Areas › Anger › What anger actually is
For most people anger is weather that passes. For some it is closer to climate: quicker to arrive, bigger when it lands, slower to leave.
Knowing which you are changes what you plan for. Weather can be waited out. Climate needs arrangements: sleep kept regular, fewer things stacked on one day, a standing agreement with somebody about how the two of you handle it. Neither is better to be, but the second wants more scaffolding and fewer surprises.
Qur’an and Sunnah
When Moses' anger abated, he picked up the Tablets (Quran 7:154). Even the fiercest anger is described as having a downslope, and the work waits on the far side of it.
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
In a substudy of a cardiac trial, hostility and anger predicted poorer health-related quality of life, and part of that link ran through a weaker sense that life is comprehensible and manageable. Running high over long stretches shows up in how ordinary life feels. People were measured at one point in time, so it does not tell you which came first.
Julkunen J, Ahlström R. (2006). Hostility, anger, and sense of coherence as predictors of health-related quality of life. Results of an ASCOT substudy.. Journal of psychosomatic research doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Planning for what usually happens beats being caught out by it every time.
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
How you show anger was taught to you long before you had any say. Some households raise their voices and forget it by supper, others go quiet for three days.
Anger takes speech in one of two directions. Some of us go silent and let the face carry it, others turn suddenly fluent and very precise.
When anger comes it takes the whole body with it: heart, hands, voice, attention. The system would rather do too much than too little.