Areas › Anger › Choosing your response
You are free in principle and a good deal less free at half past eleven at night in the middle of a row. Freedom is a capacity that rises and falls, which also means it can be built.
On autopilot, hijacked, exhausted or drunk, the choice is technically yours and practically not. Knowing that without shame moves the question from what sort of person you are to what state you were in and what could be arranged differently. Sleep, food, distance and not being drunk are unglamorous, and they are most of it.
Qur’an and Sunnah
Do not let hatred of others lead you away from justice (Quran 5:8). The warning assumes that strong feeling really can pull your judgement off line, so being fair to someone you dislike takes more than good intentions.
يَٰٓأَيُّهَا ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُواْ كُونُواْ قَوَّٰمِينَ لِلَّهِ شُهَدَآءَ بِٱلۡقِسۡطِۖ وَلَا يَجۡرِمَنَّكُمۡ شَنَـَٔانُ قَوۡمٍ عَلَىٰٓ أَلَّا تَعۡدِلُواْۚ ٱعۡدِلُواْ هُوَ أَقۡرَبُ لِلتَّقۡوَىٰۖ وَٱتَّقُواْ ٱللَّهَۚ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ خَبِيرُۢ بِمَا تَعۡمَلُونَ
You who believe, be steadfast in your devotion to God and bear witness impartially: do not let hatred of others lead you away from justice, but adhere to justice, for that is closer to awareness of God. Be mindful of God: God is well aware of all that you do
Qur’an 5:8read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
The alcohol myopia account, set out in a review of this literature, holds that alcohol narrows attention onto the loudest provoking cue and away from the reasons to hold back, which is why intoxicated people act on anger they would otherwise contain. It is a theoretical review pulling experimental work together rather than a single study. It describes one particular state, and extending the same narrowing logic to tiredness or stress is a reasonable guess rather than a finding.
Giancola PR, Josephs RA, Parrott DJ, Duke AA. (2010). Alcohol Myopia Revisited: Clarifying Aggression and Other Acts of Disinhibition Through a Distorted Lens.. Perspectives on psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Your capacity to choose depends on the state you are in, and states can be arranged for.
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
Picture a line of dominoes with a gap where one should be. That gap is what a single pause does: it stops a whole run of things, not only the next sentence out of your mouth.
Some triggers make no sense because the memory attached to them is long gone while the alarm is still wired in. A tone of voice, a particular shirt, the smell of dinner burning.
You are not stuck with the temper you have had so far. Reactions are learnt, which is unglamorous news and also the hopeful kind.