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Areas › Anger › What anger actually is
Keep that in mind on the days you conclude that flinching or snapping proves something shameful about your character. The determination was real and it still lost, because the part that jumps is quicker than the part that decides. What you can actually work on sits slightly later, in the second or two afterwards and what you do with it.
Man was created hasty (Quran 21:37). The speed is stated as a feature of the creature, not as a mark against one particular person.
الأنبياء
خُلِقَ ٱلۡإِنسَٰنُ مِنۡ عَجَلࣲۚ سَأُوْرِيكُمۡ ءَايَٰتِي فَلَا تَسۡتَعۡجِلُونِ
Man was created hasty: I will show you My signs soon, so do not ask Me to hasten them
Qur’an 21:37read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
In a brain stimulation experiment, disrupting a region involved in holding back impulses increased both motor impulsivity and retaliation after provocation. Control over the reaction depends on machinery that can be knocked about from outside, which fits the idea of a narrow window where control is possible rather than a matter of resolve. It was a small laboratory study using an artificial provocation task.
Dambacher F, Sack AT, Lobbestael J, Arntz A, Brugman S, Schuhmann T. (2015). Out of control: evidence for anterior insula involvement in motor impulsivity and reactive aggression.. Social cognitive and affective neuroscience doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
The reaction fires before deliberate thought is available, so aiming your effort at stopping the reaction itself is aiming at the wrong moment.
Anger runs through all of you at once, in the breath, the muscles, the gut and the thinking. Which means there is more than one door into it.
A lion chasing a gazelle is not in a temper. It wants dinner. Some harm is done coldly, with a purpose, and it needs a different answer entirely.
The years you spent angry are not written off. The drive that wrecked things is the same drive available now for putting things right.