Areas › Anger › What anger actually is
Anger moves from person to person in a house, and so does steadiness. Working on your own reactions was never a private project.
You are one of the conditions everyone around you is responding to. When your fuse lengthens, the number of moments that turn into an incident drops for people who were never in the room while you practised. Worth remembering on the days this feels like effort spent on yourself for no return.
Qur’an and Sunnah
leave no malice in our hearts towards those who believe (Quran 59:10). The prayer is made in the plural, for a whole group, which is roughly the range over which one person's anger travels.
وَٱلَّذِينَ جَآءُو مِنۢ بَعۡدِهِمۡ يَقُولُونَ رَبَّنَا ٱغۡفِرۡ لَنَا وَلِإِخۡوَٰنِنَا ٱلَّذِينَ سَبَقُونَا بِٱلۡإِيمَٰنِ وَلَا تَجۡعَلۡ فِي قُلُوبِنَا غِلࣰّ ا لِّلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُواْ رَبَّنَآ إِنَّكَ رَءُوفࣱ رَّحِيمٌ
Those who came after them say, ‘Lord, forgive us our sins and the sins of our brothers who believed before us, and leave no malice in our hearts towards those who believe. Lord, You are truly compassionate and merciful.’
Qur’an 59:10read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
In a laboratory study of 69 couples, aggression was highest when anger rumination was high, the habit of reinterpreting a situation was low and alcohol was present, and those factors combined rather than acting alone. What one person carries in is part of what happens between the two. It was a laboratory task rather than a row at home, and it looked at couples, so extending it to a whole household is an inference.
Watkins LE, DiLillo D, Maldonado RC. (2015). The interactive effects of emotion regulation and alcohol intoxication on lab-based intimate partner aggression.. Psychology of addictive behaviors : journal of the Society of Psychologists in Addictive Behaviors doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Fewer sparks from one person means fewer fires for everybody nearby.
When not to
If someone in the house is frightening or hurting you, your calm is not the missing piece and safety comes first.
This one is still a draft. It is waiting on a scholar and a clinician to read it before it is published.
Near this one
Anger shown early sometimes stops things going further. A clear no at the start can prevent the whole conversation that would have ended much worse.
If you catch yourself saying you were teaching someone a lesson, ask what the lesson cost. Were you paid for the teaching, or are you the one still paying?
Before treating a temper as a character problem, check the body. Poor sleep, hunger, a new medication, drinking, a head injury and a number of neurological conditions all show up as a short fuse.