"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,
, 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.