Areas › Anger › The moment before you snap
Writing down what happened puts a little distance between you and it. Later you are not inside the row any more, you are a person reading about one.
Two things come out of a few weeks of this. You get data: the same time of day, the same person, the same bad night behind it. And you get practice at watching yourself, which is the skill that everything else here is built on. Keep the entries short or you will stop.
Qur’an and Sunnah
Those who are aware of God think of Him when Satan prompts them to do something and immediately they can see [straight] (Quran 7:201). Noticing is what restores the clear sight, and a written record trains the noticing.
إِنَّ ٱلَّذِينَ ٱتَّقَوۡاْ إِذَا مَسَّهُمۡ طَٰٓئِفࣱ مِّنَ ٱلشَّيۡطَٰنِ تَذَكَّرُواْ فَإِذَا هُم مُّبۡصِرُونَ
those who are aware of God think of Him when Satan prompts them to do something and immediately they can see [straight]
Qur’an 7:201read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
In a laboratory study of 69 couples, aggression was highest when anger rumination was high, reappraisal was low and alcohol was present, which shows these conditions combine rather than acting one at a time. A log is how you notice your own combination. It was a lab based aggression task with couples, so the numbers describe that setting more than they describe your kitchen.
Watkins LE, DiLillo D, Maldonado RC. (2015). The interactive effects of emotion regulation and alcohol intoxication on lab-based intimate partner aggression.. Psychology of addictive behaviors : journal of the Society of Psychologists in Addictive Behaviors doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Recording something turns you into an observer of it, and observers have more choice than participants.
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
In a row, the words themselves rarely do the damage. The damage comes from what you do once you have decided the words mean something about you.
There is a kind of mindfulness that means sinking right into a moment, and another that means stepping back from it. When you are angry, you want the second one.
Sometimes you dislike a person or a room before you can say why. The fast part of you stores feelings, not explanations, so the reaction arrives whole and wordless.