Areas › Anger › The moment before you snap
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.
Someone can say something ugly and you can hear it as noise coming out of a person having a bad life. That is not pretending it was fine. It is refusing to hand over the next ten minutes of your behaviour to it. Deciding beforehand what your one line back will be helps, so you are not composing it while your heart is going.
Qur’an and Sunnah
and turn away whenever they hear frivolous talk, saying, 'Peace be with you' (Quran 28:55). A prepared sentence and a turned back are offered here as an honourable answer, not a defeat.
وَإِذَا سَمِعُواْ ٱللَّغۡوَ أَعۡرَضُواْ عَنۡهُ وَقَالُواْ لَنَآ أَعۡمَٰلُنَا وَلَكُمۡ أَعۡمَٰلُكُمۡ سَلَٰمٌ عَلَيۡكُمۡ لَا نَبۡتَغِي ٱلۡجَٰهِلِينَ
and turn away whenever they hear frivolous talk, saying, ‘We have our deeds and you have yours. Peace be with you! We do not seek the company of ignorant people.’
Qur’an 28:55read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
In a randomised experiment, people who had formed a specific if then plan in advance served themselves less of a tempting food than those who had not. Decisions made ahead of time can hold when in the moment decisions do not. That study was about portion size rather than provocation, so treat it as a principle worth borrowing, not as proof that a prepared line works in an argument.
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
The insult is over in a second, but your answer sets the shape of everything that follows.
When not to
If the person in front of you is threatening or has hurt you before, getting yourself somewhere safe matters more than any composure practice.
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
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.
Your body knows before you have words for it. A tightening jaw or a hot face is the first news, and it arrives well before any thought about what they meant by that.
Most of us think there are two things to do with anger: hold it in or let it out. There is a third, which is to stop, stay still, and watch it without doing either.