying regulated in conflict
Before you reply to something that stung, quietly rate how stirred up you are, one to ten.
Naming the number makes the feeling something you are watching, rather than something driving you.
Qur’an and Sunnah
The Prophet ﷺ said the strong person is not the one who overpowers others, but the one who masters himself when anger takes hold. Reading your own temperature is the first act of that mastery.
ٱلَّذِينَ يُنفِقُونَ فِي ٱلسَّرَّآءِ وَٱلضَّرَّآءِ وَٱلۡكَٰظِمِينَ ٱلۡغَيۡظَ وَٱلۡعَافِينَ عَنِ ٱلنَّاسِۗ وَٱللَّهُ يُحِبُّ ٱلۡمُحۡسِنِينَ
who give, both in prosperity and adversity, who restrain their anger and pardon people- God loves those who do good
Qur’an 3:134read it in the library
Narrated Abu Huraira:Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) said, "The strong is not the one who overcomes the people by his strength, but the strong is the one who controls himself while in anger
Sahih al-Bukhari 6114graded sound, sahihaynfull report
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
You cannot steer a feeling you have not named. Putting a number on it turns the heat from something driving you into something you are watching, and once watched, it loosens its grip.
Gottman, J.; Levenson, R. (1992). Marital processes predictive of later dissolution: Behavior, physiology, and health.. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology doi
Interaction patterns and physiological arousal predicting dissolution.
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Labelling your own arousal lowers it and buys a moment before the reflex.
Where this sits: Gottman method, Manage Conflict.
This one is still a draft. It is waiting on a scholar and a clinician to read it before it is published.