Areas › Anger › Choosing your response
After you do something deliberately, skip the question of what you did differently. Ask what it felt like from the inside.
A description of the behaviour leaves you nothing to search for later, because in the moment there will be no paper in front of you. A felt sense is still available: a slight slowing, a widening, a sense of being at the controls. That is what you are trying to find your way back to while somebody is shouting.
Qur’an and Sunnah
Those who are aware of God think of Him when Satan prompts them to do something and immediately they can see [straight] (Quran 7:201). What is described is an inward shift rather than a visible act, and the shift is what you are learning to recognise.
إِنَّ ٱلَّذِينَ ٱتَّقَوۡاْ إِذَا مَسَّهُمۡ طَٰٓئِفࣱ مِّنَ ٱلشَّيۡطَٰنِ تَذَكَّرُواْ فَإِذَا هُم مُّبۡصِرُونَ
those who are aware of God think of Him when Satan prompts them to do something and immediately they can see [straight]
Qur’an 7:201read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
In a multilevel study, both people's usual level of mindfulness and their moment to moment fluctuations in it predicted lower aggressiveness, with less brooding as the path between. So a passing inner state, and not only a settled trait, tracks something real. The study was observational, which means the pattern holds without the direction of cause being settled.
Eisenlohr-Moul TA, Peters JR, Pond RS, DeWall CN. (2016). Both trait and state mindfulness predict lower aggressiveness via anger rumination: A multilevel mediation analysis.. Mindfulness doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
You can only go looking for something you would recognise, and in the heat what you have is the feel of it.
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
The relief people describe afterwards has little to do with clever insight. It is the feeling of being back behind the wheel, which is a large change if you have been living as though other people operate you.
Picture a machine set to strike at anything that even slightly resembles a threat. It would hit the postman, the neighbour's dog and, sooner or later, a child in a muddy coat.
Hardly any of us were taught how to acquire a habit. You can know which one you want, agree it is a good idea, and still have no procedure, which is a different problem from not caring.