Areas › Anger › The moment before you snap
You do think before you act. The trouble is that you react first, and the thinking arrives just behind it.
This is better news than it sounds, because it means your judgement is not missing, only mistimed. So the job in a flare is to stall rather than to solve. Leave a space and the sensible thinking will turn up in it, usually within a minute.
Qur’an and Sunnah
When Moses' anger abated, he picked up the Tablets, on which were inscribed guidance and mercy (Quran 7:154). What the anger covered was still there to be picked up once it passed.
وَلَمَّا سَكَتَ عَن مُّوسَى ٱلۡغَضَبُ أَخَذَ ٱلۡأَلۡوَاحَۖ وَفِي نُسۡخَتِهَا هُدࣰ ى وَرَحۡمَةࣱ لِّلَّذِينَ هُمۡ لِرَبِّهِمۡ يَرۡهَبُونَ
When Moses’ anger abated, he picked up the Tablets, on which were inscribed guidance and mercy for those who stood in awe of their Lord
Qur’an 7:154read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
Pooling brain imaging studies, reinterpreting an upsetting situation consistently engaged frontal and parietal control regions and reduced activity in the amygdala, the brain's threat detector. So the machinery for cooling a reaction is real and is yours. What the meta-analysis does not show is that it works while you are already shouting, since the studies were calm laboratory tasks.
Buhle JT, Silvers JA, Wager TD, Lopez R, Onyemekwu C, Kober H, Weber J, Ochsner KN. (2014). Cognitive reappraisal of emotion: a meta-analysis of human neuroimaging studies.. Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
A short delay lets the reasoning you already have reach the moment instead of arriving after the damage.
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
You did not calm yourself down. You sat still and watched, and calm turned up. It is worth having that the right way round.
Hold up two hands: one is you, the other is what you are feeling. Ask how far apart they are right now, and you have a quick reading of where you stand.
Your mind is judging everything all the time, quietly sorting what is safe from what is not. You cannot switch that off, and you would not want to.