MICRO-DOSING ANGER

Pour a little out for the good of us all

Jan 17, 2025

Ahhhh. Mars retrograde. Lots of astrologers have written lots of very wise, profound things about this transit, especially on the topic of the Mars-Pluto opposition — a key feature of this martial season.

Disclaimer: I won’t be going into depth on that opposition here, or really getting into the technicals of Mars retrograde at all.

The thing I’m here to talk about is irritability, and the annoying-but-beneficial awareness it can gift us when we’re feeling the whole menu of ahhhhhh and trying to figure out how to navigate the world without being a total asshole.

I’ve been feeling a lot ahhhhhh myself. I imagine you have too. Just about everyone I know is angry or on edge to some degree. There are many external, collective reasons for that *waves wildly around* and there are lots of internal, personal reasons too. All of those crystallize into a big bitter boiling pot of angst that I’m continually dipping my toes into before screeching, recoiling, and recovering.

It goes like this.

The Irritation Loop

a yellow object with a pink background — Photo by Maxim Berg on Unsplash

I’m already a little keyed up. Maybe I didn’t sleep well, or I’m stressed about work/finances, or I scrolled too long through a sea of bad news. In any case, the anxiety-dread-anger-grief bubble grows.
Someone or something pisses me off. My patience is already thin. I feel the incoming request, inconvenience, roadblock, or everyday annoyance as a bigger imposition than usual.
I act out my irritation. I snap back, sigh (violently), slam my phone down, or stomp around a bit. I’m trying to get it out of my system. It’s uncomfortable. My body is trying to expel it.
I feel bad. I judge myself for how I acted. I say mean things internally. If I responded to someone curtly, I feel the need to apologize or edit myself. I catastrophize. I ask the tarot if I was an asshole.
I try to stop feeling bad. I convince myself I need to meditate or sweat or something. This feeling feels foreign. I distance myself from the part of me that’s irritated or angry.
I soothe myself. I come back to “center.” I go for a walk. I reflect on what happened. I find perspective. I affirm the validity of my feelings. But I still feel a little bad beneath it all.
I move on. Life continues (miraculously). My worst fears and self-perceptions fade. I go about my day, distracted by other things, until something knocks me off center again and I cycle back to step 1.
Rage and repeat.

I’ve been going round and round this loop since Mars stationed retrograde on December 6. And it’s gotten significantly more intense since Mars re-entered Cancer on January 6. I expect I’ll be looping for at least another month, until Mars stations direct on February 24, and possibly even through early May, when it finally clears its post-retrograde shadow after arriving at 6° Leo.

I’m very open to it getting easier before then, though. I’m not fatalistic about astrology and I’m not interested in staying stuck just because the planets suggest the possibility. But I’m recognizing that, if I want to feel a little better, I’m going to need to learn something here, and probably do something differently. I suspect that “something” is working with irritation instead of resisting it.

Resistance — what a bitch

If you’ve ever seen one of those emotion wheels, you might know that irritation (or annoyance) is generally considered the child of anger. And let’s be real — not all that many of us learned how to express anger responsibly, or at all. Few of us were even modeled what that looks like. I know, for me, my early exposure to anger was my brothers punching holes through walls when their favorite teams lost, or my dad erupting into a furious “lecture” (AKA barrage of verbal abuse) that would sometimes last hours. In short: It did not make me a fan of anger.

feelings-wheel — I love a good wheel, so here it is for reference.

So it’s understandable I, and so many of us, struggle with more subtle expressions of anger, like irritation, when their lineage is… complicated. If you were socialized in the U.S. as a girl, like I was, or if you’re part of any marginalized group that gets punished for expressing anger, you probably learned to repress it at some point out of safety. You may have even internalized the idea that it’s a Bad Emotion — dangerous, impolite, inappropriate, or otherwise unacceptable. And no matter what your grown-up, conscious self thinks about anger, if you struggle with self-judgment when it bubbles up within you, it’s possible some part of you is still holding onto that idea. It’s possible you’re repressing it even when you feel like you’re expressing it.

When parts of us are at odds with each other, it’s like getting stuck in an emotional Chinese finger trap. We know we should go toward the feeling, but another part of us is yelling “noooooooope” so we pull back, stall out, and experience the tension of a halted emotion. You probably know what I mean. It’s like emotional constipation. One minute you’re validating and affirming and honoring the anger, and then suddenly this voice of judgment sweeps in and derails you.

For me, it’s an eye-rolling character that chides me after each burst of fury — a “get over yourself already” vibe. And I’ve found that all the stomping and vocalizing and lion’s breaths in the world won’t crack the code if somewhere, deep within, I’m still punishing myself every time I feel irritation or rage. And when I punish myself for those feelings, I inevitably shut down the flow of emotion. I pack it away out of view.

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a close up of a green grass with a blurry background — Photo by Bhumik Photography on Unsplash

Sometimes you’ve just gotta yell

I probably don’t need to tell you this, but repressing your anger is bad, not anger itself. That doesn’t mean it’s not completely and totally understandable to repress it though — the consequences of being angry in public can be catastrophic, especially for people whose rage is policed and politicized. But when anger isn’t expressed, it can become toxic.

You may have heard about the Stanford study showing women of color experience higher rates of autoimmune disorders from suppressed anger. Black women in particular, who are so often vilified in the U.S. for expressing righteous rage, suffer disproportionately from the consequences of having to repeatedly swallow their emotions. Anyone who experiences the repeated cycle of invalidation and oppression that leads to internalized rage probably understands the toll it can take on you. When it doesn’t go outward, it goes inward. And it makes us sick.

The other day, I returned to acupuncture after two years away and one of the first things we talked about was anger. My acupuncturist suggested that we should all be yelling at people more often when they do messed up shit, or when we’re simply angry, so we can see that anger through and release it. But because it’s a cultural no-no to yell, for the most part, we’ve learned to seeeeethe.

He compared it to a blade of grass growing beneath the earth. Under ideal conditions, it would have rich, moist soil above it. It would slowly and smoothly break through the surface, revealing itself without much force. But when the soil is dry and hardened, the blade of grass has to force its way through. The pressure mounts until it bursts through with power. (That’s us when we suppress our anger and then eventually explode.) And in more extreme cases, when the soil has grown so hardened that the blade of grass can’t even break through, it shoots sideways, growing beneath the surface — unnatural, suppressed, and starved of light.

That’s the kind of growth that leads to illness. And it’s the kind I was used to for the first ~28 years of my life, until I literally got ill with an autoimmune condition and had to learn how to express my rage. Thing is, I learned how to do it BIG. I let myself throw tantrums. I indulged in huge, fiery eruptions of anger over years of stored trauma, like that second blade of grass bursting through with power. And for a long time, I thought I was good. I’d made so much progress. Anger and I were cool. No, we were pals.

But it wasn’t until this Mars retrograde that I realized there was a metric ton of anger I was still burying. And each time I’d get provoked, it was like a little bit of that buried material would get scooped up and shoved in my face. I hadn’t yet learned how to let my anger seep out of me gradually, like the blade of grass growing up through the rich, moist soil. And that’s what brings me back to irritation.

clear glass jar lot on shelf — Photo by Matt Briney on Unsplash

Irritation is micro-dosed anger

Let me introduce you to a little visual metaphor I came up with a few years ago that I’ve found helpful. Imagine all of your untapped emotions are housed within you in little bottles on little shelves, like an apothecary. Each one contains the liquid of emotions, often associated with particular memories and experiences. Each time we don’t fully express an emotion, it gets stored in a little bottle on the shelf.

Over time, our shelves grow full. (It’s not a Mary Poppins bag situation here.) And if we don’t empty out a bottle and clear a space, the next time we try to store an emotion, we’ll find there’s no room. We’ll have to clear it with more urgency — like, knocking-it-off-the-shelf-and-watching-it-shatter urgency. That’s what I imagine happens when a “small” thing sets off a big reaction. We try to hide or conceal the feeling and it disrupts another bottle.

If we want to maintain a tidy apothecary and become better stewards of our inner space, we need to periodically empty out a bottle, or at least pour a bit out so were gradually working through the backlog. That way, when we inevitably have to store something away (and let’s be real, that’s life — we can’t always feel our feelings immediately) there’s space there waiting for it.

I bring this metaphor up because I think it’s a helpful way to think about our everyday experiences of irritation, frustration, and all the other more tolerable but nonetheless uncomfortable children of anger. They give us the change to micro-dose anger and practice expressing it.

Someone cuts you off in traffic and you wanna scream for a sec? Scream, baby! Roar. Let it out. It’s better than quietly fuming until you get home and then unloading on your partner or roommate when they happen to get in your way or say “hi” in the wrong tone.

Moments of irritation help us pop open a bottle and pour a little out. It doesn’t even matter if we’re tapping into the same emotional experience that we long ago stored away. The story isn’t important. The substance is. And gently opening the release valve helps us exhale some of the dormant emotion. When we give ourselves permission to feel irritated, we experience less inner clutter. Instead of shoving it away, we let it flow through.

flame illustration — Photo by Paul Bulai on Unsplash

A cautionary note

Do I have to say this? Maybe I have to say this.

I want to clarify that I’m not suggesting anyone verbally abuse anyone, or unload their anger on an undeserving subject. And I’m definitely not suggesting anyone express their anger in a way that might make them a target, or get them into deep shit. What I am suggesting is that you give yourself permission to feel — loudly (ba-dum-chhh) — and maybe even make some “mistakes.”

I can tell you from experience, I’ve gotten very little out of shelving my anger. Well, I got sick. I got that. And I kept the peace. But more often than not, that was at my own expense.

Shelving my anger kept me stuck in unhappy relationships where my needs were consistently unmet. Shelving my anger let other people believe they could treat me poorly, because I’d be “nice” no matter what. Shelving my anger let me believe I was fine with disrespect, neglect, and abuse, because I wasn’t witnessing my own anger burst through the surface to signal, HEY, NO, THIS ISN’T FINE, ACTUALLY.

And you know what all that did? For nearly 28 years, it made me bitter. It made me feel like a perpetual victim. It led me to believe I was powerless. It even inspired me to subconsciously seek out angry, aggressive people who would do enough expressing for the both of us. I’d question again and again why I (a Calm, Not-Angry Person) kept ending up in relationships with people who were so quick to rage.

Well… turns out I wasn’t a calm, not-angry person. I’d just deeply associated “not being angry” with goodness, so I was totally unaware of the rage bubbling beneath the surface. But it was there. And it was coming out in subtle but nonetheless harmful ways, like through passive aggression and criticism. And — AND — I found back-door ways of experiencing true, unbridled anger: secondhand, through other people who didn’t have that same blockage. And I’d judge them for it.

Probably unsurprising to most, these were mostly cis men. But not all! And when their anger eventually pointed toward me, I’d feel shook. At times, it was unjustified — misdirected rage from their own buried stuff. But other times it was justified. I’d say or do something messed up. They’d feel understandable anger. And I couldn’t handle it. I couldn’t make space for it, because it was Bad. No matter how valid their grievance, I struggled to validate the emotion, because it scared the shit out of me. I didn’t know how to reckon with anger in them because I didn’t know how to reckon with anger in me. And at times it made me pretty bad at taking accountability.

huge wave at daytime — Photo by Torsten Dederichs on Unsplash

Being a good steward

Anyway. What that’s leading me back to, again, is why it’s so important for us to practice expressing our anger (and all its children) — not just for us, but for everyone. For the world! The more we express our anger, the more bandwidth we have for other people to express their anger. The more we off-gas the fumes of fury in healthy, cathartic ways, the more we can bear to bear witness to other people’s fury — and the less likely we are to punish our loved ones, comrades, and peers when they experience righteous rage.

And we need that. We really, really need that.

We need to learn to become better stewards of our emotional worlds — our apothecaries — so we can give other people the space to do the same. We need to practice expressing our anger when people inevitably cross a line. We need to practice receiving someone else’s anger when we inevitably cross a line. We need to stop endlessly stocking our shelves and start pouring out some bottles. Now feels like the time, possibly more than ever.

There’s a lot of difficult astrology ahead, and much of it will test our ability to be responsible with our rage. This Mars retrograde feels like a practice run. It feels like the build-up to a big era that’s pushing us to rework how we respond to anger and perceived (or real) attacks. It’s testing our ability to recognize harm, set boundaries, and protect our peace without immediately flying into self-victimization or self-denial. It’s preparing us to defend ourselves without diminishing ourselves — or villainizing someone else in the process. And it’s demanding we look up the food chain at the real villains.

When we express our irritation (those little micro-dose moments) we’re less likely to feed the drama triangle. And we’re more likely to see that feeling through — to feel it through — which clears our heads, our hearts, and our shelves.

lioness sitting on gray surface — Photo by Sergey Romanov on Unsplash

A final note on catharsis

In Jessica Lanyadoo’s recent episode of Ghost of a Podcast, “Apple Fights Tree,” she tells her guest listener to try stomping it out like a horse when they experience irritation. She also regularly suggests listeners watch videos of lionesses guarding their young to witness these raw expressions of anger and power. And I love that. Not just because I’m a Leo Moon and I’m high-key obsessed with lions. But because the animal world can teach us a hell of a lot about emotion.

My 15-pound Chihuahua mix has been one of my most powerful teachers when it comes to anger. I shit you not. Her little Pisces Sun is widely conjunct my Pisces Mars, and as an Aries Moon ruled by a Capricorn Mars, she’s constantly showing me what embodied anger and irritation look like. She’s sweet as hell, but she takes no shit. She tells me when she doesn’t like a dog or a person. She shows me when I’m in her space. She makes it known when she’s annoyed or mad or out of patience. And I LEARN. And I RESPECT.

Like these beautiful, unbridled creatures, we need to find instant, cathartic ways to express our emotions too. We need to learn to respect our feelings instead of constantly talking ourselves out of them.

I’d highly recommend you spend these final weeks of Mars retrograde doing that — finding your ways of expression. For me, it’s exhaling loudly with force, or, yes, stomping. If I’m home alone, I’ll yell or groan or make weird but delicious noises that help me expel it. I’ll jump up and down or shake my limbs. I’ll write things down and set them on fire (in a fire-safe bowl, duh — safety babes). I’ll dance until I’m out of breath. I’ll just move.

I’m constantly experimenting by simply allowing and letting my body guide the way into the motions and sounds I find most cathartic. I do this in the little and big moments. And I’m learning. I’m practicing. I’m beginning to get ahead of the voice of judgment. I’m beginning to do right by my body and my heart. I’m beginning to empty the bottles, one by one.

I hope you will too.

Feeling Loudly