Unprocessed Anger: The Emotion That Erodes in Silence

Anger is often misunderstood — dismissed as aggression, or buried altogether. But for many men, especially in midlife, unprocessed anger hides in plain sight. Beneath the irritability or flatness lies grief, disappointment, and a lifetime of emotional containment. This blog explores how anger functions as both a signal and a defence — and how therapy can help bring it into the light.

By David Waterman - Inspired by the work of Jan McGregor Hepburn

Anger gets a bad name. It’s misunderstood, feared and often flattened into a caricature of shouting or fists. But in the therapy room—and often in life—anger is rarely the central issue. Its a signal. The symptom. The smoke that tells us there’s a fire underneath.

Anger as a Messenger

At its core, anger is information. It’s a response to a perceived threat—whether physical, emotional, or existential. For children, it shows up first in the body. Tight jaw. Clenched fists. Heat in the stomach. But if these signals aren’t met with help—if no one says, “That’s anger. Let’s talk about it”—then we grow up emotionally illiterate. We repress. We somatise. We project and in the silence, the anger corrodes.

When Anger Gets Stuck

In a healthy system, anger moves. It’s felt, expressed, and released. But for many people—especially men in midlife—it gets stuck. They were taught not to feel it. Or that it was dangerous. Or weak. They learned to hold it in. Or turn it on themselves.

Unprocessed anger can twist into blame, sarcasm, or quiet withdrawal. It can lodge in the body—becoming chronic tension, autoimmune flares, or mysterious symptoms that no test can explain. Sometimes, it gets projected, where a part of the self dumps it on someone else—so it can finally be expressed, but not owned.

What’s Beneath the Surface

For many men in their 40s and 50s, what looks like depression is often something else. A flatness. A loss of joy. An irritability that has nowhere to go. Beneath that? Often, a deep well of disappointment. Unacknowledged grief. A lifetime of holding it together. The death of a parent. The drift of a marriage. The career that didn’t deliver what it promised. The creeping sense of time passing and old roles not fitting anymore. And underneath that—the impossibility of going back. The fear that if they let themselves feel the anger fully, it will destroy them. So instead, it flattens everything.

The Illusion of Blame

Blame can feel like control. It makes sense out of senselessness. It lets us avoid the terrifying truth: that some things can’t be fixed, reversed, or made fair. But blame is not the same as accountability. And when it becomes the default mode, it drains agency. It keeps us locked in victimhood.

As one teacher put it: “Blame gives the illusion of power, but it hides the real work.”

In the Therapy Room

In therapy, anger shows up in strange ways. The client might seem fine, but the therapist feels irritable or frustrated — something’s being projected. A depressed client might resist accessing anger because it feels too dangerous. Often, it’s the therapist who senses this and gently opens the door:

“I wonder if you might feel disappointed… maybe even angry — perhaps with me, or with how this space has felt?”

And in that moment, something shifts. Now there’s relationship. Now there’s room. Not to act the anger out — but to name it, and start to tolerate its presence.

Healing Isn’t Suppression

We talk a lot about forgiveness. But real forgiveness requires acknowledgement. You can’t forgive someone who won’t own their part. Sometimes the best we can do is say: “It happened. It hurt. And I’m still here.” That’s not resignation. That’s power.

As Jan McGregor Hepburn says, “You can’t help how you feel. But you can choose what to do with it.”

The real work isn’t about pushing the anger away. It’s about being with it long enough to hear what it’s trying to say. To find the pain underneath. And to stop the cycle—from repeating in your body, your relationships, or your children. Because unspoken anger doesn’t disappear. It just moves underground. And what goes underground, grows roots.