Areas › Anger › Cool the body first
Telling yourself to calm down asks the part of you that has just gone offline to do the work. Have something practised and physical ready instead, something your hands and lungs can do without instructions.
Relax is a wish, not a skill. A skill is: breathe out for longer than you breathe in, six times. Or: unclench, both feet flat on the floor, shoulders down. It has to be simple enough that you can do it badly and still get something from it, because badly is how you will do it when it counts.
Qur’an and Sunnah
Go at a moderate pace and lower your voice (Quran 31:19). Two physical instructions, both of them things a body can actually be told to do.
وَٱقۡصِدۡ فِي مَشۡيِكَ وَٱغۡضُضۡ مِن صَوۡتِكَۚ إِنَّ أَنكَرَ ٱلۡأَصۡوَٰتِ لَصَوۡتُ ٱلۡحَمِيرِ
Go at a moderate pace and lower your voice, for the ugliest of all voices is the braying of asses.’
Qur’an 31:19read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
In a randomised controlled trial with musicians, a single session of slow breathing biofeedback reduced performance anxiety. One session in one specific stressful situation is a narrow test. It does show a physiological method changing how a high pressure moment felt, which is more than can be said for instructions to relax.
Wells R, Outhred T, Heathers JA, Quintana DS, Kemp AH. (2012). Matter over mind: a randomised-controlled trial of single-session biofeedback training on performance anxiety and heart rate variability in musicians.. PloS one doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
High arousal degrades the thinking part, so the plan has to be simple enough to run without 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
If one sigh helps, take another. Nothing says you have to wait for the hard part to be over first.
If you feel yourself rising, sit down. It is the smallest instruction in the whole toolkit and often the one that works.
If someone stands up mid argument, stay where you are. Rising with them turns a conversation into a stand off.