Areas › Anger › What you are actually defending
When your thinking comes back online mid-argument, say so and offer a restart. I could feel myself getting defensive and this is not helping either of us, shall we try that again?
Most people escalate sometimes. The skill worth having is not never starting but knowing how to get out once you have. Naming it yourself gives the other person a way back as well, without either of you having to lose. It works with children as well as adults, sometimes better.
Qur’an and Sunnah
You will hear no reproaches today (Quran 12:92), said to brothers who had done real harm. The offer to stop the scoring comes from the person who could most easily have kept it going.
قَالَ لَا تَثۡرِيبَ عَلَيۡكُمُ ٱلۡيَوۡمَۖ يَغۡفِرُ ٱللَّهُ لَكُمۡۖ وَهُوَ أَرۡحَمُ ٱلرَّٰحِمِينَ
but he said, ‘You will hear no reproaches today. May God forgive you: He is the Most Merciful of the merciful
Qur’an 12:92read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A meta-analytic review found that several personality traits predicted aggressive behaviour only once people had been provoked, so provocation brings out what stays quiet the rest of the time. That is an argument for having a plan for the middle of it rather than only for the calm beforehand. The review pooled laboratory provocation studies, which are shorter and tidier than a row at home.
Bettencourt BA, Talley A, Benjamin AJ, Valentine J. (2006). Personality and aggressive behavior under provoking and neutral conditions: a meta-analytic review.. Psychological bulletin doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
A named exit lets both people step down without it counting as a defeat.
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
Feeling good about yourself is not the safe end of this. The high and the low come from the same borrowed source, which means the high can be taken back at any point.
Esteem shares a root with estimate, and estimating needs a measure. Look at what you are measuring yourself with and you will usually find it was handed to you: money, height, thinness, numbers on a screen.
Try saying the word until it goes silly. Respect, respect, respect: a socially agreed comment on how tall you are supposed to be.