Menopause Rage: How to Cope When the Anger Feels Too Big

He’s chewing. That’s all he’s doing. Just chewing, across the table, and you want to throw your plate at the wall.

Later, alone in the bathroom, you look at your face in the mirror and don’t recognise the woman who just snapped. You used to be the patient one. The one who kept everybody calm.

If you’ve typed “why am I so angry in menopause” into your phone at one in the morning, wide awake and too hot, we want to say something first. You’re not turning into a bad person. Something is changing in your body. And something else may be coming up too, something that has been waiting a long time for its turn.

Why am I so angry in menopause?

Start with the body, because it’s real. We’re not doctors, and this part belongs with yours. But here is what the NHS says.

Perimenopause and menopause are different for everyone. Among the symptoms, the NHS lists mood swings, low mood or depression. It also says that not being able to sleep, or stay asleep, can make you feel irritable, stressed and anxious, and that sleep problems may be worse with night sweats. (NHS: Symptoms of menopause and perimenopause)

So if you’re angry, tired and up at three with a racing heart, there are reasons, and your doctor can talk you through your options. It’s worth telling them about the anger, not only the hot flushes.

What we can speak to is the feeling itself. What it is, where it sits, and what to do with it when it’s filling the kitchen.

Menopause anger and the years of swallowing it

Here is a question to sit with, not a diagnosis. What if some of this anger isn’t new?

Most of us were raised to be the easy one. The part of our book about anger opens right there: “Most of us were taught that anger is bad, ugly, unspiritual, dangerous. So we smile over it. We swallow it.”

Think of how many times you smiled over it. At work, at the in-laws, with the kids, with him. Thirty years of “it’s fine.” That anger didn’t vanish. Feelings we don’t feel wait in the body, and every one of them is still there, waiting for a track.

Maybe something in this time of life makes the lid harder to hold down. Maybe you’re simply too tired to keep smiling over it. Either way, what comes out over the chewing may be far older than the chewing.

That isn’t bad news. It means the rage isn’t a new monster in you. It’s a part of you that was never allowed in the room. Violeta puts it like this: “There’s as much anger in you as there is divinity.”

And something on the other side often surprises people. “People who make peace with their anger often become calmer, not angrier. And they stop being walked over.”

Perimenopause rage: when it comes out of nowhere

One of the hardest things about perimenopause rage is how fast it arrives. One second you’re fine. The next, your face is burning and your hands are shaking.

The NHS describes hot flushes as the face, neck and chest suddenly feeling very hot or cold. Anger can feel a lot like that from the inside. Heat rising up the neck. A flush in the cheeks. A pounding heart.

When a hot flush and a wave of anger arrive at the same time, you don’t need to work out which is which. You don’t need to name it at all. Naming pulls you back into your head, into “is it hormones or is it me?” Heat is heat. You can meet it the same way.

And “out of nowhere” is how it feels, but feelings rarely come from nowhere. If the box is already full, one small thing is enough. We wrote more about that in why do I get so angry over small things.

How to cope with menopause rage in the moment

The rule is short. Feeling it is allowed. Throwing it at someone is not.

That doesn’t mean swallowing it again. You’ve done that for decades. It means a third way. Our book says: “You can feel the urge to slam the door with your whole body, and not slam the door.”

In practice, that might mean leaving the room. Not storming out, just going. Any room with a door will do. Closing a door gives the anger somewhere to be that isn’t another person.

And one more thing, for the big moments. When the heat is high, it can feel urgent to change everything at once: the job, the marriage, the house. Some of those changes may be right. But make them from calm, not from the middle of the heat. “First the feeling, then the decision.”

If the heat is in your face right now, go somewhere you can close a door. Sit on the stairs or the floor if that’s where you land.

Practice5 min

Hello, anger

When anger rises, sit or lie down.
Say inside: “Hello, anger. I allow myself to be angry.”
Then watch it in your body, the heat, the trembling, the pressure, without pouring it onto any person.

What you might notice: some women find tears underneath the heat, or a deep tiredness. Some feel the heat slowly spread out and cool. And some days it’s just hot the whole time. That’s allowed too. You can stop whenever you need to.

Our book has a chapter on fear, anger and sadness, and its part on anger starts where this page does: with the anger we were taught to swallow, and how the two of us learned the hard way that it isn’t evil.

What to do this week

Tell your doctor about the anger. Not only the hot flushes or the sleep. Mood belongs on the list.
Tell the people you live with, kindly. Something like: “If I go quiet and leave the room, I’m not angry at you. I’m dealing with it.” It helps them, and it gives you permission to go.
Find one thing you swallowed today. Lie down for five minutes, eyes covered, palms down, and let it be in your body instead of your head.
Make no big decisions in the heat. Write the thought down if you must. Look at it again on a calm day.

For more on the anger itself and where it sits, read how to release anger stored in the body. If the broken nights have left you running on empty, emotional exhaustion may help. Other changes in the body that bring feelings with them, from hair loss to brain fog, have their own pages in Body, and the method behind all of this is in The Feeling Session.

Tomorrow he may be chewing across the table again, and the heat may climb your neck before you can think. This time you might put your fork down, feel the burn in your face for a few breaths, and keep all of it in your own body, where nobody gets hit.