Losing your temper

If your point was good at the moment you lost your temper, it was still good twenty minutes later. That is the whole argument, and everything else in the book is the work of making it believable, because the moment does not feel that way at all.

Two beliefs do most of the damage. The first is hydraulic: that anger is a pressure which builds up and has to be released, so shouting is a kind of maintenance. It is a satisfying picture and it is not how it works — rehearsing the heat tends to raise it, not drain it. The second is the mirror image, and it is why people resist giving the first one up: that the only alternative is swallowing it, saying nothing, and letting people walk over you until it comes out sideways or makes you ill.

Neither is the choice on offer. The thing you are angry about is usually real, and often worth saying; it is the delivery that guarantees nobody hears it, and that leaves you apologising for the way you said it instead of discussing the thing you said. Anger is loud enough to win a room and never good enough to win a point.

There is a chapter on old anger, which is a different animal, and one on what to do after a bad one — because you will have a bad one, and the hours after it matter more than the hour of it.