Areas › Anger › What anger actually is
When anger comes it takes the whole body with it: heart, hands, voice, attention. The system would rather do too much than too little.
That preference made sense where missing a real threat was fatal and an unnecessary fight was survivable. It is why the response feels so total and so out of scale with a comment at work. Expect the size of it, and have a plan for a body that has already prepared for something serious: move, breathe out slowly, put some distance in.
Qur’an and Sunnah
He threw the tablets down and seized his brother by the hair (Quran 7:150). The response overshoots even in a prophet, which is the scale being described.
وَلَمَّا رَجَعَ مُوسَىٰٓ إِلَىٰ قَوۡمِهِۦ غَضۡبَٰنَ أَسِفࣰ ا قَالَ بِئۡسَمَا خَلَفۡتُمُونِي مِنۢ بَعۡدِيٓۖ أَعَجِلۡتُمۡ أَمۡرَ رَبِّكُمۡۖ وَأَلۡقَى ٱلۡأَلۡوَاحَ وَأَخَذَ بِرَأۡسِ أَخِيهِ يَجُرُّهُۥٓ إِلَيۡهِۚ قَالَ ٱبۡنَ أُمَّ إِنَّ ٱلۡقَوۡمَ ٱسۡتَضۡعَفُونِي وَكَادُواْ يَقۡتُلُونَنِي فَلَا تُشۡمِتۡ بِيَ ٱلۡأَعۡدَآءَ وَلَا تَجۡعَلۡنِي مَعَ ٱلۡقَوۡمِ ٱلظَّٰلِمِينَ
On his return to his people, angry and aggrieved, Moses said, ‘How foul and evil is what you have done in my absence! Were you so keen to bring your Lord’s judgement forward?’ He threw the tablets down and seized his brother by the hair, pulling him towards him. Aaron said, ‘Son of my mother, these people overpowered me! They almost killed me! Do not give my enemies reason to rejoice! Do not include me with these evildoers!’
Qur’an 7:150read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A study of dominant emotional responses to traumatic events found that for many people the leading response was not fear but anger, guilt, sadness or numbness, and those responses still predicted later post-traumatic symptoms. The defence system speaks in more than one voice, and anger is one of them. It was cross-sectional and relied on people recalling their own reactions.
Hathaway LM, Boals A, Banks JB. (2010). PTSD symptoms and dominant emotional response to a traumatic event:an examination of DSM-IV Criterion A2.. Anxiety, stress, and coping doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
The response was built to be too big rather than too small, so the excess is the system working, not breaking.
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
This is just how I am ends more attempts at change than anything else. It is also less true than it feels.
Put a word to it while it is happening. Saying quietly that this is anger and it is climbing gives you something to hold that the bare feeling does not.
Being late on purpose, the joke with an edge, the job done just badly enough: that is anger at full strength, only sent by a quieter route.