Why anger is your midlife magic

Just don't beat yourself up.

Anger isn’t an accessory that looks good on a woman. Or so we’re led to believe.  Like cheap earrings, apparently it doesn’t go with the smile we’re always told to wear.  “G’wan love, give us a smile” is a phrase I doubt many men have ever been jeered at. 

Yet anger, for lots of reasons - haphazard hormones, patriarchal unfairness and overwhelm for starters - can be a very present and potent part of our lives. Women in midlife are the busiest cohort of society… juggling any array of parents, kids, jobs and relationships while possibly navigating a range of life-altering experiences from pregnancy, miscarriage, giving birth, peri-menopause, divorce, grief, .. all while trying to jump through the hoops of expectation of how we should look, dress and be (are big bums in or out, I’m confused).

As a midlife woman myself, and a coach to midlife women, let me be very clear. Anger is a fabulously fucking essential part of life. It is your magical midlife messenger that you need to turn the light you shine so brightly on others, on yourself. It is your alarm bell that a line has been crossed and you have a right to be cross about it.

But many women are afraid of it. Worse, we’re shamed by the social narrative that an angry woman is somehow abhorrent… as if there is no possible reason why a woman may not be satisfied with her lot. And if she is, well, keep it to yourself.  Do some yoga, drink some Kombucha, and meditate that anger all away, there’s a good girl. 

There are two types of anger. The type that eats you up from the inside out, like an alien in your belly, waiting for Sigourney Weaver to hunt it down, drooling with spite and spittle, crazed and destructive. It consumes you.  I’m surprised I’m still standing after my alien invasion. 

Then there is the type that burns like a cold, dead steel inside you, slowly fanned by more overwhelm or resentment until it boils over and eats up the other person / people / children alive.  I’m surprised my family are still standing after my boiled over outbursts. 

Anger is a normal and natural part of the human experience, yet for women (be that in your role as parent, partner, daughter, friend, colleague or just because you are a women in general) it can feel unwarranted and unwelcome. From the teeterings of mild irritation to full blown rampant rage anger itself is not the problem… it’s what you do with it that matters. 

Here’s the thing about anger.  It is a secondary emotion, which means it isn’t a direct emotion, but an expression or reaction fuelled by a primal emotion.  

Anger is just your body’s way of telling you something is wrong. It’s your brain’s way of waving a red flag that a boundary has been broken or a limit has been reached; a boundary or limit you weren’t necessarily aware of, especially if you’ve been running on emergency mode for a while. 

I first learned this from the family therapist I see to help me single parent three teenage girls.  Over the years as my girls physically stretched upwards but also emotionally stretched into turbulent territory, she has helped me stay grounded (and sane). Between my peri-menopause and their puberty, our home became the Horror House of Hormones.  Anger took up residence like a stray dog who stank the place out and snapped at everyone’s heels.  This was on top of my anger at the way my marriage ended, the grief around the loss of my mum and, well, let’s throw in ageing in an age of anti-ageing propaganda. It felt for a while there were no smooth areas of my life, just jagged, too-hard-to-climb edges  Frankly, there were days when a good angry outburst was my only joy. 

Understanding that my rage or irritation was a reaction to another emotion helped me move from blind anger to seeing reason. It’s really easy to just focus on the anger, and never respond to, or deal with, the originating emotion. The primary emotions that sit behind the anger like a child cowering behind a shouty adult can be hurt, resentment, grief, shame, fear, loneliness, overwhelm, stress, depression, helplessness, anxiety, isolation, frustration or any number of other underlying feelings that are painful to face.

The anger model

And so we express them through anger, and avoid the discomfort of the primary feeling. (We can do this without being conscious of it….. anger is just our body’s internal fire alarm bell, so we run with that peace-shattering ringing in our ears rather than see what’s actually fanning the flames.). 

So with raging teens on the loose for example, it really helped me to try and remember there was probably a reason behind one of their angry outbursts. Rather than focus on the swearing or slamming of doors, I can try and think why they might be so angry. Is it fear, shame, hurt?  It also really helps to check in with my own anger. When one of them lobs a verbal grenade at me that stings with its viscousness, my anger can flare up quicker than I can grab it. But if I can take a beat to think, I know this is usually because I feel hurt, betrayed or overwhelmed with it all, and resentful I’m doing this alone. Before you know it, I have a full-blown six-part explosive drama playing out on my head that can last for hours, when in actual fact, she might just have been having a moment of vulnerability and all it needed was a moment of connection, but because her anger (and mine) became the problem, all connection was lost. 

And as anyone knows, when you meet anger with anger, no-one wins.

 Recently I got really pissed off with my 18 year old because she wouldn’t take my advice on researching courses for her college application. But when I tried to settle with my real feelings, I realised I was actually:

• Scared for her she'll make the wrong choice

• Hurt she had dismissed me

• Feeling rejected 

• Vulnerable and overwhelmed because I wasn’t getting support from her dad.

Once I sat with those feelings I could try and deal with them while connecting back to my values of love and encouragement (rather than wanting to strangle her and run away).  From that place I can think about what her feelings might be behind her anger towards me... probably fear. Ok, now I can try and respond differently rather than react by calling her a stupid cow and refusing to help her (which is what I did originally).  I’ve also learned that being human means sometimes the anger just floods your system, but it’s ok to go back to the situation later, calmer, with a bit more clarity, so beating yourself up for being angry won’t help anyone.

If we hang out in the swamp of anger, we never really fix anything.  This comes up so much with my work as a coach. Once I can get a client to think about what they’re really feeling, we can plan how to articulate their needs better to a partner, or parent, or child, or boss.

This week alone, I had a client who was so angry with her husband and kids because of the unfairness of workload. When we broke it all down, she was able to articulate exactly what she wanted (and it wasn’t to actually leave them all), make some changes and the world didn’t fall apart. She now leaves the house in the morning without getting embroiled in all the get-kids-out-to-school routine because her husband has commitments in the evenings so she does that end of the day. It just took her to see how she was really feeling (it was very unfair so she felt resentful hurt, unappreciated, overwhelmed and very, very shouty) and articulate it in a calm and reasonable way. She gave the kids chores linked to pocket-money and no-one batted an eyelid.

She got to respond to her feelings, rather than react to them.

Women are often caught in this trap. Anger is the only expression for all the feelings they feel, and be that shouty rages or quiet seething, it can focus all their energy on the external, rather than see it as a midlife marker that something needs to change.

As the flurry of Christmas tension descends, anger is going to be playing a starring role. For many women, the sheer stress of making the magic happen for everyone else can be overwhelming. So if you feel the rage about to roar, or the fuming about to fan, try and think about how you are really feeling… what is your primary emotion - and see what you need to do for yourself.

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