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Anger in Midlife: Why Small Things Feel So Big
Updated: 6 days ago
By Sarah Gilbertson, Therapeutic Coach and BASI ski instructor
I get angry. Sometimes really angry. The sort that arrives with astonishing speed when five seconds earlier I was perfectly happy, chatting away and enjoying myself.
Someone trod on my skis in a lift queue last winter. They're pink Black Crows, a few years old, not cheap, and I'm extremely fond of them. I was furious before I'd managed a glare through my polarised goggles.
Sometimes anger in midlife is about exactly what just happened. Often it's about what you were already carrying when it happened: bad sleep, back pain, a difficult conversation that morning, menopause, a long day on the mountain. Someone could do exactly the same thing the next day and I'd shrug it off.
I'm a therapeutic coach who teaches nervous system regulation, which you'd think would make me good at staying calm.
Of course the person standing on my skis hasn't done it deliberately. I've done exactly the same thing myself and apologised in as many languages as I can think of. At that particular moment I'm not thinking about any of that. I'm reacting.
Why anger in midlife can feel so sudden
We judge our reactions by what has just happened, without counting what we brought into the moment with us.
Perhaps I've slept badly, my back hurts, or I'm tired after a long day on the mountain. Maybe something difficult is going on at home. Menopause has brought its own moments of unexpected irritability, though not every instance of anger in midlife is hormonal.
I use the word capacity for the resources you have available to meet the demands of a day. Those resources aren't fixed, and neither are the demands.
Think about how differently you'd answer an unexpected request when you're rested with a clear day ahead, compared with when you're exhausted, hungry, running late and already dealing with three other problems. In the first you might happily agree. In the second you're irritated before they've finished asking.
It's still you. The request hasn't changed.
Your nervous system is responding all the time to what's happening inside you and around you. You need to be able to mobilise energy when something needs your attention, meet it, and recover once it's passed. Being regulated doesn't mean staying relaxed.
Research into emotion regulation looks at how we adapt our responses to different situations rather than assuming one approach always works.
A strong emotion isn't automatically a problem. You can feel anger intensely without losing control of what you do. The difficulty is when you're repeatedly overwhelmed, when your reactions cause problems, or when you can't recover afterwards.
First we were told to be good. Now we're told to be calm
A recent BBC article, 'I rage and I don't care': Why women are reclaiming their anger, asked whether women are becoming angrier or simply more willing to acknowledge feelings they've been expected to suppress.
For generations, women have been encouraged to be pleasant, accommodating and considerate. Don't make a fuss. Don't be difficult. Don't be too emotional.
Men face their own expectations about which emotions they're allowed to express, particularly around vulnerability, so this isn't exclusively female territory. But I recognise that pressure to be good, to be reasonable and to put things into perspective.
Now there's a whole wellness industry offering us ways to regulate our emotions, 'reset' our nervous systems and return to calm.
The irony isn't lost on me. We've spent years being told not to express certain feelings. Are we now being encouraged to regulate them out of existence instead?
It's an uncomfortable question for someone who teaches nervous system regulation. I use breathing exercises myself and teach techniques that help people when they're overwhelmed. I've seen them work.
I just don't want anyone coming away from my work believing that feeling angry, anxious or upset means they've somehow failed.
I know all this. I still lose my temper
Part of my training was learning to steady myself so I can be fully present for someone else.
Someone might arrive at a session carrying grief, anger, anxiety or something they've never felt able to say aloud. My job is to listen properly and stay engaged while noticing my own reactions, without getting so caught up in their experience that I lose perspective.
That doesn't mean switching off my emotions. I need outlets too, and the awareness to notice when my own feelings might influence how I respond.
Outside a coaching session I manage that distinction a good deal less well. Sometimes I snap. Occasionally I say something sharper than I intended. Then comes the guilt, then the urge to make that uncomfortable feeling disappear as quickly as possible, and before long I'm annoyed with myself for being angry in the first place.
It's quite a lot of emotional administration for one incident in a ski lift queue.
I can apologise for behaving unfairly without deciding that the anger itself was wrong.
This is one reason I'm interested in helping women notice the physical side of emotion: tension in the jaw, a change in breathing, butterflies in the stomach. Getting familiar with those helps you understand what you're feeling without having to change it.
What if the problem isn't how you're feeling?
Making calm the goal turns every uncomfortable feeling into something we need to fix.
If you're furious because someone repeatedly ignores your boundaries, is the answer really to become better at calming yourself? If you're exhausted because you're carrying far too much, a breathing exercise might help you through a difficult afternoon, but it won't take anything off your plate.
This is where regulatory flexibility comes in. In emotion regulation research, it's the idea that there isn't one correct way to respond to every difficult feeling. What helps depends on the circumstances, on what you can influence, and on what the situation actually requires.
Sometimes that means slowing your breathing or taking a moment before you speak. Sometimes it means expressing what you're feeling: a good cry, swearing, talking it through with someone you trust, writing down what you're furious about, or telling someone plainly that they've crossed a line.
Processing an emotion means letting yourself feel it, making sense of it and finding a safe way to express or respond to it. That might help the feeling ease, or it might help you recognise something in your life that needs attention.
Regulation isn't the same as relaxation. We don't have to be calm to make a good decision, and feeling angry doesn't mean we've lost control. It doesn't mean we're right about what's happened either, or that we need to act on it.
What interests me about nervous system literacy is how your physical state, your emotions and your circumstances interact, and how that shapes what you think and do. It gives you another way to make sense of your reactions instead of judging yourself for having them.
Someone standing on my skis is hardly a great injustice. Most days I can recognise it's an accident and get on with enjoying my skiing. But on a day when I'm tired, my back hurts or I've already had more than enough to deal with, that same small incident can feel enormous.
And if someone stands on my lovely pink Black Crows tomorrow, I can't promise I won't get cross. But I'd quite like whatever comes out of my mouth to be a choice.
Regulation, not just relaxation
Curious about what nervous system regulation looks like in practice?
Explore my free nervous system tools and discover how to work with what you're feeling, rather than simply trying to calm yourself down.
Further Reading
How to Calm Your Nervous System Quickly - Article
About Sarah
Sarah Gilbertson is a Therapeutic Coach, BASI ski instructor and nervous system educator.
She works with women at the meeting point of nervous system science, midlife physiology and movement, with a particular interest in what happens when confidence, recovery and the body begin to feel different in midlife.
Her approach, Nervous System Literacy, grew from her own experience of perimenopause, recovery and the years of pushing through that preceded both.
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