Anger Is a Blocked Wish (And What That Has to Do With Your Anxiety)
Let me ask you something.
When you hear the words anger, rage, resentment — what happens in your body? If you’re anything like me, you probably cringe a little bit. Maybe your chest tightens, or your breathing becomes slightly more shallow. Although it’s normal, and even healthy, to experience anger, I severely avoided this emotion for years. At some point (probably in childhood, because isn’t that where we all get messed up?!), I determined that feeling anger was bad and that it meant I was a mean person.
I was so committed to this belief that I became, as I now call it, a professional conflict-avoider. I even once moved out of state partly to avoid confrontation. That's how deep it ran.
Here's what I know now that I wish someone had told me then: the anger didn't go anywhere. It just got buried inside me. And all the ‘good’ emotions that should be felt - joy, love, passion, hope - got buried along with it.
Sabotaging Should #2: "I should be happy all the time."
This is one of the quietest and most damaging beliefs people pleasers carry.
On the surface it sounds almost aspirational — who wouldn't want to be happy? But underneath it is something much more insidious:: the idea that negative emotions, especially anger, are not allowed. That if you feel them, something is wrong with you. That you should be able to rise above, stay positive, and keep smiling.
So you do. And you do. And you do.
Until one day your body says “Enough is Enough”.
What Anger Actually Is
There is a mindset reframe that changed everything for me: anger is a blocked wish. (I learned this from my many viewings of the brilliantly comical movie, Analyze This.)
We are driven by wants and desires — to be understood, to be seen, to be valued, to have our needs matter. When those wishes go unmet, anger is the natural response. It's not dysfunction. It’s information. It's your inner world telling you that something important to you has been denied.
The woman who snaps at her kids after saying yes to one too many things isn't an angry person. She's a person whose wish — to have her limits respected, to have space for herself — has been blocked one too many times.
The woman who lies awake replaying a conversation, feeling the slow burn of being dismissed or misunderstood, isn't overreacting. Her wish to be seen is blocked.
When you start to look at your anger this way — as a message rather than a flaw — everything shifts.
The Connection Between Anger and Anxiety Nobody Talks About
Dr. David Burns, author of When Panic Attacks, wrote that people prone to anxiety are nearly always people-pleasers who fear conflict and negative feelings like anger.
When I first read that it hit me so hard. I had never connected my anxiety to my unexpressed anger. But once I saw it, it made complete sense.
Here's how it works:
Anger feels unsafe, so it gets suppressed. Suppressed anger turns into guilt — I shouldn't feel this way. Guilt feeds anxiety — what if I say the wrong thing, hurt someone, cause conflict? And underneath anxiety, almost always, is fear.
Anger → guilt → anxiety → fear.
It's layered like an onion. And if you've been living with low-grade anxiety for years, there's a good chance there's a lot of unexpressed anger sitting underneath it.
What Happens When We Stuff It Down
This is where it all starts to make sense.
When you suppress one feeling, you suppress all of them.
It's not selective. You can't numb anger and keep joy. You can't shut down resentment and stay open to love. When the walls go up, they go up for everything. And that leads to what so many of my clients describe — a life that looks fine on the outside but feels hollow on the inside. Like going through the motions. Like something is missing but you can't name it.
Suppressed anger can show up physically, too. It may manifest as tension that won't release. Insomnia. Anxiety that spikes for no clear reason. Chest pain or heart palpitations. In traditional Chinese medicine, unexpressed anger and frustration are stored in the liver — which, as I discovered through my own experience with acupuncture, can even affect something as unexpected as chronic inflammation in the eyes.
The body keeps the score. It always does!
The Day I Beat a Table With a Bolster and Ugly Cried
I used to think I wasn't an angry person. I was calm. Zen, even. I smiled a lot. I kept the peace.
Then one day, my acupuncturist handed me a foam bolster in our session and told me to be open to a new approach. He asked me to hit the treatment table with the bolster as hard as I could while shouting "No."
I half-heartedly tapped it and said "no" like I was declining a second cup of coffee.
He looked at me, unimpressed. "For every time you wanted to say no but said yes instead — really feel it."
So I did. I whacked that table over and over until I was sweating. And then I sat down and completely fell apart.
What came up wasn't what I expected. It was grief. Years of unexpressed anger and sadness — for my parents, for my losses, for all the times I had smiled through something that was slowly breaking me. For someone who wore her calm like a badge of honor, it turned out I was sitting on a lifetime of unfelt feelings.
Afterward, lying there in silence, I thought of a quote by Buddha: "Holding onto anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else. You are the one who gets burned."
I had been holding those coals for a very long time.
How to Start Processing Anger in a Way That Actually Works
You don't need a foam bolster or an acupuncturist. You just need permission and a little space.
Feel it to heal it. Find a quiet place where you won't be interrupted. Put your hands on your heart and complete these sentences out loud or on paper:
"I'm mad because...""I'm sad because...""I'm hurt because..."
Don't analyze what comes up. Don't talk yourself out of it. Just let it be there. If tears come, let them. If you need to grab a pillow and let loose, go ahead. Then come down gently — take a bath, step outside, cuddle a pet. Emotional release often needs a soft landing.
Write it out. Journaling gives your conscious, overthinking mind a rest and lets the real stuff surface. Write without editing. Write without judging. What you're angry about, who you're angry at, what wish has been blocked. The answer to what's underneath your anxiety is often waiting there on the page.
Move it through your body. Anger is a high-energy emotion that gets stored physically. A hard workout, a run, even a walk with your arms swinging — movement gives the energy somewhere to go.
And if you find that what comes up feels too big to sit with alone, that's not weakness, it’s wisdom. Knowing when to ask for help is one of the bravest acts of self-care there is.
The Question Worth Sitting With
Anger isn't your enemy. It never was. It's a messenger that's been waiting, sometimes for decades, for you to finally let it speak.
So before you move on from this post, I want to ask you one thing:
What blocked wish is sitting underneath your anger right now?
You don't have to answer out loud. Just let yourself feel it.
This is Sabotaging Should #2 from my book Confessions of a People Pleaser, where I explore the seven beliefs quietly running (and derailing) the lives of people pleasers everywhere. Each chapter includes journal prompts to help you move from awareness into real change. Grab your copy on Amazon here.
And if you're ready to stop carrying this alone — my Choose Yourself coaching program is where we do this work together, with energy healing woven in so the shift happens at every level.
Learn more here.
Journal Prompts to Go Deeper:
In childhood, how did the adults around you deal with anger? What did that teach you?
The last time you suppressed your anger, what was the wish underneath it?
What feeling have you been calling anxiety that might actually be unexpressed anger?
Next time anger rises, what's one small way you'll let it speak instead of stuffing it down?
Lisa Kern is a Reiki Master, transformational coach, and author of Confessions of a People Pleaser. She works with women who feel anxious, overwhelmed, and unfulfilled — helping them get to the root of why and reclaim themselves in the process. Find her at lisakern.com.