As I was preparing a talk for a women's conference, I felt led to share the unredacted parts of my journaling revelations and research from a previous season in my life where I discovered I had rage. The segment of my talk about rage felt profoundly on time (and not of me, more like a channeled message from God). Of all the feedback I received from the attendees, the rage revelation resonated with the women most.
What prompted me to share on the topic of rage was an article on mom rage that a therapist friend of mine published who specializes in treating women with postpartum depression and anxiety. She’s built an empire around helping women navigate motherhood. Although I’m not a mother, rage showed up in my marriage.
As a therapist, I know our most intimate relationships (typically with spouses and children) is where our unconscious issues arise that we never knew existed.
Here’s a piece from her article where she, as a mom herself, courageously shared a personal rage experience:
Mom confession:
A few days ago, I lost my sh*t (over a baseball belt) and SCREAMED at my child. Not just yelled at him, but legit screamed, crazy person style, right in his face as I grabbed him by the shoulders.
If I’m being 100% honest, I felt myself holding back the urge to physically hurt him. It’s hard to admit that. But it’s the truth. I was filled with rage. He did nothing wrong, but I had a split second moment of wanting to quick release the pressure cooker. Luckily I was able to hit pause and re-ground myself.
But guess what – I’m human! And I have my “sh*tty” mom-meltdown moments.
I needed to forgive myself for that moment and normalize these experiences happen to us all!
It dawned on me – because I have an entire course devoted to implementing emotional regulation, healthy communication, and boundary setting in motherhood…I somehow adopted the belief that I should be protected against my own mom-meltdown moments.
I know that it doesn’t make me a bad mom, and it doesn’t make me a fraud as a therapist either.*
I read her article and felt - what’s the word I’m looking for…validated – no, it was more like angels were singing. I replaced bad mom with bad wife. I have my sh*tty rage meltdown moments, and it doesn’t make me a fraud as a therapist either.
Numerous times I have spoken (in conferences, workshops, retreats, media interviews, and in conversations with clients) or written (newsletters, a book, magazine articles, and blogs) about anger. And the science behind why anger is a God-given emotion designed to help you heal and set boundaries. Anger is a gift and can serve as a protection when expressed in a healthy manner.
One of the many ways repressed anger can show up is rage. I knew about rage intellectually and clinically. But not experientially and personally.
Not until I got married. More on this in a minute.
Upon reading the enormous number of responses to my therapist friend’s article and her social media posts, I researched mom rage. I discovered how common it is and how moms are afraid to admit they experience this level of anger toward their own children.
They feel crazy, alone, and ashamed.
She and I met for coffee shortly after her article came out because I felt compelled to share how her words were like a bullseye to my heart. And that as a woman who is not a mom, I can still relate.
Maybe for you rage shows up as Marriage rage. God rage. Career rage. PMS Rage. Perimenopause Rage. Ministry rage. Illness Rage. Family rage. Singleness Rage. Road rage.
Rage is rage. And it’s sh*tty.
The Therapist Gets Therapy
A few years ago, I had an identity crisis. This led to an intensely complicated, confusing, and painful season of my life especially because I had my greatest dreams come true all at once. I finally found my person and got married. Published a book. Moved to my dream home in my dream neighborhood. And it was during that celebratory time that I simultaneously felt rage for the first time in my life.
I NEVER knew I had rage. To be honest, it scared me.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaand so the therapist got therapy.
After a year of therapy, soul searching, and intense inner work, I went from an identity crisis to identity confidence and from a breakdown to a breakthrough.
During that time, I lost myself. But then I reinvented myself. I redefined what success looks like for me. Life post- identity crisis these days is characterized by 90% peace and happiness (10% leeway because sometimes life throws unexpected curve balls). I am radically content and blissfully secure in who I am and what I want.
I have so much to share about that season of my life and every time I try to sit and write it as a blog post, it’s overwhelming but in good way. Profound and powerful truths I feel called to impart to other ambitious women of faith. I’m thinking it will either be a blog series and/or my next book. Which was not planned BTW. But the best things never are, you know?
My greatest joy and calling are taking what I learn in my own life and sharing the lived experience with you. It’s not only the learning, but also the sharing that completes the calling for me. And right now, it’s on the topic of rage.
Ever since I worked through my rage, it has been a theme in my work with therapy clients, colleagues, and friendships. I believe God brings specific people into your life to provide them the hope and healing you experienced. For me, it solidifies my new-found freedom, keeps me accountable to the truths I’ve learned, and most importantly resonates with people to help them put a name to their pain.
I still, at times, experience rage mini-meltdown moments when I am triggered which is typically around feeling the tension of being a present wife and an ambitious entrepreneur. The tension occurs because I care so deeply about both. Coupled with the reality of my personality – I need a lot of space. I don’t do stress. I don’t do busy. I don’t people-please. I protect my peace and prioritize my happiness. So, when all these things are out of whack, there will be an inevitable unraveling. My nervous system gets overstimulated.
Beet Juice Breakdown
My most recent rage experience:
One morning, I was shaking up a glass bottle of beet juice, and it slipped through my fingers. Glass shattered and bright red beet juice exploded everywhere all over the kitchen and all over me. I also cut myself and couldn’t tell what was blood and what was beet. I legit lost my sh*t.
The visceral rage that bubbled up from deep inside me was jarring. I was like, oh hello old friend. I repeatedly dropped the f-bomb. I could have screamed at the top of my lungs and probably would have if I didn’t think the neighbors would hear and out of concern call the police. I guess I could have used a pillow.
Post-beet-juice-breakdown I realized how that was a triggered situation because I was stressed, frantically rushing out the door to see my therapy clients, and did not have ample quiet time earlier. I have my routines and non-negotiable priorities that help me establish boundaries around marriage, private practice, and self-care.
Yet, I’ve learned to be more spontaneous, flexible, and to trust when my happiness energy shifts from one priority to another and to make exceptions. That way I don’t get so locked into my boundaries and routines that I miss special opportunities that also make me happy.
Earlier that morning, my husband and I spontaneously…you know. And because my marriage is a top priority, I made a choice to connect with him. And because of that connecting, as beautiful as it was, took time away from the other things I needed too which did not happen. But I was ok with that. It was well worth it.
Until the beet juice rage meltdown.
There’s a hidden culprit behind my mini-meltdown moments. It’s not the actual incident itself (the beet juice bottle breaking or even the stress it caused) – it’s what I make the incident mean about myself that unleashes fear and shame spirals that pushes me to rage.
I make it mean that I’m failing. I make it mean that I'm trapped.
The truth is I am a very happy person. I love my work, and I love my husband and there seems to be ample time for both. I have it all. A great love and a purposeful career.
I get triggered when I put hard work into something and see it thrive only then for something to happen that causes me to doubt my dreams, my faith, or my career and then I start spiraling. I fear a new pattern is emerging that I will have no control over because whatever was successfully working before, might not anymore.
My beet-juice-spiral sounded like this:
Following my intuition, prioritizing happiness, and being flexible with my non-negotiable priorities will lead to stress and pain. And I’ll have to make detrimental compromises in my therapy practice or in my marriage.
When I choose my marriage, it will negatively impact the success I’ve worked so hard to establish. I’ll lose myself in a relationship, sacrifice my ambitions, and my career will suffer.
Or I’ll lose myself in my career and my marriage will suffer. My ambitions will prevent me from having a fulfilled marriage and my husband will feel neglected.
I can’t have both.
And if I do have both, my self-care will suffer, and I’ll be an anxious stress case and lose my peace
Yikes.
Those are the lies I tell myself which as you can see goes against the truth that I do have it all. And I’m happy. When I focus on the truth and remind myself that it is indeed my reality, this mindset reframe frees me from the paralyzing analytical, joyless, and doubt-filled fear bubble I feel trapped in.The rage meltdown moments pass by more quickly.
And instead of getting all judgy-wudgy and beating myself up post-meltdown, I pause, collect myself, and go on with my day. I choose to be happy. Then the rage loses its once powerful grip on me.
Through therapy I learned how family of origin issues contributed to the lies I tell myself and exposed this self-sabotaging unconscious pattern.
Therapy also taught me that caring deeply about somebody doesn’t mean I’m emotionally responsible for them or that I must lose myself in a relationship to keep the closeness.
I also discovered that I have a maternal heart, and my husband receives this mother-type of love in addition to wife-type of love. I came to appreciate this quality in myself even more when I was reading the mom rage articles and the tension mothers feel about their children because they love them so much, but also need space to be alone.
A mom so aptly explained, I couldn’t wait until the babysitter arrived so I could finally have some me time, only to find out how much I missed my son and couldn’t wait to be with him again. I get it. It’s how I feel in my marriage. And what a tremendous blessing it is to have such a close bond.
Back to the beet juice breakdown, I must remind myself that it's OK to be angry, stressed, and lose my sh*t sometimes - that’s life! But it doesn’t mean I made a bad decision, and my career will suffer or that it’s a new normal I can’t control. It can mean I followed my heart happy energy (connected with my husband because of our bond) and it’s just a beet juice bottle breaking. It’s annoying and time consuming to clean up. I’ll be late to my sessions. Etc. Etc. But it’s simply a stressor. I don’t have to make it so painfully complicated. So why do I?
Because patterns are not always easily identifiable...
My Migraine Miracle
Over a decade ago, I had sporadic migraines that lasted about 8 months, and the same self-sabotaging pattern emerged in terms of making a migraine mean I failed, and I was trapped. I judged myself for having migraines. I was convinced the migraines were my fault, so I felt desperate to find a reason and “fix” them.
It was an all-too-familiar, sneaky pattern that was occurring unconsciously beneath the surface of my migraines.
I fear spiraled into what-if statements:
What if my migraines worsened and I can’t meet with clients?
What if I eventually can’t pay my bills?
What if my social life is impacted?
What if my faith isn’t strong enough?
I feared the migraines would become debilitating and ultimately ruin my counseling practice and my life.
In reality, this was never the case. It was my fear speaking. The migraines did suddenly and miraculously stop, and my life was not disrupted. Even when I experienced a migraine, I took medication, it passed within a few hours, and never negatively impacted my career.
The breakthrough I took away from that time: The mental suffering I put myself through was more painful than the migraines.
I wrote a blog post titled, My Migraine Miracle - Trust me, it’s worth the read.
All to say, fast forward to now, those same self-sabotaging patterns show up, not in migraines, but in rage meltdowns. That was my aha moment.
The fear and shame women feel after a mom rage meltdown, or a non-mom rage meltdown is often just as painful as the rage itself - if not worse.
Better to Get Angry
In my therapy work with clients, I primarily counsel high-achieving, brilliant women who are leaders in their communities and experts in their industries. Often their buried anger shows up as anxiety, perfectionistic tendencies, imposter syndrome, or sacrificing well-being and personal fulfillment for external achievements.
Suppressing anger and trying to squash feelings of rage is not the answer, nor is it healthy. Coping with anger effectively and identifying the root of rage is healthy. Sometimes it involves letting go of having to do it all. Sometimes it means releasing the pressure to build an empire, dominate an industry, or be the number one.
Sometimes it means choosing to find happiness and be satisfied in the right here, the right now. Sometimes it looks like redefining success to find significance. Sometimes it looks like saying no more than yes and protecting your peace. And sometimes it involves learning the words to apologize and repair after an explosion.
In marriage, sometimes it means getting brutally honest with your spouse. It can be easier to agree or ignore them. To say whatever they want to hear in order to avoid conflict. To stop trying. To stop telling them what you really want. To not really listen when they share things. To just assume you know what they’re going to say next or do next or feel next.
Or to stop believing the way to be a good spouse is by compliance. To never ask for the things you need. To expect them to know. And when they don’t know, to assume they don’t care. That you don’t matter. That they’re choosing themselves over you.
Better to get angry. To tell them what you think and feel. It’s ok to hurt their feelings. As long as you do it from love.
Getting furious and saying things in the heat of the moment shows you still care. What often hurts the most is when a spouse develops apathy. They become indifferent. They don’t care or get curious anymore. They stop fighting all together. And beneath the surface they are slowly building resentment which will eventually manifest somewhere in the marriage or outside of it.
Or be forced to by your body.
Dr. Gabor Maté explains it best in his book, When the Body Says No. In his work with patients, he discovered that people with cancers, chronic pain, and autoimmune issues, have difficulty saying no and expressing anger. And how the nature of stress is not as much about external factors like getting fired, it’s the internal stress of having to adjust yourself to someone else.*
He goes onto say:
“The inability to say no and a lack of awareness of one’s anger make it much more likely that a person will find herself in situations where her emotions are unexpressed, her needs are ignored and her gentleness is exploited. Those situations are stress inducing, whether or not the person is conscious of being stressed. Repeated and multiplied over the years, they have the potential of harming homeostasis and the immune system…predisposing to disease or reducing the resistance to it.”
He explains that “when a person describes herself as ‘a control freak,’ in reality, there is no innate human inclination to be controlling. What there is in a ‘controlling’ personality is deep anxiety.”
Dr. Maté is a big fan of working out our suppressed anger and anxiety through psychotherapy and strongly encourages his patients to do so.
I find his work very validating because our Creator made our bodies to hold truth that we can deny intellectually. We lie to ourselves, but our body always tells the truth. Things build up inside and we lash out. Anger can be a signal that can help you and not hurt you.
I accept my rage meltdown moments as reminders of my humanness. They remind me there’s no such thing as a perfect, problem-free life. They remind me I need to depend on God.
In my marriage, they remind me that it is safe to be myself. They remind me that I am unconditionally loved. My husband sees the scary, worst parts of me and embraces it all wholeheartedly. He says I’m a firecracker and that it’s my deep love and fiery passion that moves me through the world. And that my fierce personality is what he loves most about me.
Moments of rage meltdowns do not make you a bad person. A bad wife. A bad Christian. A bad mother. A bad boss. A bad sister. A bad daughter. They make you human.
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If you can’t relate to rage, maybe your suppressed anger shows up in other ways such as anxiety or depression. Perhaps it’s crippling perfectionism. Your marriage has fizzled out and you're contemplating things you’re ashamed of. You’re drinking too much. You have chronic pain and health problems. You’re constantly burnout and this stressful way of life has become your new normal. As is often the case with anger, you don’t know it’s there yet. But you do know you’re struggling. Or maybe you’re not ready to face your anger and you’re afraid. Either way, I hope my blog post gives you hope that this is not the way things have to be.
Need help dealing with rage or with any of these concepts above? Get in touch to request a therapy appointment.
*When the Body Says No: Exploring the Stress-Disease Connection" by Dr. Gabor Maté
*Megan MacCutcheon: www.meganmaccutcheon.com
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