"There's a tipping point for women where the anger penny drops, and they think, WTF?!"

Women aren't just angry, they're downright bloody furious. So now seems like a good time to chat to a woman who knows why – and what we can do about it, Dr Jennifer Cox

Women’s rage. It’s been simmering for quite some time. When I wrote The Shift book, back in early 2020, I headed the chapter about anger in midlife, “Never pick a fight with a woman over 40, she is full of rage and sick of everyone’s shit.” My publisher had postcards made. I wish they’d done t-shirts too. The merch potential was huge and, in the last four years, has only gotten bigger.

So now seemed like a good time to talk to someone who knows a lot about women’s rage, where it’s coming from, why it’s exploding right now and what we can do about it, founder of the Women Are Mad method, forensic psychotherapist Dr Jennifer Cox. Jen trained at the Tavistock and now, at the age of 46, has an extensive practice specialising in treating women with undiagnosed anger. As part of this work, she developed the Women Are Mad approach, to help women who can't afford therapy to think below the surface, as she puts it, about where their rage might be coming from.

Give yourself time to get the anger out, give yourself moments to breathe and then come back into the room. Particularly for women in midlife. Often we're like, oh, it's not worth it. It IS worth it. You gotta get back in. This is what you fought for.

Jen is also co-host of the podcast,

Women Are Mad with Jen&Salima

, and has written a book called Women Are Angry, which is very much what it says on the tin. Her mission? To help us identify our rage and let it the hell out. Productively, of course.

Jen and I discussed the nature of female rage and why she thinks we're seeing such a groundswell of fury right now, when and why we learn to bitch, why it's easier to be a worried person than an angry one, and the moment the anger penny dropped for her.

(CW: there is passing reference to suicidal ideation and eating disorders.)

If you prefer to listen, this interview is also available as a podcast:

Sam: I'm going to throw you straight in at the deep end before we get talking about women's anger, because if we started there we could talk about it all day. So, I want to talk about you a bit first. Straight to your uncomfortable place!

Jen: Panicked eyes!

Your face, honestly. I want you to tell me a bit about little Jen, and your upbringing.

It's so funny, because the only place I ever really do this is with my own therapist. I don't think there's anyone else in my life. I mean, okay, so there's the besties, you know, there's Salima, and there's the Ride or Die Andy, who is also a therapist, plus a couple of others, they're the core. But mostly that sort of overview, the person that knows, from, you know, cradle to where I am now, it's not my family, it's my therapist.

So how long have you been in therapy?

Since I was 20, just before I left uni.

What made you go into therapy?

What family isn't very complicated? But I guess I was a young carer, so I was kind of, I would say, born into a therapist's role. I knew what to do. I know how to prioritize the other’s story, that's my comfortable place. And I love it, I can't get enough. But what that meant was I became resourceful under the surface. I went to a really quite bad high school in quite a deprived area, it went into special measures after I left. No-one had heard of Oxbridge there, it just wasn't a thing. Which also meant that I didn't realize that it wasn’t possible. So I just thought, well, I mean, James Herriot went there and I wanted to be a vet!

I remember doing the application at the dining room table, my dad looking over my shoulder, going, people like us, don't go there. And, I mean, he was right. They didn't. There weren’t many people like me when I was there. 1996 I went. I took myself to Kings College because I'd read that they accepted kids from state schools, or were trying to up their state school quotient. But the reality wasn't that at all. Compared to other colleges there was definitely a significant handful of us. We formed a little clump very early on. What was quite weird was that I didn't really know what a private school was. In the town where I grew up, there weren't private schools. It just was not a thing.

Dr Jennifer Cox

I was really obsessed with communication, connection. I can't tell you at what point the vet dream disappeared. But it was to do with keeping everyone happy, that was why I made that decision. Ultimately, when I got there, I quickly realized this wasn't making me happy. I'm not a linguist, it's not my bag. And I started to borrow papers from other subjects. Quickly, psychology started filling up my roster, and I was taught by the amazing psychoanalyst, Juliet Mitchell, who is the doyenne of analysis, and she sort of took me under her wing a bit. And that was the other thing about the little spoilt groups that you were taught in. It was so cosseted. And that's the thing, I can pretend to be not of privilege, but as soon as you go there, you're a privileged person, so fuck off. From then on, I just decided, right, this is what I want to do, this is who I want to be.

Very quickly on graduating, I started accruing more and more experience, training more. At that point, it was very easy to get work. This is quite scary. As a young woman with no qualifications, really, in very sharp edge services. I went into forensic work, like straight out of the – what's the expression? – off the bat? Gate? Whatever that expression is, I was working in these places where I definitely shouldn't have been working. And I think that what that did was make me tough. I had to put up with a lot. I mean, it was quite astonishing, really, the stuff going on because I was working with paedophiles, murderers, proper violent offenders. I just felt weirdly, this is where I need to be. I'm doing good work, you know, this is where my skills are coming into play. And it was incredibly fulfilling.

I think there's a point for women, where the penny drops, and they go, what the fuck? And it is somewhere around coming out of that massively child-centric fug, when you've just been up to your eyes in proper toddler stuff. So you can breathe a bit, but that's when everything else hits and you realize, oh, oh, right. So I'm expected to carry on with that, plus do my job, plus look after, sorry, how many other people?

But then I started to have kids – I was quite young in London terms – and I had a couple of quite unsettling experiences. One of which was I was really heavily pregnant, and I was in this small room with an offender who was actually in prison for murdering a pregnant woman. I had to stop him from looking at something on the computer that he was not allowed to be looking at. And he turned on me. They didn't have any alarms anywhere in the building. Because, interestingly, it was run along psychodynamic principles, which is how I work now. So we had to rely on our wits and our instinct and essentially reading the projections and get out if we thought we were in danger. So it was all on us, and if we got it wrong, well, sorry, better luck next time! I was cornered and I couldn't move because I was so huge, and, fortunately, (and she'll never know quite how much of a close call this was) my co-worker, who was in the nursing station behind me, heard something that didn't sound quite right, and came bursting in. And that was enough to break it. But, it was horrible. And from then on, I just thought, yeah, I need to be a bit more sensible now.

I didn't leave straight away, because I did have a sort of moment of when I'd gone back to work after maternity leave, feeling like, God, I've left my child with another person to come and look after men who were abandoned when they were babies, or, you know, at various points after that, what am I doing? So I just thought I need to radically overhaul my approach, and rein everything in a bit. That’s when I started formalizing everything, and went to the Tavistock and started my training.

How old were you then?

Twenty nine, thirty. Something like that. And that was young. I must have a knack of shoving my foot in doors where I'm not meant to be. Because that is a repeated theme.

Where do you think that comes from? Do you remember the first time you did it?

The first time I can really remember, was the audacity of sending off that Oxbridge application form and everyone going, what are you doing that for? And I think the confidence that gave me that kind of anything is possible. You know, you just have to work your tits off. And Sam, I mean, I work fucking hard. I never stop working. I guess it's potentially not great for me, health-wise, but equally, I don't feel great when I'm not working. You know, a kind of 40-hour clinical week, plus doing the podcast, plus writing. I just feel at my best when I am absolutely stretched to the max. And I suppose my family has grown up used to that. But I did have a dilemma with small babies, because I was really signed up to the attachment approach. So the way I got around it was I just strapped them to me constantly and carried on with my life.

So what does your therapist say about your busy busy busy approach to life?

No one's ever tried to slow me down. Do you know, when they try and stop me is when they realize I'm doing the young carer bit, and it's for other people. I think when they think, this is for her and she's getting a massive dopamine hit out of this, it doesn't disturb them so much. It's when they think I'm clicking into something that answers a kind of childhood thing.

Where were you at when you started to get interested in women and anger?

I think I was very angry myself. I think there's a point for women – and I see it all over, and you'll have seen this – where the penny drops, and they go, what the fuck?

Yeah, totally.

And it is somewhere around coming out of that massively child-centric fug, when you've just been up to your eyes in proper toddler stuff. So you can breathe a bit, but that's when everything else hits and you realize, oh, oh, right. So I'm expected to carry on with that, plus do my job, plus look after, sorry, how many other people? I think it was for me that a sort of perfect storm, possibly hitting at around COVID, which, Sam, I have never been so furious. I actually woke myself up one night having slapped myself in the face because I was so angry. I was so angry. And it was something about the being hemmed in.

I had really strong views at the time about the lockdowns. I just could see people falling apart. I was even pre-zoom, that first lockdown, so we all went onto phone. So I was in a dark room wearing a horrible old fleece from literally, seven in the morning till, I don't know what time at night, back-to-back calls. I had people who were trying to jump out of a window. I had people with anorexia who were getting significantly iller. I had domestic abuse situations, where I was saying, hang up and call the police. It was kind of like hell. I couldn't quite believe what was happening. And obviously, I wasn't in the NHS anymore, and here I was having to send messages out to people's doctors and various other crisis services, and thinking, if I wasn't here, who would be holding this up. So there was definitely something about, oh yeah, just another woman propping up the system. And I suppose I'm very, very sensitized to that because of growing up in the family that I did, and seeing just how much free care was being provided by family members. And how much was left to families to sort out, and invariably, it’s women. The repercussions will last for lifetimes, because the kids... I mean, honestly, don't get me started on the childhood crisis, because we are shafting these kids, and in part that’s because we're shafting the mothers. We are still in a place where mums are pretty much primary carers. They're not looked after. How can we look after these, these poor ones coming up?

What I'm really starting to observe in women around me is this kind of second coming of energy, power, potential and capacity. And that's one heady mix, isn't it?

So I guess I was aggregating these feelings in myself. Sarah Everard, happened. I guess the frequency I was tuning into changed, and I was hearing the same things on repeat from the women in my practice. Then Roe v Wade happened, and I just thought, What the fuck is happening? And then I guess Andrew Tate popped up. You know? It’s like we get this tiny molecule of power… do we? I don't know if we even do.

That's what it is, isn't it? It feels like that to me. It feels like, we take a few steps forward, and the dinosaur roars and goes, Oh, my God, we need to deal with this. And all of a sudden, you know, abortion rights are in turmoil. Andrew Tate is indoctrinating young men. We've got Trump… I can't remember who I was talking to, but I was interviewing someone for The Shift podcast and we were talking about the witch trials, for some reason, and the person I was talking to said, Yeah, but look at what was going on in the world at that point; Queen Elizabeth I, we had very powerful women ruling Europe...

That’s amazing. What a great observation.

And I just hadn't thought of that. And she was like, so in rolls James the first or the sixth, depending on where you're living, and all of a sudden, all of the women who are not quite in the right box are being called witches and and living in a state of fear, at best.

And it's the women with power, I guess.

Kind of a weird power, but yeah, something that they don't men don't understand totally.

And they've got access to them. They couldn’t access Elizabeth I, but they can get to the weird old crone in the village who seems to wield something that, yeah, they don't have. Her they can duck or put on a stake. That's a brilliant observation. I like that.

Which kind of ties in with what you say in the book, and what a lot of women say about perimenopause and menopause, and the way women start to realize they're being treated, in midlife. Because there's something, I think, about menopausal women that men, society, patriarchy, blah, don't understand and can't control.

Well, do you know something, what I'm really starting to observe in patients and in women around me, actually, is this kind of second coming of energy, power, potential and capacity. And that's one heady mix, isn't it? And they can't stand it.

Yeah, they don't know what to do with it, because we can't – you write about all this – but we can't be reduced to our bodies anymore, because our bodies don't, tragically, fit the bill. And, you know, we don't got no eggs.

No eggs! But our minds keep growing. Men seem to shrivel and shrink. Maybe it's because they don't have to put in the effort. All this expansion we've done, we've grown so many limbs, metaphorically speaking, well, they don't shrivel up and disappear. We've still got them at our disposal. So what are we going to do next? And it is amazing seeing all these women in their late 40s, 50s, really, having this incredible second kind of awakening. And this time they're not shackled. This time they haven't got babies hanging off them and schools phoning them. They can go! And I think that is really potentially very frightening for men, for, you know, let's say their colleagues...

If we stop believing it's all over, and we start to see, well, okay, all these other obligations are gone, or they're not, because, of course, people have ailing parents and older children and all of those things, but you've maybe lost that kind of obligation to nurture. I mean, the number of women I speak to who are like, Okay, bring it on. What next? And then in the next breath, they'll say that, you know their partner or husband or whatever, is bit like, oh, well, we're gonna put our feet up now. And she's like, No, no, no. You might want to put your feet up, but I don't want to put my feet up, so you're fine. You carry on over there, putting your feet up, but I'm going off here.

It’s amazing seeing all these women in their late 40s, 50s, having this incredible second awakening. And this time they're not shackled. This time they haven't got babies hanging off them and schools phoning them. They can go! And I think that is really potentially very frightening for men

How are your anger levels now?

Writing the book was what I absolutely had to do. I didn't have a choice. It wrote itself. I mean, it was like, What the hell am I going to do with this stuff? Okay, here's my laptop. Off I go. And I think the process of churning it out and the catharsis of feeling it flowing from my fingers was just bliss in terms of, yeah, this simmering, and often not just simmering, but quite explosive rage in me had an outlet, and I think that's really where it went. Then, I kicked off the whole WAM movement, simultaneous to the book because I thought this book is for me right now. I didn't know what was going to happen with it. It wasn't a book. It was just me writing. And the urgency was so great. I just thought, I can't ethically be here with this knowledge and not sharing it, only able to help this many women a week. There's a world out there. There's people who can't afford therapy. What can I give them? So that's when I started doing the sort of online zoom sessions. And that went quite international.

It all happened within a year. And within that same year, Salima, who's a really old close friend, said, look, why don't we just do a podcast? Like, let's get this speeded up. Let's get this out there. And we did. And you must find the same thing actually; when you give women a proper platform to speak and say what they want, and you don't stop them, and you just sort of hand them the tools, why wouldn't they want to come on knowing that what they're saying will be helpful to so many others?

The timing is perfect, there's such a need. And that's what I found with The Shift podcast – and I apologise to anyone who has heard me say this about a bazillion times – it really was absolutely instantaneous. The podcast just hit. I wanted to hear older women's voices, and it turned out so did loads of other women.

So, women and anger. Give us a very quick – and I mean, quick! – science lesson about what anger and not expressing it is doing to our bodies.

The repression of anger, so if you think about it in terms of the adrenaline cortisol, that is the hallmark of that feeling, if you don't express that and allow it to move through your body, through your bloodstream and sort of into external surfaces… It’s there to help you run or fight, but if you don't do either of those things, it's stuck in you. So if you can't run or fight, put it somewhere else, give it to something else. And that's why I talk a lot about explosive movements, which literally get that kind of kinetic energy out of your body. So it's sort of transported away that way.

Or impact. Running or hitting something. It just gets it out of your body in the way that it's meant to. And obviously, as women, we never do that stuff. I mean, we might run, we might swim, but we don't do it in order to mobilize, specifically, anger and negative feelings and frustration and resentment and all that stuff out of ourselves. We do it often because, you know, we want to look better, or take care of our bodies, but what about all the shit that's built up in there that needs to get out?

That's why I think it can be a very democratic solution, because you don't need money for this. All you need is to really listen to yourself and be aware of those feelings and be honest about those feelings, and be prepared to give yourself the opportunity to get them out. Whether it is like literally shutting yourself in the toilet cubicle at work and doing star jumps or running on the spot, or screaming into a cushion at home, which is very muffling, and people genuinely can't hear that, and then letting your brain come back online, because the adrenaline, the cortisol, stop your brain from functioning properly.

Be aware of those feelings and be honest about those feelings, and be prepared to give yourself the opportunity to get them out. Whether it is literally shutting yourself in the toilet cubicle at work and doing star jumps or running on the spot, or screaming into a cushion at home

That's why you kind of freeze. That's why you can't think of the thing to say. So give yourself the time to get it out, give yourself moments to breathe and come back into the room. And obviously I talk about that in the book, the importance of coming back in. And I think this particularly for women of our kind of age. Often we're like, oh, it's not worth it. And it is worth that you gotta get back in. This is what you fought for. And that's what breaks my heart. Is just the sort of, oh, I haven't got the energy.

Just going, I've had enough. You see that so often. Sometimes people just go, oh, fuck this. I'm done. Those who probably have the privilege and the emotional support to do it might do their own thing or whatever, but, yeah, if you don't get back in the room, then, you know, the people in the room don't really care.

What was it all for then?

A friend of mine used to get in her car and go and drive out into the hills outside the town where she lived and scream the place down. But how do you get yourself to a place where you can even recognize that when you've been, you know, taught to be good, to be apologetic, to worry about how other people feel, to reduce your boundaries? I'm massively paraphrasing a million conversations I've had and your entire book, but when you've been trained like that, to be a good girl and, you know, apologize all the time, be ladylike, don't take up too much space, don't show off. You know, always comparing yourself and finding yourself wanting. Ditching all of that and going in the loo and doing star jumps is quite a big leap, isn’t it?

It's huge. It's huge. And isn't it nuts that it should be so huge? Because it's just natural. It's what this apparatus internally was intended for. It just wants us to know when something is wrong for us and that we need to change it, but that we're so far away from being able to recognize that and give ourselves the experience that we need, is shocking. Hearing you say all those statements that we all grew up with repeated back, I’m speechless. It never fails to make my blood boil, because it's true. This was our life. All of us.

I don't know how different it is for the girls coming through, because they've got so much to deal with that we actually didn't have when we were that age. The Andrew Tates of this world. Well, thanks, because that's stitching up a generation of boys and girls frankly.

On the one hand, I look at the girls on social media and they're so much more assertive, and I hate the word feisty, because I just think you never call a man feisty, but they're so much more assertive and sure of themselves, and they seem more confident. And then at the same time, I look at my god daughter, who's now 10, 11, and I watched her go through a process of going to school, suddenly caring about pink and unicorns, when she’d never cared about pink and unicorns before; suddenly coming home and saying she'd been told that she couldn't be a princess because she wasn't blonde and she didn't have white skin.

*Gags*

And then you watch all of that, and you just think this is the two steps forward and one step back thing again, isn't it? On the one hand, young women are so much more emotionally literate than we were, but at the same time, they're still picking up all these messages. They're still self-bullying, and conforming and comparing.

It really is an uphill battle, isn't it? And I guess so much of it people think they haven't got the time for or energy for. And the point is, you don't need time or money or a brilliant education. You just need to be listening to yourself and wanting your daughter to have the same stuff as your son. That's all. And if we could all just get onto that track and be honest about it, because I think people can say it, but if you don't think about the impact on bodies especially, it remains these sort of pipe dreams, and then nothing really changes from one generation to the next.

And I think the patriarchy gets better at staying one step ahead, creating the right equality forms that you have to agree. Yes, I suppose you have done that and you have done that, but we know what BS that really is. We know who the school is still phoning, you know?

One of the things that I've noticed in the women I speak to for the podcast is that, maybe it’s perimenopause, maybe just a coincidence, maybe other factors, or it may also be because we’re seeing young women be a bit more gobby, but one of the things I'm definitely seeing is an emerging… I don't want to say entitlement because it’s got such negative connotations, but a sense that actually, you know what? Maybe I am entitled to have boundaries. Maybe I am allowed to say no. Maybe I don’t have to apologize. But how do we teach that? With the lessons we've been taught and with the language that we don't have, the lack of vocabulary around anger for women, it's like you're not assertive or decisive, you're bossy or hysterical.

That’s why I think community is so important, so powerful. Because you realise that on your own even trying your hardest to make that decision to prioritize your needs (imagine that!), to adopt some boundaries, you're up against, probably, a family that has expected the opposite of you. So how do you suddenly start to implement this stuff? Yes, it's one thing, teaching the daughters, and let's hope we can do that better, but teaching ourselves and teaching those around us. This is where I think talking together really openly matters. And this is my obsession with honest, authentic communication and connection between women. I am obsessed with it. I think you can move mountains with it. I think women are incredible. It does give you strength to go back into your home and go no, because, you know what, Susan's doing it differently. And I'm gonna go on holiday with her. Or, no, you make your own dinner tonight, or whatever it is. It doesn't, it doesn't need to be nasty or like pulling a rug. I think it can be confident and decisive.

This is my obsession: honest, authentic communication and connection between women. I am obsessed with it. I think you can move mountains with it. I think women are incredible.

In your practice, do you see common threads?

Definitely. One of them is that people bring their partner, their male partner, in to therapy a lot, as in psychologically, not literally. (I mean, they may as well have – the impact in the room is very much like, Oh, here he is.) Because the male partner refuses to get therapy himself. So basically, all his issues are borne by the wife, and she can't deal with them on her own. So I have to help her. And, yes, I gladly will. But why can't he also do this? So that's very common.

Sadly, I do feel like we haven't advanced much in terms of the arrangement of the load in households. And that's why I think there is a kind of age at which it hits that women who have had – you know, they were equals, they really were team players all the way through until a certain point, and then suddenly they're realizing, hang on, he got a promotion, and, hang on, school is still phoning me, or whatever it is. Hang on, he's out again, but we haven't arranged any childcare, and I wanted to go out, you know, and so she can't. And it's these really boring, repeated themes, and honestly, it's like they're trying to keep us in the 1950s and so is the rest of society. I don't think this comes down to individual men. I think a lot of men feel really hamstrung by this. They're not very happy either. I think they'd really like it if their female partner could carry on being that equal. It's a lot more fun.

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So long as they don't have to do anything different, though.

I mean, there is that!

I think that's why we're seeing this “menopause movement” that's happening now because, we were the first generation to live our lives that way, then to be pushed back into our lane – not by individual men, but by society and structures and all of that. I feel like Gen X is almost the hinge between boomers and millennials.

It's like we've been pincered. I think that's a really good point. I back you there, Sam! I'm really curious to see how this does play out in future generations, if left alone. I mean, hopefully the effect of people like us talking a lot about these things does start to change stuff. Otherwise, what's the point? You know, that's what we have to hope. It's almost like there's this feeling of, we're going to just say yes to everything. Yes, yes, yes. Oh, but we haven't really stopped to think about what the reality of that will look like. So yes, she can do that. Yes, yes, yes, put it on her Yes, yes, yes. But then, oh, hang on, yeah. We didn't stop and think about how it would wor. The fact that she still has to give birth to a baby, and it will be hanging off her boobs for the, you know, next year. It was just really badly thought through, but we're the ones that have to carry the can for that. And don’t get me on the bloody social care soapbox as well, that hasn't been thought out. Because women are at home picking up the shit, frankly, and that's just a whole other… I mean, I should stop myself, because, I mean, where do you go? Awful? Awful.

There's a point you made about worry, which I really, really liked, because worry is a very female thing, isn't it? “It's easier to be a worried person than an angry one.”

Yes, mmm-hmmm. I think this talks back perfectly to the idea of the good girl, the nice girl, the polite girl, because where does the raging girl sit in that constellation? But the worried girl? Yeah, I buy that, just like I buy the sad girl and the shamed girl. It's essentially all these inversions of rage that I think we see, and we are so familiar with. The big one is depression. As psychoanalysts, we've always known depression is inverted anger. And I guess I take it much further in my thesis and actually suggest that, especially for women, it shows itself in this whole host of other really just mundane, everyday presentations from things like worry and guilt. I’d say anxiety is the one that I hear most often presented.

And you’d say that's inward, deflected rage?

The extremities of the presentations are wild, and it's all so displaced. But once you start gently lifting the lid and asking the questions, it is joyful to see women own themselves again. Maybe even for the first time, frankly, become themselves and sort of pace their way along the scaffolding of their feeling, to get there. It is beautiful. I think I'm addicted. I think I am addicted to being a therapist.

Yeah, I can see that. I can get it. I mean, everybody's different, aren't they, so I imagine everybody who presents to you with anxiety has a different story and different outcome.

That's what was so remarkable, that even though each of my patients across the years has had so many different flavors of presentation and and history to talk about, these themes have been so prevalent and have scored themselves into my brain, such that they started just flowing out in the form of the book.

What do you see most in much older women, in the kind of oldest age group who come to you? What are the most common things that manifest?

Sadly, this kind of calcified idea is quite hard to work into. Because if we're talking about a lifetime, add on another 30 years to that. It can feel really, really sad, because you think, Oh God, even if, even if we get some stuff happening here, there's so much regret. There's so much regret. For some women, actually, the joy of being released at whatever point outweighs that. I wonder if it does end up extending their lives, improving their health, meaning that they have slightly different relationships with family members, meaning that they say no more. And, you know, God, if you even have a couple of years like that, and those are the last ones, then it's better than nothing.

Okay, I'm going to ask you the questions I always ask at the end, what is your emotional age?

I think 17.

Why 17?

That was my favorite year. And I think I've been lucky enough to stay there, or maybe find my way back to it. It was when I'd gotten through the anguish of the worst of adolescence. I felt somewhat comfortable in my own skin. I mean, that kind of came and went over the years, but that's why I feel like I've come back to that now. I felt free. It was that A level year when you don't have exams. Glastonbury. I'm obsessed with music, that is my life blood. I think I was just having that beautiful, heightened experience of puberty at its best. And yeah, I think a lot of me has remained there.

Give us book recommendation.

The first one that comes to mind is Catcher in the Rye. Can't tell you why. I think I probably read that at around that age. So isn't it funny? Unconsciously, I'm probably just like throwing you things from that era.

What advice would you give younger women?

Be honest, mostly with yourself.

That's the pivotal thing, really, isn't it? I just remembered, I wanted to ask you about bitching. What is the point that we learn to do it, and why? Because it's so toxic.

You know when you were saying about your goddaughter, who at a certain point in school had to change, and whatever age that might be. I'm just trying to think, when you see it emerge. It's the little groups. It's maybe seven or eight. I think eight is quite a pivotal age actually, for personality development and making assumptions and observations about the world that are outside of your family and putting things together in more independent ways. Maybe because it's quite an exciting time, but also quite a scary time. So perhaps you sort of fall back on things that feel a bit comforting or give you a boost in the moment, make you feel safe, so you align with somebody, and you throw someone else out, and you scapegoat that person, you feel a bit stronger. Maybe this is where it kind of kicks off. I mean, it’s arguable. You could probably say even younger.

But I also think it's the way in which girls are taught such wonderful communication skills. Because we get three inches of playground to chat on, we get brilliant at talking. And I guess with that comes this developed, really sophisticated sense of social subtleties. (I don't think boys have to be worse at this. I just think this is how we're socialized.) But with that socialization, plus the brilliant communication tools that the conditioning is giving us, it's just this perfect, hideous, brilliant, horrible, amazing, gorgeous, toxic storm.

That connection, that ability to forge something so deep with another woman can be flipped, and can absolutely cut her off at the knees.

It never stops, though, does it?

It's disgusting. It's awful.

There’s a point you make in the book, which is that as we get older there are all these things in our relationships that remain unsaid, but worse, some of them remain unsaid altogether, and others remain unsaid just to people's faces.

This is my point about the honesty, because why can't we be better? If we were just truer to our feelings and tuned into our affect system properly, and we could say stuff in the moment, then it would never have to build to these levels where it cuts other people down with it. Often we have to do that because we've ignored ourselves until the point we can't tolerate anymore, so then we have to resort to these really underhand sideswipe-means to try and wriggle out or keep ourselves safe. But if we earlier on went, No, I don't like that. Oh no, I'm not coming to that. You'd save yourself standing there in the corner all night, going, I fucking hate this. Why did I come here anyway? Wasn't she a dick? Oh, look at her shoes, you know?

Who is your old bird role model?

I have to say Juliette Mitchell, my first psychoanalyst professor.

What's your superpower?

This is where my therapist would be cross with me, because I think it probably is like… well, maybe the good side of it is reading the room. I guess let's keep it there.

Yeah, as opposed to hyper-alertness!

Exactly. What do I have to do? Who needs me? What do I have to do to keep safe?

Last one, how many fucks do you give?

27

Why 27?

I think they are probably all wrapped up in the book. This is probably why my anger levels have shrunk down to the basics now. And it's mostly to do with the shit that we're dealt and I reckon that probably covers it, it probably is about that number.

Women Are Angry by Dr Jennifer Cox is out now, published by Lagom.

Find out more about Jen and Salima’s podcast, Women Are Mad:

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