Loading practices
Loading practices
Areas › Anger › When anger turns to harm
Families often know this long before anyone says it aloud: he is fine, except. Go through it honestly, every incident, drunk or sober, and if sobriety has never once produced violence then everything else waits. Years can go into breathing and calming work for a person whose behaviour was never really about how well they calm down.
If anger in your home has become frightening for anyone, self help is not the right tool. Please reach for real help.
Do not kill each other, for God is merciful to you (Quran 4:29). The people most at risk here are usually the people in the same house, which is why dealing with the drink is itself an act of care towards them.
النساء
يَٰٓأَيُّهَا ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُواْ لَا تَأۡكُلُوٓاْ أَمۡوَٰلَكُم بَيۡنَكُم بِٱلۡبَٰطِلِ إِلَّآ أَن تَكُونَ تِجَٰرَةً عَن تَرَاضࣲ مِّنكُمۡۚ وَلَا تَقۡتُلُوٓاْ أَنفُسَكُمۡۚ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ كَانَ بِكُمۡ رَحِيمࣰ ا
You who believe, do not wrongfully consume each other’s wealth but trade by mutual consent. Do not kill each other, for God is merciful to you
Qur’an 4:29read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
In a randomised clinical trial, adding a brief motivational alcohol intervention to a batterer programme reduced substance use and violence, and people with alcohol problems had benefited least from the standard programme. A separate experiment that gave alcohol to intimate partners found it shifted the balance of positive and negative behaviour during a conflict task, so the effect on how a disagreement goes is fairly immediate. Neither says drinking explains all violence, only that where it is in the picture it belongs in the plan.
Stuart GL, Shorey RC, Moore TM, Ramsey SE, Kahler CW, O'Farrell TJ, Strong DR, Temple JR, Monti PM. (2013). Randomized clinical trial examining the incremental efficacy of a 90-minute motivational alcohol intervention as an adjunct to standard batterer intervention for men.. Addiction (Abingdon, England) doi
Testa M, Crane CA, Quigley BM, Levitt A, Leonard KE. (2014). Effects of administered alcohol on intimate partner interactions in a conflict resolution paradigm.. Journal of studies on alcohol and drugs doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Treating what actually sets the harm off works faster than treating what merely turns up alongside it.
If someone becomes dangerous when drunk, the first question is how everyone stays safe tonight, not what treatment to arrange next month.
Some of what a person does to a partner is not defence and not temper. It is a script they watched at home, absorbed as ordinary, and never once held up to the light.
An act meant to be heard rather than to end a life can still end one. Whatever you believe about the intent, lethality is a separate question and it always gets asked.
Imagining revenge is ordinary and on its own tells you very little. What matters is whether it has started collecting details: a particular person, a method, a time, something bought or moved.