Principles › Working it out
Working it out
Cool down, then talk
When feelings run high, pause before you reply.
For example
Porcupine · a tipThings are heating up. It’s okay to take a break and come back to this tomorrow.
How Porcupine uses it
- “Take a moment” lets you step away for a while, or send one calm line.
- Your raw words stay private; only the version you approve is sent.
- When things heat up, Porcupine may suggest a pause.
In practice
When you’re too worked up to think clearly, take a break and come back.
Small moves that de-escalate: humor, a softer restart, “let me try that again.”
Why it helps
When someone is flooded with anger or hurt, listening gets very hard. Venting tends to feed anger rather than release it, and calming down helps: in a review of 154 studies, calming activities like slow breathing reduced anger while ones that rev you up didn’t, and in lab studies of couples, breaks reduced aggression. That’s part of why Porcupine is asynchronous: you can write your first reaction privately, take your time, and decide what to send when you’re ready.
What we don’t know yet
Calming down and taking breaks have good evidence, from studies of anger and of couples in the lab. How long a break should be comes mostly from clinical work with couples. Repair attempts, like warm humor or an apology, go with conflicts ending better, but those studies watched what people did rather than testing it. And no study we’ve found tests whether waiting before replying to a message helps.
See it in a conversation
- How to talk about money with your partner without fightingPartners
- How to ask someone you’re dating where things are goingDating
- How to message your co-parent about a schedule changeCo-parents
- How to stay friends with your exExes
- How to set a boundary with your parents as an adultParents and adult children
- How to talk to your roommate about guests staying overRoommates
The research
Studied with adults in general
A meta-analysis of 154 studies found that activities that calm the body, like slow breathing, relaxation and mindfulness, reduced anger and aggression, while activities that rev it up, like running or hitting a bag, didn’t help overall.
Studied with couples
In two lab studies of couples’ conflict, breaks, both ones the researchers imposed and longer ones partners chose for themselves, reduced aggression between partners.
Studied with adults in general
In an experiment, angry people who vented by hitting a punching bag while thinking about the person who angered them were more aggressive afterward, not less, than people who did nothing.
More research
Studied with adults in general
A meta-analysis of 146 randomized studies found that writing or talking privately about difficult experiences had a small but real benefit.
Studied with couples
In a study of 98 dating couples recorded discussing a conflict, people whose partners used more warm humor and less mocking humor were more satisfied with the relationship, and afterward felt closer and that the problem was better resolved.
Studied with adults in general
In a study that followed 337 adults recently hurt by someone they had a relationship with, conciliatory gestures, like apologies and offers to make amends, went with forgiving sooner and feeling less angry.
From practice
From his clinical work with couples, Gottman describes “flooding”, a surge of physiological arousal during conflict that makes listening very hard, and recommends a break of at least 20 minutes.
Gottman, J. M. (1999). The Marriage Clinic: A Scientifically Based Marital Therapy. W. W. Norton.
Library last updated October 2026.