Areas › Anger › The moment before you snap
Decide now what you will say when it happens, while nothing is happening. A line chosen in the calm is worth more than any resolve you can summon mid row.
Keep it short and unheroic: I need ten minutes, I am not walking out on you. Say it aloud a few times so your mouth knows the shape of it. And if someone tells you their thinking goes black and white when they are angry, agree with them first, then offer the other way of seeing it as something for a quieter hour rather than for the moment itself.
Qur’an and Sunnah
When the foolish address them, reply, 'Peace' (Quran 25:63). A short prepared reply is handed to you here, which is what you can reach for when nothing longer is available.
وَعِبَادُ ٱلرَّحۡمَٰنِ ٱلَّذِينَ يَمۡشُونَ عَلَى ٱلۡأَرۡضِ هَوۡنࣰ ا وَإِذَا خَاطَبَهُمُ ٱلۡجَٰهِلُونَ قَالُواْ سَلَٰمࣰ ا
The servants of the Lord of Mercy are those who walk humbly on the earth, and who, when the foolish address them, reply, ‘Peace’
Qur’an 25:63read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
In a randomised experiment, forming a specific if then plan in advance reduced how much tempting food people served themselves, showing that a decision made before the moment can carry through it. The plan holds because it never depends on being resourceful at the time. It was a portion size study with students, so treat the mechanism as promising rather than proven for anger.
van Koningsbruggen GM, Veling H, Stroebe W, Aarts H. (2014). Comparing two psychological interventions in reducing impulsive processes of eating behaviour: effects on self-selected portion size.. British journal of health psychology doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
A decision made in advance does not need the part of you that goes offline when you are flooded.
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
Your threat system is not a neutral observer. It listens out for danger, so it tends to find some, and your first read of a situation leans towards the worst version of it.
Whatever you fix on costs you everything else in the room. In anger the picture stops moving and the target becomes the whole of it.
Even one go at this leaves you with something. You have seen for yourself that the anger can be handled, and that does not expire when you walk out of the room.