Areas › Anger › The moment before you snap
Most of us rehearse the crushing line we wish we had said. Try spending that same time writing what you would actually like to say next time, and keep it short enough to remember.
Take one real episode from the past week and write two things: what happened, and one sentence you would rather have used. Something like I am getting wound up and I want to sort this out, not win it. Doing this afterwards, in the quiet, means you are never asking yourself to invent a good line while your heart is going.
Qur’an and Sunnah
Repel evil with what is better and your enemy will become as close as an old and valued friend (Quran 41:34). The better response is named as a thing you reach for, which means it is worth having ready.
وَلَا تَسۡتَوِي ٱلۡحَسَنَةُ وَلَا ٱلسَّيِّئَةُۚ ٱدۡفَعۡ بِٱلَّتِي هِيَ أَحۡسَنُ فَإِذَا ٱلَّذِي بَيۡنَكَ وَبَيۡنَهُۥ عَدَٰوَةࣱ كَأَنَّهُۥ وَلِيٌّ حَمِيمࣱ
Good and evil cannot be equal. [Prophet], repel evil with what is better and your enemy will become as close as an old and valued friend
Qur’an 41:34read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
In laboratory experiments, recalling an anger provoking event was not the problem in itself: dwelling on it prolonged anger and raised blood pressure, while reinterpreting the same event reduced both. In a separate randomised experiment, forming a specific if then plan in advance reduced how much tempting food people served themselves, which shows a decision made beforehand can carry into the moment. Both are small controlled studies rather than trials of this exact exercise.
Ray RD, Wilhelm FH, Gross JJ. (2008). All in the mind's eye? Anger rumination and reappraisal.. Journal of personality and social psychology doi
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
Whatever you rehearse gets easier to reach for, so it is worth rehearsing the thing you actually want.
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
Run it for about ninety seconds, stop, and see how that was. Short and repeated beats one long sit, especially if sitting still is not your strong point.
In a bad moment your attention, your seeing and your remembering all narrow onto the threat. So your memory of the row is a partial recording, and so is theirs.
The alarm gets the first word. It does not get the last one, unless you spend the next minute repeating what it said.