If you’re wondering why you’ve been feeling more irritable, snapping at people for no real reason, or carrying around a sense of constant frustration - you’re not alone. One of the lesser-known ways anxiety can show up is through anger. A lot of people think of anxiety as worry, panic attacks, or feeling frozen, but what they don’t realize is that anger can actually be anxiety wearing a different outfit. As a therapist who specializes in anxiety, perfectionism, and childhood trauma, I see this all the time. People aren’t “angry” by nature. They’re anxious. Their nervous systems are overloaded. And anger, even though it can feel messy, is often just a symptom of that overload. Let’s dig into why anxiety shows up as anger, what’s happening inside your body and brain, and what you can do to start managing it differently.

Let’s be real: blaming our parents feels obvious. When your adult life is full of anxiety, self-doubt, people-pleasing, or perfectionism, it’s natural to look at who raised you and say, “Yep. That’s where it came from.” And honestly? You’re probably not wrong.

Your parents were your blueprint. They taught you - directly or indirectly - what was safe to feel, how to react to stress, whether you were allowed to take up space. So when your internal world is chaotic now, it makes total sense to trace that chaos back to the source.

Let’s talk about guilt. Not the “oops, I forgot to text back” kind. I’m talking about the deep, sticky kind that lingers for years. The kind that sits in your chest like a weight and whispers that you're not doing enough, that you're not enough.

Stress isn’t just some vague feeling you get when you’ve got too much on your plate. It’s not just in your thoughts, or your “mindset,” or whatever other buzzword people throw around on social media.

The term burnout gets thrown around a lot. But here’s what most people miss—it’s not just about working too hard or not sleeping enough. For a lot of us, burnout is tangled up with stuff that happened way before the job ever started.

Let’s get something straight: you’re probably not as good at predicting your future feelings as you think you are. No offense. I’m not either. None of us are. Psychologists have a name for this: affective forecasting. It’s our brain’s attempt to guess how we’ll feel in the future. And most of the time, those guesses? Way off.

Have you ever been at a party, sitting with friends, maybe even laughing—yet inside, you feel completely alone? It’s frustrating, isn’t it? You have people in your life, you stay busy, and you’re constantly connected through texts and social media. So why does it feel like there’s a wall between you and everyone else?

When you’re trying to change something—whether it’s leaving a toxic job, starting a regular exercise routine, or to stop overcommitting—it can feel frustrating when progress isn’t linear. One day you’re motivated, the next you’re stuck in old habits. Sound familiar?

Rather than aiming to excel or innovate, her primary focus is on avoiding criticism from her boss and preventing any possible failure. This avoidance motivation keeps her in a state of high anxiety, leading her to over-prepare presentations and avoid taking on bold projects, not because she lacks skill, but because she’s terrified of the potential backlash if something goes wrong.

Hyper-independence can feel like a strength. You handle everything. You don’t need help. You push through no matter what. People admire your work ethic, your ability to stay in control, and how “strong” you are.

We all know the feeling—you’re faced with a problem, and instead of doing something about it, you analyze it from every angle. You dissect what went wrong, why it happened, and how unfair it is. But somehow, after all that thinking, the problem is still… there.

You go to bed early, get your full eight hours, and still wake up feeling like you got hit by a truck. You schedule a lowkey weekend, thinking that might fix the problem, but instead of feeling recharged, you feel even more drained. Maybe you’ve noticed that even when you sit down to relax, your mind keeps racing, or your body still feels tense, like it’s bracing for something.