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Areas › Anger › Choosing your response
A low threshold feels like safety and is not. Every false alarm costs you something, and since the people nearest the sensor are the ones you live with, they take most of the hits. Worth sitting with, if you have been telling yourself you would rather be safe than sorry.
Even among your spouses and your children you have some enemies (Quran 64:14). Even there, where provocation comes closest and most often, the course given is to overlook, forgive and pardon.
التغابن
يَٰٓأَيُّهَا ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُوٓاْ إِنَّ مِنۡ أَزۡوَٰجِكُمۡ وَأَوۡلَٰدِكُمۡ عَدُوࣰّ ا لَّكُمۡ فَٱحۡذَرُوهُمۡۚ وَإِن تَعۡفُواْ وَتَصۡفَحُواْ وَتَغۡفِرُواْ فَإِنَّ ٱللَّهَ غَفُورࣱ رَّحِيمٌ
Believers, even among your spouses and your children you have some enemies- beware of them- but if you overlook their offences, forgive them, pardon them, then God is all forgiving, all merciful
Qur’an 64:14read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
In a randomised experiment with 200 police recruits, an effortful task that ran down self-control raised their stated intention to use force in a video scenario. When capacity drops, the threshold for force appears to drop with it. It is one experiment measuring intentions rather than actions, so read it as a warning light.
Staller MS, Müller M, Christiansen P, Zaiser B, Körner S, Cole JC. (2019). Ego depletion and the use of force: Investigating the effects of ego depletion on police officers' intention to use force.. Aggressive behavior doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
A threshold set low enough to catch every threat will also catch a great many people who were not one.
Before you walk out, say three things: this is getting heated, I need a bit of space, I will be back and we will carry on. The sentence is the skill, not the walking.
Whichever response you practise is the one getting stronger. Today's small choice is not a test you pass or fail, it is a deposit.
You cannot swap the temperament you were born with, but you can change what you do with it. A reactive person who has trained handles things better than a calm person who never had to.