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Areas › Anger › Choosing your response
None of them has anything to do with anger, which is precisely why they work: you get to practise noticing and choosing while nothing is at stake and nobody is upset. Two or three a day quietly builds the habit of catching yourself. By the time it is needed in a real argument, it is not a brand new move.
Who give, both in prosperity and adversity, who restrain their anger and pardon people (Quran 3:134). The giving is described in the easy seasons as well as the hard ones, which is roughly what rehearsing in low stakes moments is for.
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 randomised controlled trial with forensic mental health patients, anger management training based on acceptance and commitment therapy reduced anger rumination and impulsivity. That was a structured programme built on rehearsal rather than insight alone. The setting was specialist, so what a trial like that cannot tell you is how much someone gains from moving their watch about.
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.
Practising the skill where it is easy is what makes it available where it is hard.
Autopilots are smooth. When something feels slightly awkward and effortful, that is usually the sign that you are genuinely present for it.
Picture a line of dominoes with a gap where one should be. That gap is what a single pause does: it stops a whole run of things, not only the next sentence out of your mouth.
Changing how you react is two jobs, not one: loosening the old response and building the new one. Most people only do the second and then wonder why the old one keeps winning.