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Areas › Anger › The moment before you snap
Balance something on your fingertip and you will feel it: the harder you chase it, the more it wobbles. Feelings and thoughts behave the same way. You do not get to choose what arrives, and you do get to choose what you do next, which is a smaller offer than most people want and a real one. Most of the exhausting struggle sits in the part that was never yours to run.
I seek refuge with you, Lord, so that they may not come near me (Quran 23:98). The request hands something over rather than gripping it, which is a different posture from trying to master it alone.
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 randomised controlled trial with forensic psychiatric patients, acceptance based anger management training reduced anger rumination and impulsivity compared with a control group. Practice aimed at allowing feelings rather than suppressing them changed both the dwelling and the acting. It was a single site trial with a modest sample in a very particular setting, so how far the size of the benefit travels is unknown.
Polat H, Asi Karakaş S. (2021). The effect of acceptance and commitment therapy orientated anger management training on anger ruminations and impulsivity levels in forensic psychiatric patients: A randomized controlled trial.. Perspectives in psychiatric care doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Effort spent on what will not obey you is effort taken from what will.
Give the alarm system a name. Saying "that is my alarm going off, not my judgement" puts a little air between you and the reaction.
If you want to start noticing what goes on inside you, start with the urges. The pull to speak, to stand up, to say the cutting thing: those have a push behind them that thoughts and moods do not.
A face read quickly is a face read badly. Before you answer what you think you saw, allow that the flat look might be tiredness, or worry about something else entirely.