Areas › Anger › Cool the body first
People who train regularly seem to be set off less easily, not because they care less but because a fitter body reads fewer situations as emergencies.
This one works on the scale of weeks, so it belongs in the ordinary part of your life rather than in the middle of a flare. Two or three sessions a week of something that raises your heart rate is roughly the level most of the research sits at. Treat it as maintenance for the whole system, in the way you already treat sleep.
Qur’an and Sunnah
Glorify Him morning and evening (Quran 33:42). Fixed anchors at both ends of the day are the shape of anything that works by repetition.
وَسَبِّحُوهُ بُكۡرَةࣰ وَأَصِيلًا
and glorify Him morning and evening
Qur’an 33:42read 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, two weeks of aerobic exercise reduced fear of anxiety-related bodily sensations, plausibly through repeated safe experience of a racing heart and breathlessness. Separately, a meta-analysis found exercise training reduced depressive symptoms in people with chronic illness, with larger effects for those who began more depressed. Neither looked at anger, and the neat story about the amygdala quietening is a reasonable guess rather than something these trials measured.
Smits JA, Berry AC, Rosenfield D, Powers MB, Behar E, Otto MW. (2008). Reducing anxiety sensitivity with exercise.. Depression and anxiety doi
Herring MP, Puetz TW, O'Connor PJ, Dishman RK. (2012). Effect of exercise training on depressive symptoms among patients with a chronic illness: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials.. Archives of internal medicine doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Feeling your heart pound over and over in a safe setting teaches the body that a pounding heart is not itself the danger.
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 techniques and explanations are not for you, carry a bottle of water and drink it down whenever you feel yourself going up. That is the whole method.
For a child who is boiling over: eyes closed, fingers gently over the ears, and a long humming breath out. They can feel the buzzing inside their own head.
You already own this one. Let out a sigh of relief right now, on purpose, and notice that your body knew exactly what to do.