Areas › Anger › The moment before you snap
The alarm gets the first word. It does not get the last one, unless you spend the next minute repeating what it said.
Most of the damage comes from the second, third and fourth sentence, the ones that agree with the first. You can let the reaction stand without endorsing it: feel it, do not act it, then say the thing you would still stand behind tomorrow. Anger that states what you need is a different creature from anger that goes for the person.
Qur’an and Sunnah
He would have succumbed to her if he had not seen evidence of his Lord (Quran 12:24). The pull was real and it still did not decide the outcome, because something else landed inside the moment.
وَلَقَدۡ هَمَّتۡ بِهِۦۖ وَهَمَّ بِهَا لَوۡلَآ أَن رَّءَا بُرۡهَٰنَ رَبِّهِۦۚ كَذَٰلِكَ لِنَصۡرِفَ عَنۡهُ ٱلسُّوٓءَ وَٱلۡفَحۡشَآءَۚ إِنَّهُۥ مِنۡ عِبَادِنَا ٱلۡمُخۡلَصِينَ
She made for him, and he would have succumbed to her if he had not seen evidence of his Lord- We did this in order to keep evil and indecency away from him, for he was truly one of Our chosen servants
Qur’an 12:24read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
In a randomised controlled trial of dialectical behaviour informed skills training for borderline personality disorder, the benefit worked partly by shifting people from destructive or suppressed anger towards assertive anger, meaning anger expressed as a statement of need rather than an attack. That suggests the aim is not to remove the anger but to change what it does with your mouth. It is one trial in one clinical group, so read it as a direction rather than a guarantee.
Kramer U, Pascual-Leone A, Berthoud L, de Roten Y, Marquet P, Kolly S, Despland JN, Page D. (2016). Assertive Anger Mediates Effects of Dialectical Behaviour-informed Skills Training for Borderline Personality Disorder: A Randomized Controlled Trial.. Clinical psychology & psychotherapy doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
The first reaction is automatic, but everything after it is yours to choose.
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
If the language of mindfulness puts you off, drop the language. Call it noticing what your mind is doing, and use it anyway.
Eventually the pen goes down and the finger stays still, and you simply notice what moves through you. That is the whole thing with the scaffolding taken away.
If the page is covered in dots, that is not a mind that failed to settle. That is the number of times you came back.