Areas › Anger › Choosing your response
Your alarm system is not your enemy. Picture the calmer part of you joining it with better information rather than overpowering it, and the whole business stops being a fight.
When people treat their own anger as a defect they add shame to it, and shame is petrol. A kinder account is that an old and very fast part of you has sounded an alarm and is waiting to hear more. So tell it something: where you are, what is actually happening, what you would like to be true by tomorrow morning.
Qur’an and Sunnah
You were gentle in your dealings with them; had you been harsh, or hard hearted, they would have dispersed and left you (Quran 3:159). That is said about handling people, and it holds for the frightened part of yourself too, which has never responded well to being bullied.
فَبِمَا رَحۡمَةࣲ مِّنَ ٱللَّهِ لِنتَ لَهُمۡۖ وَلَوۡ كُنتَ فَظًّا غَلِيظَ ٱلۡقَلۡبِ لَٱنفَضُّواْ مِنۡ حَوۡلِكَۖ فَٱعۡفُ عَنۡهُمۡ وَٱسۡتَغۡفِرۡ لَهُمۡ وَشَاوِرۡهُمۡ فِي ٱلۡأَمۡرِۖ فَإِذَا عَزَمۡتَ فَتَوَكَّلۡ عَلَى ٱللَّهِۚ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ يُحِبُّ ٱلۡمُتَوَكِّلِينَ
By an act of mercy from God, you [Prophet] were gentle in your dealings with them- had you been harsh, or hard-hearted, they would have dispersed and left you- so pardon them and ask forgiveness for them. Consult with them about matters, then, when you have decided on a course of action, put your trust in God: God loves those who put their trust in Him
Qur’an 3:159read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
Pooling neuroimaging studies, deliberately reinterpreting an emotional situation drew on frontal and parietal control regions and lowered activity in the amygdala, so a change of mind does register in the emotional brain. That is an average across scanner tasks, and it does not tell you how much any particular reframe will do for you in a live argument.
Buhle JT, Silvers JA, Wager TD, Lopez R, Onyemekwu C, Kober H, Weber J, Ochsner KN. (2014). Cognitive reappraisal of emotion: a meta-analysis of human neuroimaging studies.. Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Anger that you are not also punishing yourself for has less to feed on.
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
Aim for the cat rather than the dog. The dog goes off the second the door knocks, while the cat waits, watches, and still moves decisively when it decides to move.
Under the anger there is usually something you wanted and did not get, or something you are afraid of losing. Say that, and you have handed the other person something they can actually do.
You cannot talk yourself out of a state you are not in yet. Anything you want to have available when you are angry has to be practised, not merely understood.