1There is a difference between stepping out and storming out, and most of it sits in whether the other person knows you are coming back.
Two failures sit either side of this one. The first is staying in the room until something is said that cannot be unsaid. The second is going quiet and cold, which feels like restraint from the inside and like a wall from the outside. What you are aiming at is leaving the argument without leaving the person.
Islamic evidence
Turn away from them and say, 'Peace': they will come to know (Quran 43:89). Turning away comes paired with a word of peace, and that pairing is what keeps it from being a slammed door.
“but turn away from them and say, ‘Peace’: they will come to know”
Qur'an 43:89
Psychological evidence
A meta-analysis of how emotion regulation strategies relate to each other found that they group into broad families of engaging with a situation or turning away from it, so the useful question is often which stance you are taking rather than which technique. Stepping out and shutting down can look alike from outside and sit in different families. The analysis is about how strategies cluster, not about how couples fare, so treat it as a way of thinking rather than a finding about relationships.
Naragon-Gainey K, McMahon TP, Chacko TP. (2017). Psychological bulletin · doi
Review detail
Why it works. A short, announced break brings your body down without telling the other person they no longer matter.
Feedback
none yet2If your break turned into disappearing for the night, look at it as fear rather than as a discipline problem. Anger is often a way out of feeling afraid, and so is running.
Shame teaches badly here. Telling yourself you failed at the skill tends to produce more heat, and heat is the thing you were trying to leave behind. Ask instead what you were afraid of hearing if you had gone back in, because that is what the practice actually has to get around.
Islamic evidence
If Satan should prompt you to do something, seek refuge with God (Quran 7:200). When the urge to run arrives, the move is to turn towards God, not to turn on yourself.
“If Satan should prompt you to do something, seek refuge with God- He is all hearing, all knowing”
Qur'an 7:200
Psychological evidence
In a randomised controlled trial with forensic mental health patients, anger management built on acceptance and commitment therapy lowered scores for anger rumination and impulsivity. That is a particular and unusual group of people, so the size of the effect will not carry over neatly to anyone else. The direction is still worth having: an approach that asked people to face what they felt rather than fight it did shift anger.
Polat H, Asi Karakaş S. (2021). Perspectives in psychiatric care · doi
Review detail
Why it works. You can look at something honestly once you are not busy defending yourself against it.
When not to. If vanishing is how most of your difficult conversations end, and has been for years, that is worth working through with someone rather than alone.