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Areas › Anger › The moment before you snap
So the earliest place to catch anger is physical rather than verbal. Learn your own two or three signs and check for them the way you check a pocket for keys. Waiting for a clear thought like I am getting angry usually means waiting until the sentence has already left your mouth.
If Satan should prompt you to do something, seek refuge with God (Quran 7:200). The prompting is the thing you are learning to feel arriving, and the response is ready before you have analysed it.
الأعراف
وَإِمَّا يَنزَغَنَّكَ مِنَ ٱلشَّيۡطَٰنِ نَزۡغࣱ فَٱسۡتَعِذۡ بِٱللَّهِۚ إِنَّهُۥ سَمِيعٌ عَلِيمٌ
If Satan should prompt you to do something, seek refuge with God- He is all hearing, all knowing
Qur’an 7:200read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A meta analysis of heart rate variability and brain imaging studies found that this simple heart measure tracked activity in prefrontal and amygdala circuits, supporting its use as a readout of how well threat is being managed. Your pulse and your breath really are carrying information about the regulating system. It is a broad research picture, not a gauge you can read off precisely in the middle of an argument.
Thayer JF, Ahs F, Fredrikson M, Sollers JJ, Wager TD. (2012). A meta-analysis of heart rate variability and neuroimaging studies: implications for heart rate variability as a marker of stress and health.. Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
The alarm system has no words, so its first output is a feeling in the body rather than a sentence.
If you finish and say you managed to calm your mind down first, something has quietly slipped. You are not cleaning the water or blocking the flow, you are only sitting beside it.
There is a stretch after anger fires when a person is feeling rather than thinking. In it, only information that matches the emotion gets through, so reasoning at yourself or at anyone else is wasted breath.
The alarm stores as well as reacts. Every flare that ends badly teaches it a little, and so does every one you handle gently.