Your anger isn't the problem

What if your rage is trying to protect you?

When I set out to write this newsletter, I said it was to reconnect with my creativity. That was part of the reason. Beneath that intention was something deeper. More than anything, I had an insatiable need to understand myself. Writing became a way to gather the scattered pieces of my story and start making sense of them.

Each week, I find myself reaching into the past, tracing the threads that continue to tug at me. Over time, I’ve come to realise this isn’t just a creative practice. It’s a way to bring curiosity to the parts of me that still feel unfinished, and to honour the ones that have grown.

The more I wrote, the more I began to notice the same patterns. One of them was people-pleasing. I used to see people-pleasing as a sign of being considerate and easy to like. In reality, it was a survival strategy.

A wave of sadness, shame, and guilt washes over me when I think about all the times I couldn’t say no, when I swallowed my opinions and needs to keep the peace, and how deeply my sense of safety, comfort, and belonging relied on the approval of others.

When I write about a specific time in my life, the memories flicker through my mind like a movie montage. Some return vividly. I can still feel my heart race and my voice tremble as I worked up the courage to speak to my now-best friend in class. I remember how every sound, every face, every detail disappeared when I locked eyes with my husband as I walked down the aisle.

Others arrive with more intensity. Reckoning with people-pleasing wasn’t gentle or nostalgic. It slammed into me with the full force of everything I had been avoiding.

There’s a moment in every movie when the protagonist sees their choices playing out in slow motion. In mine, I was crumbling under the weight of chronic self-abandonment. My mind was consumed by other people’s opinions of what I should do, who I should be, and how I should live. The noise was deafening.

I see myself, scene after scene, spending every waking hour trying to appear capable, composed, and strong. I wanted to look like someone who could carry it all, even when life was slowly closing in on me. But after one particularly infuriating phone call, something snapped.

Anger erupted, sharp and exaggerated, like a Mentos dropped into a bottle of Diet Coke. Heat surged beneath my skin as I tried to contain what had been waiting years to be released. I wanted to scream and rip the moment apart with my bare hands.

It wasn’t just what was said. It was the crushing sense of depletion from running on empty, chasing approval, and holding everything together.

I had given so much of myself away. And for what?

Anger had always come with a sinking sense that I had lost control. For someone who had built her life around being agreeable and easy to like, that feeling was terrifying. But looking back, I can see now that my anger wasn’t a failure. It was a red flare telling me that I had crossed too far over my limits.

Without losing control, I’m not sure I would have had the courage to stop. That rupture gave me more clarity than politeness and composure ever could. In that moment, I saw it clearly. I could become the version of me everyone expected. I could silence my sensitivity, dull my intuition, and cut off the parts of me I once loved, and it still wouldn’t be enough.

No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t manage other people’s behaviour the way I believed people-pleasing allowed me to. I could never earn love or safety by making myself smaller. Once I saw that truth, something in me refused to keep trying.

Through writing, I’ve started to unpack who I am when I’m not performing, pleasing, or trying to be what others need me to be. I get to sit with the parts of me I once abandoned, hear their stories, and help them reframe how they fit.

Some memories still arrive with a sting and intensity. Others return like old friends. But with each piece I write, I feel the once-scattered parts of me beginning to come together, slowly integrating into something whole.

Now and then, as I trace a moment from my past, I get this electric, unmistakable feeling. It’s like I’m the protagonist in the final scene of a movie, when she knows, deep in her bones, that everything is going to be okay.

Thank you for reading. It truly means the world to me! 💌