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Areas › Anger › Cool the body first
That is not a reason to give up on noticing. It is a reason to have something ready that does not need much noticing to begin. A rehearsed routine, run at the first hint, does not require you to have understood the situation yet. Understanding can come afterwards, and usually does.
Bear everything they say with patience; celebrate the praise of your Lord before the rising and setting of the sun (Quran 50:39). The daily practice sits right beside the provocation it is meant to carry you through.
ق
فَٱصۡبِرۡ عَلَىٰ مَا يَقُولُونَ وَسَبِّحۡ بِحَمۡدِ رَبِّكَ قَبۡلَ طُلُوعِ ٱلشَّمۡسِ وَقَبۡلَ ٱلۡغُرُوبِ
So [Prophet], bear everything they say with patience; celebrate the praise of your Lord before the rising and setting of the sun
Qur’an 50:39read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
In a clinical trial, teaching people with panic disorder to breathe more slowly raised their carbon dioxide levels and reduced their symptoms, with the physiological change tracking the clinical one. That was panic rather than anger, in a small clinical sample. What it shows is a route that runs through the body's chemistry rather than through working out what you think.
Meuret AE, Wilhelm FH, Ritz T, Roth WT. (2008). Feedback of end-tidal pCO2 as a therapeutic approach for panic disorder.. Journal of psychiatric research doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
A response you have rehearsed can start before you have worked out what is happening.
Automatic is not the enemy. An out of date automatic is. The aim is to practise the calmer response until it runs on its own, the way the old one already does.
If you use a cooling spot on the nose or a hand on the chest, think of it as an anchor for calm rather than a trick that blocks anger. The honest description is also the more useful one.
Find something with nothing in it to look at: sky, a blank wall, a ceiling, a stretch of grass. Do not concentrate on it. Let your attention spread out over it.