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November 19, 2025 16 mins
This week on the Midweek Tease, Adelle unpacks one of the most misunderstood emotional patterns: how fear often disguises itself as anger.

Rooted in psychology and the lived experiences of African women, this episode explores why we react the way we do, what’s happening in the brain and nervous system, and how to understand the emotions hiding beneath anger. In this episode, you’ll learn:
  • Why anger is often a secondary emotion
  • How fear, shame, overwhelm, and hurt drive our reactions
  • The “Fight Response” and what it means for your mental health
  • How childhood, culture, trauma, and pressure shape our emotional patterns
  • The four faces of anger and how they show up in relationships
  • Simple psychology-backed tools to regulate anger with compassion
  • How to identify what you really need in heated moments 

It’s a soft, grounding episode for anyone who has snapped, shut down, withdrawn, or felt overwhelmed and later wondered, “Where did that come from?”
If this resonates, share it with another woman who needs permission to feel without shame. 

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Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the Midwick Teeth with me adele Jangle, where
I share some random and not two random thoughts on things.
And in this episode, I want to talk about when
fear shows up as anger. This is an experience that
very many of us have faced or are currently facing,

(00:20):
but very few of us have the language for. You know,
those moments when you snap, when you just feel irritated
over something that at the back of your mind you
know is small, When you shut down or you withdraw,
or when your tone gets sharper and you're just like,
where did that come from? You know, I've had those
moments where I will snap at someone during the day

(00:41):
and when I get back home, I'm like, I where
was that from. I also have somebody I care about
very deeply in my life who I believe is battling
this and so that's why I went on a deep
dive to recognize it in my own life, but also
to figure out how to be a better support system

(01:07):
right for this person. So, as you listen to this episode,
you may not currently be facing it in a huge way,
but this could help you be more supportive of somebody
who's having fear show up as anger. Yeah, most of
the time when you snap at people, when you experience
these moments of anger, it's normally not just anger. It's

(01:30):
fear dressed up as anger to protect you. And that's
what I want to unpack in this episode. Right, and
I sometime back did a lot of deep diving into
anger because it was one emotion that I didn't know
how to feel, and then after feeling communicate to people

(01:51):
who have made me angry. Right. And one of the
things that I found so interesting is that psychology teach
us that anger is often a secondary emotion. This means
that it often sits on top of softer or more
vulnerable emotions that we just don't feel safe enough to show.

(02:13):
So these emotions could be fear, could be hurt, could
be shame, could be disappointment, could be feeling of powerlessness,
could be anxiety, could be just that you're feeling overwhelmed, Right,
And so your mind kind of goes like, Hey, I
can't show that emotion. This is not a safe enough
space for me to be vulnerable and show that soft emotion,

(02:36):
and so your body then goes, Okay, let's show anger instead, right,
So anger becomes this armor. It's your body's way of
saying I'm protecting you, right, so let's bring it back home.
A lot of us were raised in environments where fear
wasn't safe to express, right, So we grew up hearing

(02:57):
things like, you've got to be strong you, We're gonna
handle it, no matter how tough it gets. You just
take it and go. We didn't even see the adults
in our lives express feelings of fear. Ask yourself, when
you were a kid, when you were growing up, when
you were minor, the adults around you, was there ever
a moment they told you I'm scared or you heard

(03:21):
them communicate this, right. Was there ever a moment you
heard them communicate that they were hurt, or they were
feeling shame, or they were feeling anxious or powerless, or
they were overwhelmed. No, So we didn't even have examples
growing up of what it looks like to feel those
other emotions. So we almost don't have the terminology for it,

(03:43):
but our body feels it, right, And we grew up
knowing that you're just not meant to show those emotions
because that was synonymous with you showing weakness. And so
what happens is we learned how to bury fear. We
learned how to hide hurt, We learned to silence vulnerability.

(04:04):
But one thing I know for sure about emotions is
that they do not disappear even if you ignore them
for how long it can take you years? Trust me,
there was an incident I experienced where people in my
life arrived in a way that I didn't appreciate and
it angered me. Do you know it took me two
years to feel that anger? Two one, two years, twenty

(04:27):
four months. Let me tell you. You can bury the
emotions all you want. They will not disappear. They will
leak out. And what leaks out most easily is anger
because subconsciously we feel like anger looks strong as opposed
to fear that looks fragile and weak. I mean, we

(04:50):
grew up seeing our mothers, our fathers, our aunties and
uncles and grandma's and grand pas express anger loudly, right,
But underneath that anger, perhaps what was there was exhaustion,
what was there was fear, Maybe it was generational survival.

(05:11):
But anger is what showed its face. And there's something
that therapists use called the anger iceberg. So just imagine
a picture of an iceberg. The tip can be seen
above the water, but there's a whole lot of it
that we can't see that's under the water. So this anger.
Iceberg says that above the water, which is what the

(05:33):
world sees, is irritability, snapping, stone, walling, raid, sokasim withdrawl.
But when we go below the water, which is what's
actually driving it, what real emotion is there? What we
find is fear, shame, stress, betrayal. You're feeling overwhelmed, You're

(05:54):
feeling loneliness, grief, even anxiety, feeling out of control. When
you ask yourself, maybe why am I so angry these days,
maybe that's not the right question, and maybe a better
question might be what am I afraid of right now?
Or what do I feel ashamed about right now? Or
what wound got touched? That last question is the one

(06:16):
that got me to like pause, because I feel like
end of twenty twenty three, I had like anger just
come up to the surface, and in that moment, I
didn't handle it correctly. I didn't ask the right questions.
I was actually so shocked by my anger because, as
I told you, it's not an emotion I knew how

(06:39):
to touch or feel, So it shocked me I was
just like alas kumbe, I can be angry, you know
what I mean? And where was the question I should
have been asking at the time? Is what wound got touched?
And that would have saved me a whole lot of
destractive anger, you know what I mean? And I feel

(07:01):
like asking a better question then opens the door to healing. Now,
there are very many different ways anger shows up, and
not everybody experiences anger in the same way. So there
are about four common faces of anger. There's the one
we all know, which is like explosive anger, loud shouting, snapping,

(07:23):
you know, you feel the frustration rising up quickly. The
second phase of anger is the quiet anger. This one
is a bit harder to spot than others, right, but
very many people experience this where you just go silent
or you withdraw, you completely shut down. There's also passive anger,
where there's like sarcasm here or passive aggressive responses, coldness.

(07:49):
And then there's this one, which I feel like is
really the most heart breaking, internalized anger. This is where
you turn it inward and you start self blaming high vaper, independent, hey, hey, perfectionism, overworking.
Some of these we don't even recognize as faces of anger,

(08:11):
because the one that we're socialized to see a lot
of is like the explosive anger, but it can exist
in other ways, right, And sometimes the reaction dependent on
what face of anger is more common for you. You might
find that the reaction feels bigger than the situation either.

(08:32):
For you, like afterwards, when you get reflect you're just
like what and you start apologizing becauseway, I took things
too far. Zero's one hundred real quick, and there's a
reason for that. Now, if you have experienced trauma or
high stress, or even like an unstable or chaotic childhood, right,

(08:58):
the part of your brain that is there to monitor
dangerous situations becomes extra sensitive. So to the rest of
the world, the situation looks small and looks like a
small trigger. But to you, because of all of the

(09:19):
years of trauma, high stress, or even the unhealthy childhood,
this small trigger to you feels like a big threat.
So your body goes straight to anger because it's like, yo, yo,
we need to protect this situation. So I really don't
like the stereotype of when somebody reacts, where quick to say, oh,

(09:41):
they're just dramatic. No, maybe it's just an overwhelmed nother system. Imagine,
like I think understanding this made me have a lot
more compassion for others when I have the capacity to,
because it's not all the time that I have the crazy.
There are times even me, my nervous system is overwhelmed.

(10:03):
So we're going to doe to two. But just understanding
that and understanding that the situation that is in front
of me has many layers that I may not be
privy to, and because of heightened tension and emotions in
this moment, I may not be able to understand it.

(10:25):
Now we may need air, and we may need space,
and then we'll circle back. You know, now that I've
told you all about this, like what do we do?
What can help? And I did a deep dive to
find some of the tools that therapists use, and there's
one of them that really works well for me. I'll

(10:45):
tell you which one. It's the third one. So let's
start with number one, Cintre. So the first thing that
can help is to name the primary emotion. Okay, so
the emotion that is at the bottom of their ice bag,
because in this situation, because we say remember earlier, sometimes
anger is a secondary emotion. So what's the one that's

(11:08):
at the bottom. So instead of saying I'm angry, start
naming this primary emotion with a sentence that starts with
I'm scared or I feel rejected, or I feel overwhelmed
or I feel unappreciated. Actually, now that I say this one,
I've actually done it when I'm trying to figure out

(11:29):
what am I feeling, and sometimes I'll say I'm frustrated.
Then I'm like, actually, no, no, no, no, that's not
the one, and I'm like smelling around my nervous system
to figure out what it is. This can actually help
because anger softens immediately when you name the primary emotion accurately,

(11:49):
so I'll say them again, I'm scared, i feel rejected,
i feel overwhelmed, I feel unappreciated. The second thing is
to pause before reacting. This is the different because zero
to one hundred happens really quick, but even if it's
a ten second breath that interrupts fight mode being activated,

(12:10):
it can go a long way. The third thing is
the one that I do, which is grounding your body.
Put your feet flat on the floor, take a slow
breath in and then hold it and then exhale for
longer than you're inhale and just keep doing that until

(12:30):
you feel I like to say that this normally feels
like for those of you who drive, when you put
the handbrake down of your car and it feels like
your car was like squeezing its ass. Then you put
the handbake down and it's like it's released. You know,
very strange way of explaining it, but I know you

(12:51):
get me. I know you get me. It feels like
I can breathe. That's what it feels like when I
do my breath work. And sometimes time I'll do it,
like even when I'm in bed and some you know,
before I fall asleep, I might revisit a situation that
stressing me or that I'm anxious about, and I catch

(13:11):
myself and I'm like, let's breathe, please, We're going to
bed when the dream happy dreams. Let's us ground ourselves.
Sometimes I even go outside to my flower garden and
I step barefoot outside, just to ground myself. I've done
that in the middle of phone calls that have made

(13:34):
me feel overwhelmed. I go right outside, like I could
still be holding the phone. I go outside and I
step on the grass barefoot. You know, So this one
tried and tested for me really works. The other thing
that you can do is to ask yourself what need
wasn't meant? You know, because often anger is just unmet

(13:56):
needs shouting loudly. And maybe it's you needed reassurance, or
you needed clarity, or you needed rested that one for me,
or you needed support, or you needed to feel safe.
I feel like when you ask yourself what need wasn't met?
If it's a situation where it's a friendship or romantic relationship,

(14:18):
or even at work or with a business partner, when
you ask yourself this question, it helps you identify what
the issue is and then you become better at communicating
it to the person involved or parties involved, to say
I needed clarity on ABCD, or I don't feel supported.
I need to feel more supported, you know. Or I

(14:39):
needed reassurance or I need addressed. Guys, I'm out for
a week. The fifth thing is to give yourself compassion.
We're so good at giving other people compassion, but not ourselves.
You are not a bad person for getting angry. You
are a human being whose body is trying to protect them.

(15:02):
And then the sixth, which I'll always advocate for, talk
about it with someone safe. Maybe you have a therapist,
maybe you have a friend, maybe you have a partner
who is a safe space for you. Please use your
discernment because sometimes the people around you are not a
safe space. They just happen to be around you. Find

(15:22):
a safe space and talk about it and that expressing
and I'm not saying in a trauma dumping way. Safe
spaces allow you to share and you will just feel
lighter instantly. As we wrap up this episode, I want
you to ask yourself this this week, where has fear

(15:43):
been showing up as anger in my life? That's the
question number one? Number two? What am I actually feeling
underneath my reactions? So what's the primary emotion? What's underneath
the iceberg? Under the water? Question number three? What would
happen if I treated my fear with softness instead of shame?

(16:07):
I hope you remember that you deserve gentleness, you deserve
emotional clarity, and you deserve to live a life where
you can give yourself compassion. Now, if you resonated with
this episode, feel free to subscribe wherever it is you're
listening to this on And if you know someone who

(16:27):
needs to listen to this, share it with them and
drop in the comments. What part resonated? Is there a
part that you felt like I was speaking directly to you?
Thanks for listening to The midwik TI's a Legally Clueless
Africa production. Episodes go out every Wednesday, and you can

(16:47):
learn more about us by going to legally Clueless Africa
dot com
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