Areas › Anger › Choosing your response
The circle was never the point. Any break in a running routine will do, because the break itself is what puts you back in the driving seat for a moment.
That is freeing, since it means you do not need the correct exercise. Take a different route, sit in another chair, brush your teeth with the other hand, answer the phone with your other ear. What matters is that a sequence which normally runs itself has to be planned again, and planning wakes you up.
Qur’an and Sunnah
Keep up the prayer: prayer restrains outrageous and unacceptable behaviour (Quran 29:45). A day cut into pieces at fixed times is a day that cannot simply run away with you.
ٱتۡلُ مَآ أُوحِيَ إِلَيۡكَ مِنَ ٱلۡكِتَٰبِ وَأَقِمِ ٱلصَّلَوٰةَۖ إِنَّ ٱلصَّلَوٰةَ تَنۡهَىٰ عَنِ ٱلۡفَحۡشَآءِ وَٱلۡمُنكَرِۗ وَلَذِكۡرُ ٱللَّهِ أَكۡبَرُۗ وَٱللَّهُ يَعۡلَمُ مَا تَصۡنَعُونَ
[Prophet], recite what has been revealed to you of the Scripture; keep up the prayer: prayer restrains outrageous and unacceptable behaviour. Remembering God is greater: God knows everything you are doing
Qur’an 29:45read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
In an experiment with 121 undergraduates recalling an anger inducing memory, twenty minutes of analytical brooding, reinterpreting or distraction left them with different levels of anger, and brooding came off worst. Cutting across the loop did better than staying inside it, even by plain distraction. It was one laboratory session with a recalled memory, so it shows a direction rather than a treatment plan.
Denson TF, Moulds ML, Grisham JR. (2012). The effects of analytical rumination, reappraisal, and distraction on anger experience.. Behavior therapy doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
A routine that cannot run on rails has to be steered, and steering means you are there.
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
It is less anger management than learning to hold an impulse without acting on it. That is a skill, and skills can be learned in a way that characters cannot.
Changing how you react is two jobs, not one: loosening the old response and building the new one. Most people only do the second and then wonder why the old one keeps winning.
A routine only helps you while you still mean it. Every so often, ask whether you are keeping a habit because you chose it or because you stopped noticing it.