Anger

Anger often catches people off guard after loss.
You might feel sharp, irritable, explosive, or quietly furious at everything and nothing.
You might snap at people you love, or feel rage rise without a clear target.

This doesn’t mean you’re becoming someone you don’t recognise.
It means grief has stirred something powerful.

Biologically, anger is a mobilisation response.
When something threatens what we love, the body releases energy to protect, defend, or change what’s happening.
It’s the nervous system saying: This should not have happened.

In grief, that energy has nowhere to go.

You couldn’t stop the death.
You can’t fix what’s been broken.
There’s no action that makes it right.

So the anger turns inward, outward, sideways.

Anger in grief can look like:

• rage at the unfairness of it all

• bitterness toward people who still have what you lost

• irritation at small things that suddenly feel unbearable

• fury at systems, professionals, silence, God, fate, or the world itself

• anger that feels safer than the depth of the pain underneath

Often, anger is carrying something else.

Pain that feels too big.
Fear that feels too exposed.
Love that has nowhere to go.

From a nervous system perspective, anger can actually be protective.
It creates distance from overwhelming vulnerability.
It gives structure and heat to grief when the sadness feels endless.

This doesn’t mean you need to get rid of anger.
It means it deserves to be understood.

Anger doesn’t cancel love.
It doesn’t mean you’re stuck.
It doesn’t make you a bad person.

It means something mattered.
Deeply.

The work isn’t to suppress anger or rush past it.
It’s to notice what it’s guarding - and to let it exist without shame.

Anger is not the opposite of grief.
It is one of its fiercest voices.

And like all parts of grief, it doesn’t need fixing.
It needs space, safety, and time.