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Areas › Anger › Choosing your response
An exit with no words is read as punishment, and the other person will usually follow you to finish it, which is how a break turns into the worst part of the argument. Keep it short and keep it about you. Naming a time helps more than anything else in it, even a loose one like after Maghrib.
Believers, be mindful of God, speak in a direct fashion and to good purpose (Quran 33:70). A plain sentence about needing a pause is exactly that sort of speech.
الأحزاب
يَٰٓأَيُّهَا ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُواْ ٱتَّقُواْ ٱللَّهَ وَقُولُواْ قَوۡلࣰ ا سَدِيدࣰ ا
Believers, be mindful of God, speak in a direct fashion and to good purpose
Qur’an 33:70read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
Pooled data from 48 samples and more than 21,000 people found that habitually hiding what you feel went with more depression, anxiety and negative feeling, while reframing went with more positive feeling and life satisfaction. That research is about the person doing the hiding, not about how a silent exit lands on a partner, so it supports saying something rather than nothing without proving what the words do. Take it as a reason not to make silence your method.
Hu T, Zhang D, Wang J, Mistry R, Ran G, Wang X. (2014). Relation between emotion regulation and mental health: a meta-analysis review.. Psychological reports doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Saying you will come back tells the other person they have not been abandoned, so they have no reason to chase you.
Choosing has two halves: seeing that there is more than one thing you could do, and then actually taking one. Failing at either looks identical from outside and needs quite different work.
Picture a machine set to strike at anything that even slightly resembles a threat. It would hit the postman, the neighbour's dog and, sooner or later, a child in a muddy coat.
Draw a small circle on three separate scraps of paper without thinking about it. Then look: same size, same spot on the page, same direction of stroke, same starting point, nearly every time.