Areas › Anger › Practising under provocation
You can be genuinely indignant and still say the thing evenly. The feeling does not have to travel in your voice.
Notice what actually changes when the heat comes out of it: the words stay, the point stays, the volume and the edge go. It helps to know beforehand what you want the other person to do differently, because that is the part that survives a calm delivery, where vague fury does not. And if you find there is nothing left to say once the heat is gone, that is worth sitting with quietly rather than taking as proof the anger was right.
Qur’an and Sunnah
Repel evil with what is better and your enemy will become as close as an old and valued friend (Quran 41:34). The better response is still a response, and it is the one with a future in it.
وَلَا تَسۡتَوِي ٱلۡحَسَنَةُ وَلَا ٱلسَّيِّئَةُۚ ٱدۡفَعۡ بِٱلَّتِي هِيَ أَحۡسَنُ فَإِذَا ٱلَّذِي بَيۡنَكَ وَبَيۡنَهُۥ عَدَٰوَةࣱ كَأَنَّهُۥ وَلِيٌّ حَمِيمࣱ
Good and evil cannot be equal. [Prophet], repel evil with what is better and your enemy will become as close as an old and valued friend
Qur’an 41:34read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
In a randomised trial of 65 adults with aggression problems in their close relationships, an internet delivered programme combining emotion regulation with conflict management practice reduced partner violence, and the mediation analysis supported the regulation part as one route by which it worked. So changing how something is delivered while still having the difficult conversation is a combination that has been tested. The sample was small and people volunteered for it, which limits how far it carries.
Hesser H, Axelsson S, Bäcke V, Engstrand J, Gustafsson T, Holmgren E, Jeppsson U, Pollack M, Nordén K, Rosenqvist D, Andersson G. (2017). Preventing intimate partner violence via the Internet: A randomized controlled trial of emotion-regulation and conflict-management training for individuals with aggression problems.. Clinical psychology & psychotherapy doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
People can hear a request, but they mostly defend themselves against a tone.
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
People who get angry a lot are rarely hard. They are easily hurt, and the anger arrives about a second later to cover the hurt.
Most of what feels wounded when someone slights you is a story you carry about who you are. A story can be looked at, which is a very different thing from having to defend it.
If the room decides how you feel about yourself, anyone in a bad mood can set your whole day. A quiet part of this work is moving that judgement back inside.