Areas › Anger › Cool the body first
If someone stands up mid argument, stay where you are. Rising with them turns a conversation into a stand off.
Therapists who sit with couples notice that the person on their feet usually sits back down within a minute or two when nobody gets up to meet them. There is no matching stance to hold, and the tone tends to drop with them. Keep your voice at its ordinary level while you wait, and let the quiet run on a little longer than feels comfortable.
Qur’an and Sunnah
Go at a moderate pace and lower your voice (Quran 31:19). Two plain physical instructions, and both are about what you do rather than what anyone else does.
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
This one comes from clinical practice rather than a trial, and it should be held that way. What has been tested is the other half of it: compared with a waitlist, a mindfulness-based stress reduction course reduced people's self-reported hostile and aggressive expression, which supports the idea that your own regulation is the part you have any control over. Whether it settles the other person is observation, not evidence.
Robins CJ, Keng SL, Ekblad AG, Brantley JG. (2012). Effects of mindfulness-based stress reduction on emotional experience and expression: a randomized controlled trial.. Journal of clinical psychology doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Escalation needs a partner, and a room where nobody else is squaring up leaves the standing person nothing to push against.
When not to
If you think the other person may become violent, leave the room rather than sitting it out.
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 someone already has a practice in their life, hang the new skill on that rather than handing them something foreign.
If one sigh helps, take another. Nothing says you have to wait for the hard part to be over first.
Angry eyes are not unfocused, they are too focused. Everything funnels down onto the person or thing in front of you and the rest of the room goes missing.