Why Do I Feel So Angry?
Do you feel a simmering rage at the world that’s becoming impossible to ignore? When you feel knocked down at work, by the political climate, and at home, burnout becomes inevitable. For many women, burnout becomes rage, leading Google searches for “Female Rage” to hover between 1,000-10,000 searches per month (according to Google Analytics). What started as a simmering frustration has become an all-consuming anger, causing conflict in yourself and your relationships. You find yourself lashing out at your kids and partner and almost immediately feeling guilty and ashamed of your behavior. You want to have successful, loving relationships, but you feel so mad.
And the thing that often gets left unsaid? Sometimes the rage feels powerful. It feels good to say exactly what you wanted to your asshole boss. But afterwards? You’re worried about the repercussions. You like the powerful feeling, but you don’t like being mean. You wish you could take your words back and learn to rein yourself in sometimes.
Your rage isn’t a flaw; it’s a natural response to your reality. You aren’t failing, you’re reacting to a situation that has felt harmful for a long time.
Is It Burnout or Female Rage?
Burnout in Nurses and Physicians
Pardon me while I present some of the research on burnout in nurses and physicians. I focus here both because it’s a group I specialize in treating and because the prevalence of burnout in healthcare professionals, and female nurses, physicians, and residents in particular, sparked a lot of the research (Maslach & Leiter, 2016; Norvell, Unruh, Norvell, & Templeton). Caregivers, healthcare professionals, social workers, and other caregiving professionals face high levels of burnout due to their roles taking on the burdens of others. Caring for others requires putting aside your own human needs to support others for the majority of your day. This leaves caregivers and health and mental health professionals at a higher risk for burnout and its cousin, compassion fatigue.
In May 2019, the World Health Organization added burnout to its International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11), defining burnout as “a syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed. It is characterized by three dimensions: Feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion; Increased mental distance from one’s job, or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one’s job; and reduced professional efficacy.”
Burnout vs Rage
While the WHO definition does not list “rage” in its list of symptoms, burnout researchers identify “irritability” as a burnout presentation (Maslach & Leiter, 2016). Which brings us to the idea of “women’s anger” and “female rage.”
Research suggests that women’s anger is usually not a sudden shift into rage, but builds over time due to ongoing harms, injustices, disrespect, and inequality in their relationships and work life that leads them to feel helpless, powerless, or have “outbursts” (Thomas, Smucker, & Droppleman, 1998). There may be gendered presentations of burnout, leading to some of the research suggesting that women are more likely to exhibit symptoms of burnout than men (Norvell et al., 2023; Dyrbye, Brushaber, & West, 2024). Rationale for doctors who are women and/or people of minoritized cultures and sexualities experiencing higher rates of burnout include discrimination, family leave, lactation, and childcare policies, unequal treatment by staff and patients, and burdens placed on them outside of work (Chesak et al, 2020; Dyrbe et al., 2024).
Who wouldn’t feel overwhelmed and even rageful about that?
What to do about my female rage?
Whether you’re raging at the system at work, the political climate and the systems it creates, or your family system, therapy can help. One of my therapy catchphrases is “It’s all information.” Your rage is your nervous system’s way of telling you something. That feeling in the pit of your stomach that fills you with an overwhelming energy that gets channeled into impulsive “outbursts”? Yeah, that’s some important information right there.
The Goal of Therapy For Burnout
When you’re deep in rage, it’s natural to want to lash out at the next offender, no matter how small the offense.
The goal of this therapy isn’t to get rid of your spark, but to find internal grace to channel it in a way that aligns with your values and identities. You first need to learn to recognize rage and respond to the situation with intention. Then, we can move towards the deeper healing to address the memories, internalized beliefs, and shame that contribute to the rage.
DBT For Feminine Rage
Dialectical Behavioral Therapy offers tools to recognize and respond differently to your internal states. When you build the capacity to hold two emotions, sensations, or truths about ourselves and the world at once, your window of tolerance expands. Suddenly, the distress you feel at the end of your workday becomes a little less severe because you can hold the truth that “today sucked” with the truth that “I’m a good person.” Having a hard day or losing a patient no longer means that YOU can’t handle it or that you are failing. Suddenly, the shame lifts a little bit and having a hard day no longer means that you come home and yell at your kids. You can have a hard day and rather than reaching for the wine, you’re able to take a deep, centering breath and sit on the floor to play with your kids.
EMDR For Therapist, Physician, and Nurse Burnout & Compassion Fatigue
DBT is a great modality to integrate early on in therapy. There is expansive work we do with DBT and many professionals choose to end therapy once they find more ease in their days.
For others, the need for deeper healing becomes clear. While you can usually hold the truth that “I can make mistakes and still be good,” you really struggle to believe that. While there’s been some more expansion to see yourself positively and you no longer respond angrily every time your partner leaves dishes in the sink, other times you truly believe that it means they don’t love you enough.
EMDR targets the early memory system at the root of your current attachment to others. If as a kid, you felt you only received love when you performed the role of the “golden child,” then it feels intolerable in your whole system to mess up. With EMDR, you can move from holding yourself to unrelenting standards to finding self-compassion, recognizing your intrinsic worth, and allowing yourself a little more flexibility.
Beating Burnout Rage
In 2024, I was rageful. I had two young kids (4 & 2) and felt trapped in a job that was no longer serving me. My company was changing our management structure and reorganizing the clinical teams in ways that did not make sense to me. I worried that these changes would ultimately harm my team of therapists and the people we served. The energy I spent venting to my peers and stewing in anger lead me to come home depleted. I channeled my rage into writing a letter to our executive management and most of the managers in my department signed it in support. Naturally, the outcome was more of the status quo. Even still, channeling my energy into building a coalition of managers was meaningful and helped me release my rage without simply lashing out.
My experience sparked me to dedicate my private practice to providing therapy to burned out nurses, physicians, therapists, and social workers. I’ve always seen therapists and nurses in my practice and I realized that they are some of my favorite clients. Providing therapy to community healthcare workers ultimately gives back to the communities I served as a social worker. I’m a huge believer in the trickle down effect and know from my own personal experience that my work is better when I feel good. For me, that means taking care of my mental health and doing work that energizes me. For you, it might be something else – and that’s what I love exploring with rageful, driven women.
What gives your life meaning? Let’s channel your energy there.