THE QUIET RAGE
On eldest daughters, masking & what happens when someone finally sees the anger you've been burying for 40 years...
It’s actually Amelia’s therapist who saw it first.
We were in a follow-up meeting last week about Millie…about tools she needs before middle school, about managing her ADHD, about helping her express what she keeps bottled up inside. My ten-year-old holds everything in until she can’t anymore, until she acts out, until she stabs a pencil into a classmate’s hand because she doesn’t know how else to let the pressure out.
Dr. Sarah and I talked about my hopes for Amelia, my dreams for her, what I want her to learn that I never did. And then she said something that lifted the veil, just ever so slightly.
“You know, Jess, I see your joy. I see your happiness. And I see your love for Amelia and your family. I see you trying to carry it all, managing so much.” I nodded, waiting.
“And I also see that there’s a quiet rage...a rage inside of you. A quiet rage that needs to get out.”
I was speechless. I felt completely seen in that moment and almost burst into tears…because she was right. And because I realized she wasn’t just talking about me, she was giving me insight into what Millie is probably going through too. The rage we’re both carrying, the rage we were both taught to bury.
I just saw a post about Saturn moving into Aries on February 13th, bringing a major shift for us Virgos. It said: “You’ve been holding more than you admit...carrying responsibilities that were never meant to be yours alone...not because help wasn’t there...you chose control, self-reliance, survival. But now you’re being asked: was it strength or protection?”
This week, I realized that I’ve been carrying everything alone for so long that vulnerability feels unnatural, asking for help feels like failure, sharing the weight feels like weakness. But when the post asked: “What have you been carrying alone?” I immediately knew: the rage…the one I’ve been carrying alone my entire life.
Here’s the thing: Dr. Sarah isn’t even my therapist; she’s Amelia’s. My own therapist has been helping me dismantle years of people-pleasing, helping me understand my ADHD after 42 years of not knowing why I am the way I am. We’ve been working on it for a couple of months now…the patterns, the masking, the constant need to be useful, to be good, to be enough.
But when Amelia’s therapist named my rage, it all suddenly clicked. She wasn’t asking me, she wasn’t probing, she wasn’t trying to help me process it…she just saw it. And seeing it, being seen…hit differently.
It verified everything I already knew deep inside…that my people-pleasing isn’t kindness, it’s armor. My overfunctioning isn’t competence, it’s control. My relentless helpfulness isn’t generosity, it’s a way to stay necessary, so I don’t have to risk being wanted just for who I am (or even worse, rejected for it).
My therapist has been helping me understand that my ADHD brain doesn’t process rejection like neurotypical brains do. Rejection-sensitive dysphoria means I’ve spent my entire life scanning for signs that I’m too much, not enough, failing, disappointing. I’ve built an entire personality around preventing rejection before it can happen.
Now, I’m finally understanding that underneath those things, my quiet rage connects them all. I perform so you won’t reject me. I bury the rage so you won’t leave me. I carry everything alone, so I’m seen as valuable, capable, and so I can’t be hurt.
But Dr. Sarah saw my rage…she named it and brought it to light. That’s when I realized all this work I’ve been doing in therapy isn’t just about understanding my ADHD or learning better coping strategies, it’s about dismantling the lie I’ve been living, the lie that says if I’m good enough, helpful enough, joyful enough, productive enough…I’ll finally be safe, I’ll finally be accepted.
But I’m not safe…I’m exhausted. I’m overwhelmed and my quiet rage has been trying to tell me that for the past 40 years.
I was maybe eight or nine, sitting at the kitchen table with my math homework, struggling. Numbers didn’t come naturally to me…mental math, fast facts, equations that I was supposed to just “know” because “they just do x, y, and z.” My undiagnosed ADHD brain couldn’t hold onto abstract rules without understanding why.
I asked my dad to help me. He tried to explain it, but I didn’t get it. So, he explained it again, differently. But I still didn’t get it. I started crying, and he got frustrated…not because he was cruel, but because to him, I was so bright, so capable…but crying was a sign of me giving up, taking the easy way out.
I somehow got through my homework…I passed and made it through school. But that moment did something to my mind. I learned that my emotions brought frustration, that struggling meant I wasn’t trying hard enough, that crying was giving up, and that I was simply too much. I’ve battled that feeling…of being too much…ever since.
I don’t blame my dad. I have grace for him. I mean, honestly, my parents had me in their twenties, and my dad was dealing with his own identity crisis after losing his father to cancer at 47. They struggled to make ends meet, worked hard, and busted ass. They were doing their best with what they had. But you know, I never actually gave that same grace to myself…I just carried shame and guilt and the belief that something was wrong with me.
That feeling has lingered inside me through college, through marriage, through jobs, through divorce, through being a mother, and now into this new marriage and this new phase of parenthood. I buttoned up those fears of failing and fears of mediocrity, tried to use them as motivation instead of feeling them. I pushed them down, learned to mask uncomfortable emotions because they made people frustrated with me, or meant I was giving up.
Throughout my twenties and thirties, I filled journals with self-improvement lists, affirmations about letting go of negativity, prayers asking God to make me less moody, less reactive, less much. I treated my feelings like weeds to be pulled, obstacles to productivity and authenticity, character flaws to overcome through enough discipline and prayer and lists. I genuinely believed that if I could just get my emotions under control, I’d finally be the person everyone needed me to be.
I learned to shift and shape myself, to give people the version they needed, abandoning the version I truly was. I betrayed myself, and secretly wished and hoped that someone—anyone—would just see me, the real me, and be okay with that. And not just be okay with it, but actually want that version…to see it, to appreciate it, to not need me to change.
I felt like my emotions were a problem, that my rage was a sin, that my struggle was weakness, that I was too much. So I made myself less. I made myself small…buttoned it up, pushed it down, performed, and made myself more palatable. And the rage went underground.
It wasn’t just self-abandonment, though; it was lying.
Not malicious lying, but the withholding, avoidance kind. I withheld the pieces of me that might be too much or not acceptable. I masked, I curated, I gave the version of myself that I thought was needed.
And here’s what’s not great about this…beyond the obvious…sometimes it actually does get to be too much…the mask slips, and the rage leaks out. And when it does, it’s not just about the one thing…it gets lumped in with all the baggage, the whole history behind it, the years of holding it in, and the exhaustion of performance. And the person I’m raging at has to shoulder not just the one problem on the surface, but the entire weight of everything I never said. That’s not fair to them or to myself.
And now I’m with someone who is AuDHD, someone who needs black-and-white clarity, explicit explanations, no masking. And here I am, 42 years old and recently diagnosed with ADHD and anxiety, finally in therapy to deal with the root of all this. I have a daughter who’s struggling with her own identity, trying to find her place in her ten-year-old world before middle school and all the stress that brings.
I’m learning that the rage isn’t the real problem; it’s the burial of it. I’m learning that Amelia’s pencil-stabbing isn’t about her being “bad”…it’s about her carrying something she doesn’t have words for yet, just like I did, just like I still do sometimes.
I’m learning that being with Yas…someone who needs explicit honesty, who can’t read my mind, who needs me to say what I actually mean…is begging me to stop withholding, to stop omitting, to stop performing and to just be real. He says that he wants that, that he wants me, and I know this…I just need to figure out a way to actually trust him with the real me.
Here I am, today, in the thick of it…learning that strength isn’t proven by suffering alone…learning that I don’t have to carry everything to be worthy…and that I don’t have to overfunction to be loved. Was it strength or protection? I think for me…it was protection, and I don’t need it anymore.
I don’t know what to do with the rage quite yet. I don’t know how to feel it without drowning in it, how to express it without making it someone else’s problem, or how to be honest without feeling like I’m too much. But I know I can’t bury it anymore…for Amelia’s sake, for Yas…or especially, for myself.
Dr. Sarah said there’s quiet rage inside me that needs to get out, and she’s right. Maybe the first step isn’t figuring out how to express it perfectly, maybe the first step is just admitting it’s there.
I’m a Virgo with firstborn, overachiever energy who’s been carrying everything alone for so long that vulnerability feels unnatural.
I’m an ADHD woman who learned that my emotions can make people frustrated.
I’m an eldest daughter, a recovering southern Christian girl who was taught that rage is uncouth, unacceptable.
I’m a mother watching her daughter carry the same quiet, misunderstood fury I’ve carried my whole life.
What happens if I put it all down?
I don’t have the answer yet…but, I do know the rage is there, and it won’t go anywhere until I allow it to come to the surface.
Maybe it’s time to stop being “good”. Maybe, it’s time to learn how to be angry and to grow from it…to shed these layers of protection, these walls, to actually live a life where I’m honest with the people around me and…more importantly…honest with myself.
It’s time to trust that it’s not actually too much, that I’m not actually too much, that there’s space for me, the real me.
And, she’s okay.
Jess, this is beautiful. Raw and beautiful. There’s so much I can relate to and identify with 🩷🩷🩷