This is why advice that stays in the head tends to slide off anger in particular. Something has to change in the body as well: the breath slowed, the shoulders dropped, the hands unclenched, the feet moved. Give the body a different job rather than arguing with it.

The hands are worth watching, because they tend to say something before you do. Fingers curling, a grip tightening on the steering wheel, a mug held harder than it needs to be. Once you know your own signs you get a warning that arrives ahead of the words, which is the only point at which anything can be done cheaply.

Worth saying plainly, because people assume they lose their temper against their own interests. In the moment it works: bigger, faster, less frightened. Naming the trade honestly, good for ten minutes and expensive for two days, gets you further than telling yourself anger is bad.

Ask what tends to be there in the half hour before you flare: a bit of shame, feeling small, an old fear about being left. The anger often arrives to stop you feeling that. Tending to the ache underneath does more for a temper than any amount of discipline aimed at the temper itself.

After a lot of talk about how fast the alarm system is, the other half deserves saying plainly. People do learn to sit through a surge without acting on it. It is slow, unremarkable work that never once feels like a breakthrough, and the capacity it builds is real.