the anatomy of anger

on suppressed rage, strategic silence, and the cost of staying composed

i am not a violent dog. i do not bite.

i do not bark at strangers or lunge at threats. i do not bare my teeth when i’m wronged. i do not spit venom or curse at the people who deserve it. i do not scream.

i do not enjoy confrontation. not because i am afraid, but because it rarely leads to resolution. it leaves people louder, messier, more raw. i prefer precision. i believe fury should be filtered through reason. that reaction should be replaced with restraint. calm is its own kind of weapon. it disarms without ever lifting a blade.

but that does not mean i am not angry.

my anger lives in quieter places. it settles behind my ribs, coils beneath my tongue, buzzes in the back of my throat. it is not loud, but it is constant. it simmers beneath my skin like a low-grade fever. quiet as static, humming like an engine left running. not enough to collapse me, but enough to burn. enough to remind me that something is wrong.

some days, i am angry at life itself. at the cruelty of randomness. at the chaos of illness blooming where certainty once lived. at the almost-marriage that crumbled. at the father who chose someone else. at the instability that never ends. at my own dependence. at how far away freedom feels.

i’m angry because life feels like a game where i keep rolling the wrong numbers. because so much of my life is in waiting, in pause, in asking for what should have been mine to decide.

this anger doesn’t erupt. it waits. it stretches like a shadow at sunset, growing longer without ever raising its voice. when people speak of anger, they think of fire. but mine is more like ice. it crystallizes around memory. it sharpens thought. i don’t throw things. but i remember. and i rewire.

i won’t raise my voice. i’ll use silence like a blade; not to injure, but to cut clean and exact. i know better than to bring words to a battlefield. i’ll bring strategy. i’ll outthink you. i’ll disarm the moment before it begins. and when you lose, it won’t be because i struck first. it’ll be because i was already ten steps ahead.

i am quiet, but not passive. calm, but not blind. when someone hurts me, i do not lash out. i listen. i notice what they reveal when they think no one is watching. i pay attention to what trembles beneath their certainty. i trace the places where the story doesn’t hold. i do not need to strike. i need to understand. and when i do, i carry that knowledge like water. still, and deep, and mine.

i was not born angry. i was made this way. by years of swallowing what should have been screamed. by learning that being soft made me easy to dismiss. by watching the loudest people win and the kindest people bleed. so now, i learn. i do not raise my voice. i raise my standards.

psychology calls this repression. the defence mechanism of keeping distressing emotions and thoughts outside of conscious awareness. but repression is not the absence of feeling. it is redirection. and in the brain, that redirection is managed by the prefrontal cortex. the part responsible for logic, planning, and self-control, which works to suppress the amygdala’s flare-ups.

the amygdala is small, but it’s powerful. it’s the part of the brain that detects danger. it doesn’t care about nuance or logic or politeness. it only cares about survival. it’s the reason your heart races when someone yells, the reason your stomach drops before bad news. it controls fear, aggression, and emotional memory. it reacts first, fast, and often without context. it remembers everything that hurt.

but the prefrontal cortex is slower. it’s the part that says, wait. it filters. it keeps you from shouting in meetings or crying in public. it chooses strategy over explosion. so when emotion floods the brain, and cortisol, the stress hormone, spikes, the prefrontal cortex damns the river. it holds back the scream. but the emotion is still there. it doesn’t disappear. it distills.

my body aches to erupt. my mind wants to win.

i don’t explode. i calculate. i speak slowly. i act deliberately. i don’t just get even. i get distance. i study what will make me feel less powerless. their rules were never mine to keep. so i make my own.

i often think about lucy gray baird. how she made her softness a stage, her sorrow a shield. how she vanished not as escape but as strategy. not a shout but a song. not a breakdown but a blueprint. and beth harmon, quiet as snowfall, all calculation and poise. she studies, absorbs, endures. every slight becomes structure. every bruise, a pattern she memorises and rewrites.

and amy dunne. terrifying in her brilliance. she becomes what they want, only to unravel them with it. she turns pain into performance so precise it cuts on contact. i don’t want to be them, but i understand them. the choreography of control. the elegance of restraint. the power in being underestimated until it matters. they do not yell. they win. and maybe that’s why they stay with me. because i’ve always done the same.

there is neuroscience behind this too. mirror neurons, the cells in our brain that allow us to feel what others feel, are responsible for our empathy. it’s why we flinch when someone else gets hurt. why we cry during films. why we instinctively know when someone is suffering even when they say they’re fine. my brain mirrors their pain, and my anger is diluted in it.

i hate how effortlessly i understand people. how easily i pick up on tone, on tension, on the subtle shifts in body language. i hate how empathy clouds my fury.

it’s a curse, being able to read the map of someone else’s mind. because even when someone harms me, i can see the reasons. the wound behind their words. the insecurity in their cruelty. the pattern repeating. and once i see the wound, my fury starts to soften. it turns into disappointment. into grief. into cold comprehension.

because of that, i soften. and then i’m angry again. not just at them, but at myself for the softening.

i wish i didn’t make space for their reasons. i wish i didn’t care whether i was the bigger person. but i know the cost of recklessness. i’ve seen what chaos does to a woman. how quickly she’s labelled difficult, unstable, angry for all the wrong reasons. how fast the room turns against her once her voice rises. it makes people stop listening. it makes them forget what was done to her, and remember only the way she broke.

sometimes i am angry at myself. for not speaking up. for freezing when i should fight. for making sense of things that hurt me. but even this self-directed anger is data. it shows me where i need more boundaries. it tells me what parts of me are aching for protection. anger, after all, is a signal. not always a fire to be put out. sometimes a flare. a precise and necessary call to action.

biology shows that the body, when suppressing anger, does not forget. it reroutes the fury inward, until the nervous system is caught in a loop of emergency. cortisol and adrenaline flood the bloodstream, again and again, long after the threat is gone. over time, this chronic alertness becomes illness.

the gut, rich with neurons and often called the second brain, tightens. digestion falters. inflammation rises. the immune system, confused and overworked, begins to misfire. it attacks the body it’s meant to protect.

autoimmune disorders bloom where unspoken words fester. migraines flare. the heart races. muscles lock into tension. this is not metaphor. this is biology. a scream withheld becomes jaw pain. an unshed rage becomes fatigue. the body carries what the mouth will not say.

these emotions are not just in my head. they live in the knots beneath my shoulder blades, in the clench of my jaw, in the fatigue that settles into my limbs like damp weather. unspoken fury becomes cellular. it nests in the gut, disrupts the immune system, flares across the skin. the body becomes a map of what was never said.

the psychologist carl jung once said, what you resist, persists. and i feel that. in my spine. in my stomach. in the way my fingers curl into fists while i sleep. in the tightness that lingers even on calm days. in the way i flinch at nothing. the body remembers what the mind tries to bury. and sometimes, healing begins not with release, but with recognition. with finally looking at what’s been quietly holding on.

i am learning to befriend my anger. to stop treating it as an enemy and start listening to what it’s trying to tell me. because anger, when stripped of chaos, is clarity. it says: this hurt. this mattered. this crossed a line. and i am learning to listen without flinching. to stop apologising for the fire in my chest. to stop calling it drama or overreaction. to stop confusing silence with strength.

and maybe it is revenge i want. not in the way they expect. not loud or messy. but the quiet kind. the kind that lives in thriving, in withholding access, in not needing them anymore. not to hurt them, but to rebalance something inside me. not to punish, but to reclaim.

reclamation looks like never explaining myself again. like walking away mid-sentence. like no longer rehearsing conversations that should have gone differently. like not needing them to understand.

sometimes i wonder who i would have become if i hadn’t been asked to hold so much. if softness had been safe. if love had been steady. if silence hadn’t been the only thing that kept me protected. i think about the version of me that never had to become careful just to feel safe. the one who laughed louder, cried easier, moved through the world without flinching.

i don’t know if she still lives in me. but some nights, i trace her outline. and i mourn her. not because she was better. but because she was never given the chance to become. i didn’t grow teeth. i just learned to be quiet in the right places. to watch more than i speak. to outgrow what tried to break me without making a sound.

maybe one day, i will vanish from the version of me they tried to define. maybe i’ll become so distant from their reach that even their memory forgets my name. and maybe that vanishing, quiet and calculated and complete, will be the most powerful thing i’ve ever done.

not out of bitterness, but out of strategy. not for revenge, but for healing. because some disappearances are not escapes. they are evolutions. and mine will be a quiet reclaiming, planned like a blueprint, soft as a goodbye, sharp as a beginning.

i am not a violent dog. i do not bite. i am not rabid. i am not irrational. but i am angry. and i am allowed to be. not because it is pleasant, not because it is easy. but because it is human. because it is honest. because some days, rage is the only evidence i have that i deserved better.