Areas › Anger › Choosing your response
Keep a short phrase you can actually reach for. Two or three words you already know: not now, or this can wait, or let it go past.
It has to be short and familiar, because nothing new and clever survives a jolt of adrenaline. Attach it to the moment you feel your body change, so the phrase and the signal arrive together. Say it under your breath if you like. The point is that it interrupts, not that it is profound.
Qur’an and Sunnah
When the foolish address them, reply, 'Peace' (Quran 25:63). A single word is offered as the whole reply, which is about as portable as an instruction gets.
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
Across a series of experiments, forming an if-then plan reduced the pull of an established habit, though the benefit was smaller when the habit was a strong one. Tying a specific response to a specific cue does real work, and it does less where the old response is well worn. These were behavioural tasks, so expect something helpful rather than decisive.
Webb TL, Sheeran P, Luszczynska A. (2009). Planning to break unwanted habits: habit strength moderates implementation intention effects on behaviour change.. The British journal of social psychology doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
A cue you already know is reachable at a moment when nothing complicated is.
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
To be compelled is to be driven, the way cattle are driven along a road. It makes a quick test in the moment: am I choosing this, or am I being moved?
Offer a practice as a question rather than an instruction. What do you think it would be like to wake yourself up once a day? That is a very different sentence from you should.
None of this is thought stopping. You are learning to let an angry thought pass through you, not to crush it before it finishes forming.