Areas › Anger › Choosing your response
If you are helping someone set up a practice like this, ask them for ideas before you offer yours. Keep a few in your back pocket for when they run dry.
What people invent for themselves fits their actual life, and they are far more likely to do it. Have suggestions ready anyway, because a brainstorm that stalls for two minutes leaves everybody flat. The same holds when you are choosing for yourself: your own list will beat anyone else's, and there is no shame in borrowing when you are stuck.
Qur’an and Sunnah
Consult with them about matters, then, when you have decided on a course of action, put your trust in God (Quran 3:159). Consultation comes before the decision, even for the one who is leading.
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
In a study of 764 students in Korea and the United States, how people habitually handled emotion related to their depressive symptoms, but the pattern was not the same across cultures or between men and women. So one strategy does not sit identically in every life. It was a survey at a single point in time, which shows the differences without explaining them.
Kwon H, Yoon KL, Joormann J, Kwon JH. (2013). Cultural and gender differences in emotion regulation: relation to depression.. Cognition & emotion doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
A plan somebody made themselves fits their week and feels like theirs to keep.
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
Thinking about your own thinking sounds abstract until you try it. It is the difference between being angry and noticing that you are angry.
Once you are already alight, reasoning with yourself will not reach it. Clever thinking is a tool for before, not for during.
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.