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Areas › Anger › The moment before you snap
The relief is real and it is very short, and then the thing comes back stronger. This is why letting rip does not empty the tank the way people expect. If you can feel the pull to answer, to slam something, to send the message, notice it as the itch it is and see whether it thins out on its own. It usually does, more quickly than you would guess.
Yet man prays for harm, just as he prays for good: man is ever hasty (Quran 17:11). What feels most urgent in the moment can be exactly the thing you would never ask for with a clear head.
الإسراء
وَيَدۡعُ ٱلۡإِنسَٰنُ بِٱلشَّرِّ دُعَآءَهُۥ بِٱلۡخَيۡرِۖ وَكَانَ ٱلۡإِنسَٰنُ عَجُولࣰ ا
Yet man prays for harm, just as he prays for good: man is ever hasty
Qur’an 17:11read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
In a study of 516 social drinkers, alcohol raised aggression mainly among people who dwelt on the provocation, which suggests that dwelling is the bridge between being provoked and lashing out. Going over it again is not neutral. It feeds. That was a laboratory aggression task, so it models the process rather than describing a real night out.
Borders A, Giancola PR. (2011). Trait and state hostile rumination facilitate alcohol-related aggression.. Journal of studies on alcohol and drugs doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Acting on the urge rewards it, so it comes back more insistent each time.
You will hear tidy explanations of what your brain does when you get angry. Take the useful part and hold the neat story loosely.
There is a kind of mindfulness that means sinking right into a moment, and another that means stepping back from it. When you are angry, you want the second one.
Writing down what happened puts a little distance between you and it. Later you are not inside the row any more, you are a person reading about one.