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Areas › Anger › What anger actually is
This is worth hearing properly, because most people take the failure personally. The reaction runs first and the thinking arrives a beat later, often just in time to watch. Knowing that changes what you aim at: not the reaction, which has already gone, but the seconds after it, which are still yours.
Man was created hasty (Quran 21:37). Speed is described as part of the design, which is a different matter from weakness.
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, damping down a region involved in holding back impulses increased both motor impulsivity and retaliation after provocation. The capacity to stop yourself runs on machinery that can be interfered with from outside, which is not what you would expect if it came down to wanting it enough. 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.
Intention cannot govern something that fires before intention gets a turn.
Anger takes speech in one of two directions. Some of us go silent and let the face carry it, others turn suddenly fluent and very precise.
Anger is a bit like fingernails where claws used to be. Still there, still occasionally useful, mostly not what the situation is asking for.
If you have been told that anger passes quickly, that is only half true. Roughly half of episodes do settle inside the hour, which also means the other half are still going.