What if you’re not overwhelmed… What if you’re actually angry?

Many of women I work with arrive saying they feel overwhelmed, exhausted, stretched too thin, or like they are losing patience with everyone around them. They rarely arrive saying they feel angry.

But the uncomfortable truth is that most of them are.

Not dramatic movie anger. Not shouting. Not slamming doors. A quieter anger. One that has been trained out of them for years. One that shows up as tiredness, people pleasing, self doubt, perfectionism, resentment, overthinking and a constant sense that they must hold it all together.

And it makes perfect sense. Because women are taught from childhood that anger is unfeminine, unattractive, unhelpful, and likely to make other people uncomfortable. We learn to swallow it, to minimise what we’re feeling and put on a smile. But it never goes away, it just hides.

Below, we are going to explore what this hidden anger looks like, why so many capable women mistake it for other emotions, and why reconnecting with it can be one of the most liberating things you ever do.

Signs you might be angrier than you realise

Before you ever use the word angry, your body will have been trying to tell you something is off.

Suppressed anger has a way of slipping into the everyday moments of your life, not through shouting or confrontation, but through the quiet ways you cope, absorb, tolerate and keep going. These signs are subtle, but they speak loudly once you learn how to hear them.

You feel invisible in your own life

You never want to make a fuss, yet there is a quiet frustration that no one seems to notice how much you do, how much you hold, or how often you are the one smoothing over problems so everyone else can relax. It feels like you are present for everyone, but no one is properly present for you.

You keep saying yes even when your whole body is begging you to say no

You agree because it is easier than dealing with the discomfort of letting someone down, yet later you lie awake annoyed with yourself for ignoring your needs and annoyed with them because they never seem to consider the impact on you. It becomes a cycle you did not choose, but you feel trapped in anyway.

You fantasise about escaping your life for a bit

Not because you dislike your life, but because the version of you who carries everything never gets a moment of rest. You find yourself imagining a quiet cottage, a hotel room, a train to somewhere else, simply so you can breathe without anyone needing anything from you.

You swallow your feelings to keep the peace

You tell yourself you are being reasonable and avoiding drama, yet inside you feel that familiar mix of resentment and disappointment that grows each time you silence yourself. Others assume you are fine because you do not speak up, and the resentment deepens because they never check.

These can be signals that something in your life is crossing your boundaries, draining your energy or leaving you emotionally unattended. And these signals often point to something women are rarely encouraged to recognise.

The anger you never learnt to recognise

Most women were never taught how to recognise anger in themselves. From an early age, girls learn that having strong feelings can lead to judgement, rejection or being labelled difficult, unpredictable or emotional. You are encouraged to be pleasant, flexible, grateful, accommodating and endlessly patient, even when something feels deeply unfair. Over time, you learn to smooth the edges of your true emotions so you do not upset or inconvenience anyone.

The trouble is that anger does not disappear simply because you learnt to contain it. Instead, it shifts shape. It becomes exhaustion, resentment, irritation, guilt or that restless urge to run away for a bit. It becomes perfectionism, because being perfect feels safer than being honest. It becomes overthinking, because you no longer feel able to speak the truth, so your mind tries to untangle what your voice has been trained not to say.

Jennifer Cox’s work speaks directly to this. Women are angry far more often than they realise, not because they are volatile, but because they have been conditioned to disconnect from the part of themselves that knows when something is unfair, disrespectful or too heavy to keep carrying. The problem is not the anger itself. The problem is that no one ever showed you how to recognise it or what to do with it.

And when you cannot name your anger, it becomes almost impossible to name your needs. Which is why so many high functioning women end up stuck in overwhelm, convinced they are stressed or too sensitive, when in reality their anger has been trying to speak for years.

What if anger is not the problem but the guide?

Anger is not your enemy. It is information. When you stop treating it as shameful, dangerous, or ‘bad’ and start seeing it as a messenger, everything begins to shift.

Anger points to your boundaries, to the moments where you have said yes when you wanted to say no, where you have tolerated more than you should, or where your needs have been ignored or minimised. It highlights what feels unfair, what drains you, and what parts of yourself you have been taught to abandon to keep the peace.

For many women, recognising their anger is the first step in reconnecting with themselves. It is the moment they remember what matters to them, what feels heavy and what feels joyful. It teaches them to distinguish between what they have to do and what they are choosing to do. Learning to listen to your anger is learning to listen to your own voice in a world that has spent decades trying to silence it.

When women start to reclaim their anger, it does not make them volatile or difficult. It makes them rooted, steady, and alive. They stop apologising for needing space. They stop carrying the emotional load of everyone else. They stop bending over backwards to keep life smooth for other people while they crumble inside. They start making choices that honour their wellbeing, their values, and their sense of self.

Working with your anger in therapy is not about becoming explosive or confrontational. It is about creating a safe space to explore what you have been taught to suppress, to untangle the complex feelings hidden beneath overwhelm, perfectionism, and self doubt. Therapy helps you recognise patterns, understand where your boundaries have been crossed, and practise responding rather than reacting to situations that would normally drain you.

By exploring anger rather than ignoring it, you learn to reclaim your energy, assert your needs without guilt, and trust your own voice. You start to make space for yourself in your life instead of always making space for everyone else. And slowly, you realise that acknowledging your anger is not selfish; it’s a radical act of self-respect.

Ready to see what’s really underneath the overwhelm?

If reading this resonates with you, you do not have to navigate it alone. I help high functioning women who feel calm on the outside but stretched thin on the inside reconnect with their needs, their voice, and their power. Together, we can explore what your anger is trying to tell you, reclaim the energy you’ve been giving away, and create space for clarity, rest, and self-trust.

Book a free no obligation discovery call to see if we are a good fit and start uncovering what’s really going on beneath the surface.