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Areas › Anger › Choosing your response
Interrupting looks small and slightly silly: standing up, walking to another room, going quiet mid sentence, putting the phone face down. Interruption is not the fix by itself, but it is what makes a fix possible. Expect to do it many times over, because a circle you have been going round for years does not break on the first go.
We have our deeds and you have yours. Peace be with you (Quran 28:55). A clean line and a step away are offered as a proper ending to an exchange, not as running off.
القصص
وَإِذَا سَمِعُواْ ٱللَّغۡوَ أَعۡرَضُواْ عَنۡهُ وَقَالُواْ لَنَآ أَعۡمَٰلُنَا وَلَكُمۡ أَعۡمَٰلُكُمۡ سَلَٰمٌ عَلَيۡكُمۡ لَا نَبۡتَغِي ٱلۡجَٰهِلِينَ
and turn away whenever they hear frivolous talk, saying, ‘We have our deeds and you have yours. Peace be with you! We do not seek the company of ignorant people.’
Qur’an 28:55read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
In a laboratory study, going over an angry episode again and again kept cardiovascular arousal raised across repeated trials, while a competing visual and spatial task cut across the imagery and the physical load that came with it. Interruption was doing something that an intention to calm down was not. It was a short lab task with induced anger, so it demonstrates a small effect rather than a treatment.
McClelland AB, Jones KV, Douglas Gregg ME. (2009). Psychological and cumulative cardiovascular effects of repeated angry rumination and visuospatial suppression.. International journal of psychophysiology : official journal of the International Organization of Psychophysiology doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Stopping the loop is what creates the gap in which anything else can be chosen.
If walking out of an argument at home has been used as a weapon before, agree with the other person beforehand what leaving the room means, so it does not land as abandonment.
You are free in principle and a good deal less free at half past eleven at night in the middle of a row. Freedom is a capacity that rises and falls, which also means it can be built.
Catch the reflex on something small. A one-word reply to your message, and the first question your mind asks is what have I done.
Some triggers make no sense because the memory attached to them is long gone while the alarm is still wired in. A tone of voice, a particular shirt, the smell of dinner burning.