1Those first three circles were reactions rather than actions. Something old moved your hand, and you learned what it had decided at the same moment everyone else did.
This is why people say, honestly, that they did not decide to say the thing they said. The words were out before anything you would call choosing had happened. Hearing that as an explanation rather than an excuse is the useful part: an explanation tells you where to put the work, an excuse tells you to stop looking.
Islamic evidence
If you do good, openly or in secret, or if you pardon something bad, then God is most forgiving and powerful (Quran 4:149). Pardoning is counted here as a thing you do, which is the difference between an act you author and a reaction that simply comes out of you.
“If you do good, openly or in secret, or if you pardon something bad,then God is most forgiving and powerful”
Qur'an 4:149
Psychological evidence
Across four experiments, being provoked left people with less capacity for self control afterwards, and dwelling on the provocation was one of the routes from being provoked to acting aggressively. So the sequence really can carry someone along. These were laboratory tasks with volunteers, and none of it removes anyone's responsibility for what got done.
Denson TF, Pedersen WC, Friese M, Hahm A, Roberts L. (2011). Personality & social psychology bulletin · doi
Review detail
Why it works. Something that ran without you gets changed by working on what runs, not by resolving harder.
Feedback
none yet2The relief people describe afterwards has little to do with clever insight. It is the feeling of being back behind the wheel, which is a large change if you have been living as though other people operate you.
She made me. He knows exactly which button to press. Both can be true about the provocation and still leave the response yours. Notice that this is good news rather than more blame: what belongs to you is somewhere you can actually work, whereas another person's behaviour never was.
Islamic evidence
Even among your spouses and your children you have some enemies, beware of them, but if you overlook their offences, forgive them, pardon them, then God is all forgiving, all merciful (Quran 64:14). The provocation from those closest to you is taken seriously, and the overlooking is still placed in your hands.
“Believers, even among your spouses and your children you have some enemies- beware of them- but if you overlook their offences, forgive them, pardon them, then God is all forgiving, all merciful”
Qur'an 64:14
Psychological evidence
A meta-analysis found that difficulties with regulating emotion are reliably associated with posttraumatic stress symptoms, which supports treating regulation as a skill worth working on in its own right rather than as something that simply follows from what happened to you. That is a different problem and the evidence is associational. It is quoted here for the narrow point that the handling is a target, not only the history.
Seligowski AV, Lee DJ, Bardeen JR, Orcutt HK. (2015). Cognitive behaviour therapy · doi
Review detail
Why it works. Anything you own is something you can change, and blame leaves you nothing to hold.