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Areas › Anger › The moment before you snap
When you keep flaring in the same place at the same time of day, look at the conditions before you look for a culprit. Air, heat, hunger, noise, a particular smell. Changing one of them is usually easier than winning the argument that follows, and opening a window before a hard conversation is not a small act.
I seek refuge with you, Lord, so that they may not come near me (Quran 23:98). The asking happens before the trouble arrives, which is the same instinct as sorting out the conditions in advance.
المؤمنون
وَأَعُوذُ بِكَ رَبِّ أَن يَحۡضُرُونِ
I seek refuge with you, Lord, so that they may not come near me.’
Qur’an 23:98read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
In a laboratory study of 69 couples, aggression was highest when several conditions coincided, high dwelling on the provocation, low reappraisal and alcohol, rather than when any one of them acted alone. That study looked at nothing to do with smell or room temperature, so the transferable point is narrow: what surrounds a provocation shapes what it turns into.
Watkins LE, DiLillo D, Maldonado RC. (2015). The interactive effects of emotion regulation and alcohol intoxication on lab-based intimate partner aggression.. Psychology of addictive behaviors : journal of the Society of Psychologists in Addictive Behaviors doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
If your body is already braced, it takes very little from another person to tip you over.
The braking part of the brain is not finished until the mid to late twenties. A teenager who cannot hold their tongue is not being defiant, they are working with equipment still under construction.
Two honest studies can point in opposite directions, and neither is a verdict on you. Nothing in a brain scan can yet tell one person how angry they are or will be.
Hold up two hands: one is you, the other is what you are feeling. Ask how far apart they are right now, and you have a quick reading of where you stand.