1The strongest pull is not the anger by itself. It is anger plus being right, the lift in the body and the certainty of the moral high ground arriving together.
That pairing is genuinely hard to put down, because giving it up means giving up more than a mood. It means not being the wronged one for a while. You can usually hear it in how the story gets retold, each version a little tidier, your own part in it quietly shrinking. The way through is not to fight the arousal but to loosen the certainty, and the simplest loosener is asking what your share was before anybody else asks you.
Islamic evidence
I do not pretend to be blameless, for man's very soul incites him to evil unless my Lord shows mercy (Quran 12:53). This is said by someone who really had been wronged, and he still declines the high ground.
“I do not pretend to be blameless, for man’s very soul incites him to evil unless my Lord shows mercy: He is most forgiving, most merciful.’”
Qur'an 12:53
Psychological evidence
A systematic review of 18 studies found that self-compassion and self-forgiveness are related to lower risk of problem drinking and to better recovery, although the direction of cause is not clear. Being able to be at fault without falling apart appears to sit alongside better outcomes rather than worse ones. It is correlational work, so read it as encouragement to be gentler with yourself and not as proof that gentleness does the work.
Berg SJ, Zaso MJ, Biehler KM, Read JP. (2024). Clinical psychology & psychotherapy · doi
Review detail
Why it works. Two rewards at once, the physical lift and the feeling of being in the right, hold on harder than either would alone.