Areas › Anger › What anger actually is
Before treating a temper as a character problem, check the body. Poor sleep, hunger, a new medication, drinking, a head injury and a number of neurological conditions all show up as a short fuse.
This matters most when the change is recent. Somebody even tempered for forty years who is now flying off at nothing has usually got something physical going on, and no amount of anger skills will touch it. The same goes for irritability that tracks with drinking, or that is at its worst when tired and hungry. Rule those out first, or at least ask about them.
Qur’an and Sunnah
Man was created hasty: I will show you My signs soon (Quran 21:37). Haste is described as part of how a person is made, which takes some of the shame out of going looking for a physical cause.
خُلِقَ ٱلۡإِنسَٰنُ مِنۡ عَجَلࣲۚ سَأُوْرِيكُمۡ ءَايَٰتِي فَلَا تَسۡتَعۡجِلُونِ
Man was created hasty: I will show you My signs soon, so do not ask Me to hasten them
Qur’an 21:37read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A laboratory experiment with 516 social drinkers found alcohol raised aggression mainly among people who dwelt on the provocation, one clear example of a substance changing what anger does rather than a personality doing it. Other physical causes such as sleep loss and head injury sit outside what this study looked at. What it supports is the general habit of asking what else was going on in the body.
Borders A, Giancola PR. (2011). Trait and state hostile rumination facilitate alcohol-related aggression.. Journal of studies on alcohol and drugs doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
A brain that is injured, exhausted or chemically loaded cannot hold back impulses however good the intentions are.
When not to
Any recent or unexplained change in temper, particularly after a head injury, an illness or a new medication, should be checked by a doctor.
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
Holding anger in does not hide it. It comes out in the face, the shoulders and the shortness of your answers, and the person opposite reads all of it.
If anger management sounds like something being done to you, call it impulse control instead. The work is the same and the word is easier to live with.
What overpowered Darwin at that glass was not the snake. It was his picture of what the snake was about to do, and that is usually what overpowers you too.