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Areas › Anger › Choosing your response
Nobody deliberates under real pressure, so the aim is not to think harder at the time, it is to have a better default waiting. Defaults get installed the dull way, by the same small response repeated in low stakes moments until it stops needing a decision. Pick one, keep it small, and let boredom do the work.
Who restrain their anger and pardon people (Quran 3:134). Holding back and then letting go are named together as things such people habitually do, a settled character rather than one heroic evening.
آل عمران
ٱلَّذِينَ يُنفِقُونَ فِي ٱلسَّرَّآءِ وَٱلضَّرَّآءِ وَٱلۡكَٰظِمِينَ ٱلۡغَيۡظَ وَٱلۡعَافِينَ عَنِ ٱلنَّاسِۗ وَٱللَّهُ يُحِبُّ ٱلۡمُحۡسِنِينَ
who give, both in prosperity and adversity, who restrain their anger and pardon people- God loves those who do good
Qur’an 3:134read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
In a survey of 286 adults aged 18 to 88, older adults reported letting anger out less often and dwelling on emotional events less, and those differences related to their well being. It suggests these settings do shift over a life rather than being fixed at birth. It is a snapshot across ages, so it cannot separate the effect of years lived from the generation people grew up in.
Phillips LH, Phillips LH, Henry JD, Hosie JA, Milne AB. (2006). Age, anger regulation and well-being.. Aging & mental health doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Whatever you repeat becomes the thing that happens when you are not choosing.
To be compelled is to be driven, the way cattle are driven along a road. It makes a quick test in the moment: am I choosing this, or am I being moved?
You may need to leave and come back two or three times before one conversation is finished. That is normal, not a sign that the skill is not working.
It is less anger management than learning to hold an impulse without acting on it. That is a skill, and skills can be learned in a way that characters cannot.