241 | Releasing the Rage: How Moms Can Process and Grow from Anger with Bronwyn Schweigerdt

Are you constantly feeling overwhelmed, frustrated, or on the verge of snapping, yet unsure of how to manage those emotions without guilt or shame? In this episode of Moms Without Capes, we are chatting with Bronwyn Schweigerdt, a licensed psychotherapist, podcaster, and anger expert, who shares her insights on why anger is a misunderstood emotion—and how moms can use it to transform their lives.

In this episode, Bronwyn and I explore:

• What anger really tells us about our needs and boundaries.
• Practical strategies for processing anger in healthy ways that foster growth.
• How anger can affect your relationships and how to communicate it constructively.
• The connection between suppressed anger, overwhelm, and burnout.
• Steps you can take today to start using anger as a tool to reclaim your sense of self.

Follow Bronwyn at https://angryattherightthings.com/ or follow her on social at https://www.facebook.com/bronwyn.schweigerdt/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/bronwyn-schweigerdt

Listen to her podcast, Angry at the Right Things, found wherever you are listening to this episode.

To schedule a 15 minute consultation to see if therapy could help with your journey, go to www.momswithoutcapes.com/start (This is for moms who live in Montana ONLY)

Transcript

Feeling the Rage
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[00:00:00] 

Are you tired of feeling like a ticking time bomb carrying the weight of motherhood, marriage in life while your anger simmers, just beneath the surface. You're not alone. Today, we're exploring why anger shows up what it's really telling you about your needs and boundaries and how you can process it in healthy ways to grow and reconnect with yourself. Welcome to moms without capes the podcast where you'll get practical strategies. For reclaiming your sense of identity. Outside of motherhood. I'm Onnie and my goal is to help you prioritize your needs. And carve out space for yourself. So that you can discover who you are beyond your role as a mom. For years, I was buried under piles of dishes and endless loads of laundry. Constantly putting my family's needs. In front of my own. I was overwhelmed. 

Exhausted. I felt completely invisible. It seemed impossible to carve out time for anything [00:01:00] that didn't directly revolve around my family. 

But all of that changed. When I finally decided to move myself up on my own to-do list, I started prioritizing things. That brought me joy and fulfillment, allowing me to reclaim my sense of worth and take ownership of my life instead of feeling like I was constantly. managing things for everyone else. As a mom of six, I know firsthand the struggle to juggle it all. But through years of learning, growing, and shedding, the supermom identity. I've discovered how to live in alignment with my needs without feeling guilty. And now I'm here to help you do the same. You don't have to lose yourself in motherhood. Together, we can hang up the supermom Cape. And embrace a more balanced, joyful life. This. Is Moms without capes. Today, we're chatting with licensed psychotherapist and anger [00:02:00] expert Bronwen. 

Schweigert. To tackle the powerful and often misunderstood emotion of anger. And how it might just be the key to your transformation. In this episode, you'll gain tools to manage anger in the moment. To shift your perspective on what it means to feel angry. And you'll learn how addressing your feelings can help you reclaim the vibrant whole person you are outside of being just a mom. towards the end of the episode. I'll share how you can get a resource that will help you reclaim your sense of self beyond motherhood. So be sure to stay to the end. All right. 

Let's dive into today's conversation.

Hey Bronwyn, welcome to the Moms Without Capes show. Today we're going to be talking about anger, so I'm going to dive right in and ask you why anger is a natural and important emotion [00:03:00] and how moms can reframe their relationship with it.

It's so interesting. I'm a marriage and family therapist and I just had a new client yesterday who is a mom of two young children and our whole session is about reorienting her relationship with anger so her children can reorient theirs because she's the model and they're picking it up from her first and foremost, that is normal. She feels tremendous shame that they're picking up her dysfunctional anger habits. I want to debunk that because, there's no shame. We're human and anger is the hardest. Emotion to deal with our society, including the therapeutic community knows nothing about how to foster a healthy relationship with our anger.

You can go to a therapist and you're going to hear anger management. We don't want to manage it. We want to get to the root of where it's stemming [00:04:00] from. Not just symptom management. We want to. Heal our relationship with anger. Anger is not bad. It is not inherently shameful.

There's nothing shameful about it because our anger is valid. It is always valid. Our children's anger is always valid. So I just want to start from that place because I think as a mom, we all feel so much shame about how we've effed up our kids basically, and we see it, every day and it's so hard and we feel so much shame and we feel like we're the only ones and those are lies.

Those are absolute lies. I want to say also, at the societal collective level, the therapeutic institutions are not helpful in this way. Even some of the best parenting experts. I'm not satisfied with what I'm hearing.

As far as what I helped her with on a practical level yesterday, she is already validating her young children's [00:05:00] anger, which is good because she's learning that from parenting experts. So that's better than our parents did. it's progress.

Here's what I told her to do. Other than just validating her children's anger, I said, let's do this. When you feel anger yourself, I want you to just put all of it into words like this. So I'm going to give you an example right now, I got really angry, I have a cat that made me really angry not too long ago. She got into a plant and, spilled soil everywhere. It was just a big pain. So this is how I got angry at her. Her name is Tia.

So I said really loudly, I said, Tia, I am seeing soil from my pot spilled all over my desk and the windowsill. And I am so angry. I'm angry with you. I'm also angry with me that I even let you into this room, that I trusted you again, when you've already proven to me. That you're going to get into the pot.

I'm really angry. Like it's going to take me 15 minutes to clean this [00:06:00] up. And this is like the third time in a week. I just expressed every single thing. notice what I didn't do. I didn't disparage Tia. I didn't call her a name or humiliate her. Look at what I did do.

I externalized all I expressed the anger out of my body into the ether. I'm not suppressing. I'm not saying, Tia, that makes mommy really mad. No, I'm being real. My voice got loud, but I did not say anything. I regret. I did not shame my cat.

I was just completely honest in the moment. So for me, I felt a million times better after I did that. If Tia was a child, I would have modeled that for my child. Do I want that for my child? Yes, I do. That's what I want to model. So It's not saying things we regret later.

It's setting a really healthy model of just being honest in the moment because when we suppress the anger, it will leak out. It [00:07:00] will also make us anxious and depressed 

Suppressed anger, like suppressed anger that's not externalized and expressed in a healthy way. You said some amazing things right there, because being in the therapy world, I have come to Talk about managing anger and until you said that I was like, why would we manage anger?

We don't manage happiness or jealousy or all of those other emotions we are given a whole plethora of emotions We're not meant to feel happy all the time. We're meant to feel all of these different emotions. And so that whole idea of managing seems silly right now after just listening to your explanation 

Why do I say you need to manage that anger. I do think acknowledging it and expressing it are keys. To be able to feel better, to model it for our kids, not only do that, but also to feel better ourselves,

Yeah. I can't use that same loud voice when I go to the grocery store when I'm [00:08:00] frustrated with, the cashier, but I can say, I'm really frustrated right now. What's going on? I can say that. And we're modeling that for our kids

Yeah. And then also the shame. That comes from, not only is it maybe coming from the shame, but it perpetuates the whole shame cycle that we start feeling like we are doing something wrong because we get angry. Before I jumped onto this podcast recording, I did a consultation and the woman was talking about how she felt frustrated and angry the night before with her baby and how, She immediately went to saying that she was a bad mom because she felt angry.

even for 30 seconds. I was able to talk myself down or anything, but I was like, it's okay to feel frustrated. 

If we're all honest, we all resent the hell out of our children.

we give and give and we see nothing in return until they're my daughter's age, which is now 21. 

sometimes we don't see any gratitude until they've had [00:09:00] kids.

Maybe we see something then maybe. So of course, we're like giving of ourselves day and night. We're not any returns. That is normal to resent your children. That is normal. And there's nothing wrong with that. That's a natural human response.

what are some signs that moms may be suppressing their anger? And how could this be contributing to feelings of overwhelm, emotion, exhaustion, anxiety and depression. How do we know if we've been suppressing?

I will say postpartum depression, anxiety are suppressed anger. not at the baby. It's at the people around the mom. It's at the spouse who's not helping or stepping up enough or even present enough. It's at the mom who didn't show up to help, even though the new mom was helping on her mom to help out.

It's at all these other things, that's their suppressed anger, that they're not externalizing They're just suppressing, they're dissociating from it Or maybe they're not bringing about [00:10:00] accountability to that person who is supposed to step up and help them.

But it is suppressed anger. So anxiety, depression, and then a lot of us get. Somatic symptoms

Does it ever show up in your body? 

Oh, yeah. somatically I believe we feel betrayal and disgust in our gut. So we'll see gut issues. For example, and then as moms, I believe we get triggered so much. With things that are very much out of our own awareness. our experience as a baby, our implicit memories can get triggered up.

And then our experience of our mothers can get resurfaced. We're identifying unconsciously with that baby. And we're feeling like we're the baby and no one's caring for us. And all of that can get triggered. We usually feel that in our gut. Those are like where our own inner child lives, I believe is in our gut. I, myself, this is now almost 21 years ago after my daughter was born. I got [00:11:00] voraciously hungry. I could not stop. Everyone was like, Oh my God, you just had a baby. You look great. And then I start gaining all this weight. 

And now you're getting overweight. This is crazy. I couldn't stop eating. I thought it had to do with nursing and I know nursing can make you hungry, but I was eating like, Day and night. I would wake up at two, three, four in the morning to eat. It was insane. It was not the nursing. And now I look back and as a therapist, I realized I felt emptiness in my gut.

And that emptiness was little,

Yeah.

that was little Bronwyn going, where's my mother? Where's my help? Where's I'm nurturing nonstop day and night. Who's nurturing me? Like where is that? And so little Bronwyn got triggered. she felt that emptiness and she, was eating nonstop for it. For that reason.

So you mentioned some triggers of childhood trauma. What are some other sources of this anger? And how do they start to address these?[00:12:00] 

I would say, there's the whole gamut. I would say for most moms, if we're honest, we're really disappointed with motherhood. 

are like what we have built up in our head for motherhood to be like? 

Unconscious expectations. So out of our awareness, we're like, Oh, the baby's going to love me unconditionally and make me feel needed and wanted. And that can happen. Especially if we're nursing and everything goes right in the first year 

does that happen? 

baby gets more independent, we can feel abandoned.

We can feel rejected when the baby goes through their toddler phase, the terrible twos. We take it very personally. I remember when my daughter preferred my husband to me, I was like, this hurts. I hate her right now. And so we feel all these feelings of rejection, abandonment, Disappointment, betrayal by our own child.

if we're not honest about that, if we don't know, these are normal human reactions to have, [00:13:00] they're not shameful. They're not bad. They're okay to feel Most people feel them. Of course we do. We're human. if we don't have that, it can make for a lot of somatic symptoms.

It can make for depression, anxiety, a whole host of things.

Yeah. I'm just thinking back, all of that unresolved Anger and feeling isolated with what you're sharing, like all of these emotions that it's typical for moms to feel it's normal, but because we don't talk about it, we can feel so isolated and it just continues to keep us in that state of feeling like there's something wrong with us, so that it's not okay to feel these things.

Yes.

Yeah, it's sad. like you said we have to look at the progress and the things that, even doing this podcast right now, letting moms know that it's normal to be feeling your feels, and to be feeling angry at times, and frustrated, and [00:14:00] there's the betrayal and the things that come along with it. 

It's so normal. And I'm thankful for Brooke Shields book a few years ago, her own journey in postpartum depression. And I was thankful that she published that because our moms didn't have other people stepping up and being honest about their journeys.

And let's take that stigma away. Of course, there's days where she felt like throwing her baby against the wall. Yes, that's normal.

What matters is that we're not doing it. That's all that matters. If you fantasize about leaving your baby in an open field, like that's just a fantasy and that's just expressing how you're feeling disappointed alone let down or rejected.

That's all that is. Yeah.

Talking about that, all those other emotions that are, fueling the anger or being expressed as the anger, that's the anger iceberg for the secondary emotions and primary. Can you talk a little bit about that for [00:15:00] moms who might be listening that aren't familiar 

Yes. So anger is what we call a secondary emotion, there's always primary emotions underneath it, under the iceberg. And really, I just see it as, three different primary emotions that are all overlapping. So feeling rejected, feeling abandoned. Feeling betrayed. Those are, three different aspects of the same thing, right?

And even when we have, let's say, a 4 year old who doesn't listen to us because, our kids don't, they don't listen to us and it drives us. Insane. And that's okay. But what are we really feeling when they're ignoring us? We're feeling rejected. We're feeling betrayed. And if we grew up feeling invisible in our home of origin, that's getting replayed.

So little Onnie is now what the hell? We're going to have an overreaction in the present moment. It's going to be disproportionate. Because we're re experiencing something we went through in our childhood that [00:16:00] we haven't processed. just feeling unheard, just feeling like we don't matter is so triggering.

So that's what's under the anger. we do need to get to what's under the anger. That is what's most important and see that as valid.

Yeah. When you're working with moms who are struggling with anger that come to you, because they're experiencing some mom rage or they're feeling some anger and they want to help resolve it. Do you walk them through a specific framework or what are some steps that you help them with to resolve that anger and to Feel okay with feeling angry,

Yeah. So it depends what the anger is all about. if it's a partner that didn't show up. I've had a mom who told me that she only had a child cause her partner really wanted to have a child. She actually didn't really want to be a mom. when she did, he just wasn't really involved at all.

She felt tricked. 

She felt very duped. So let's unpack that anger is an emotion [00:17:00] and I like to define emotion as something that elicits motion. it wants to move us. In some way, it wants us to channel it out into boundaries, into assertiveness, into accountability of some sort.

And so let's figure out if what's under your depressive episode, or, anger is feeling betrayed by your partner. Let's move forward in a way where we can bring about a resolution that might look like, Being really honest with him and depending on his response, it might look like, maybe not staying in that partnership if it's really bad, but maybe he doesn't know, maybe he doesn't have a clue.

A lot of partners, when a mom has a new baby feel abandoned. that's their own childhood. Feeling of abandonment when their baby brother was born, that's getting replayed out a lot of times out of their own awareness. they feel like, what am I chopped liver?

they don't use words and just let the mom and baby [00:18:00] bond. then the mom feels abandoned by him and it's this whole abandonment party going on.

And so being able to identify what is actually going on here and how can you start moving towards a better solution to our better relationships.

Yeah. So I like to say that anger is like the light on the dashboard of a car saying, Hey, check under the hood. Something needs repair. I want us to start viewing it as just that. we don't look at the dashboard of our car and go, that is horrible. I can't believe that dashboard is lighting up.

We don't judge it. We don't shame it. We say, Oh, I need to look under the hood to bring about resolution. that's. What anger is for to bring about repair resolution. let's look at why that anger is there and how we can resolve that problem it's alerting us to.

So using as a clue to get curious about what's going on underneath [00:19:00] that anger work towards making progress in those areas. Sure. That makes a lot of sense. So what final advice would you have for women who are listening to this that may be feeling that shame and guilt about feeling anger?

I really feel like it is unethical that all expecting moms don't get a big handbook that says, be prepared. You know what my girlfriend when I was pregnant, she had already had, I think her three kids, she was done. And I was having my first, and she gave me a card and it said, welcome to the ride of your life. I remember just being like, where was my handbook that said, welcome to the ride of your life. If you thought you had it together very funny. you're going to get more angry than you ever have. You're going to feel more shame than you ever have. You're going to be hit in the face with all your unprocessed work of your childhood get ready here you go. I feel like it's unethical as a culture in the Western, we send people, we're sending [00:20:00] people to, Mars, why aren't we doing this for women? This is going to be the hardest thing you have ever done. And it's going to be the most disappointing thing you've ever done.

And you're going to be more disappointed in yourself than you've ever been. this is normal. here's how

Welcome to the rollercoaster of emotions. I'm going to switch gears a little bit, Bronwyn. What do you do for fun?

if I need a short break, I try to dance every day. I have certain songs that I'll play and I have my own little office room here that I'm in and no one sees me and I just dance and let my body. Express what's ever in it, all the feelings it has.

And it surprises me how my body wants to move different days. days I feel like I'm flying like a bird and other days I'm just punching, it feels really good to be in my body. work alongside of it and let it just work out whatever's inside of it and [00:21:00] express that.

And to dance like no one's watching,

Because no one is watching.

So do you have a book that you could recommend or that you think other moms would enjoy 

two books

Absolutely.

Okay. So one book, it's one of my favorite all time books ever. It's by Glennon Doyle, Untamed.

Yes.

I really loved her book. the other book that just came to mind when you asked that is written by Jeanette McCurdy. She was a child actress who was on iCarly, which I didn't watch, but my daughter and that generation did. she wrote a book and the title is quite startling, but once you read it, you're like, Oh, I understand why she named it this, it's called I'm glad my mom died.

I've seen that book. I didn't realize that was from the girl that was, I've seen that and it has intrigued me. Yeah, I never bought it. So that was good. Is that her bio or was it just 

her autobiography. I listened to it and it was really interesting because. When you listen to it, she reads it [00:22:00] and, her voice is so flat I'm like, wow, you're so dissociative because the things you're telling us that your mom did and you realize listening to it or reading it is like, Oh, she didn't mean to be cruel with this title.

It's just the natural conclusion anyone would draw when you objectively listen to her story. I like that we're getting into an era now. Where people write books with these titles because, having a mother, a lot of us grew up with that's your mother.

You got to love your mother. If my mother objectively actively hated me my whole life, maybe she said she loved me, but the way she treated me hurt me. Why should I love my mother? why are we forcing that on ourselves? I think it's really powerful to help us reorient.

We don't have to view motherhood as a sacred thing, it's okay to feel hatred toward our own mothers. That is an okay feeling to have

I think that's like those cultural expectations [00:23:00] that we need to start questioning.

that make us sick.

Bronwyn, where can listeners find you?

My podcast is angry at the right things and it's found wherever you subscribe to your podcast. I talk a lot about motherhood and parenting but also about relationships in general then anger and shame 

Okay. And then I will have, the links to your podcast as well as your website. Thanks so much for coming on the show today sharing with us your wisdom.

Thank you, Onnie. 

Hey there, mama. I have an awesome resource for you. Something that will help you on your way to reclaiming your sense of self beyond motherhood. Making space for self care, hobbies and fun is nearly impossible. When you're carrying the full load of domestic labor. Having a, to do list that runs a mile long and doing it all yourself. Can lead straight to burnout [00:24:00] and can be devastating to your health and to your relationships. I created a guide. That will walk you through how to share the load. It. It includes some conversation starters tips for managing expectations and practical strategies for redistributing household and childhood tasks. Grab your guide today by visiting moms without capes.com. Backslash share the load. Or click the link in the show notes of today's episode.

I want to thank you for listening to this episode of moms without capes. 

As you learn from tuning in, recognizing and processing your anger in healthy ways. Can become a tool for self discovery and growth. It's important to understand the root causes of your anger. But also to exercise certain steps to set boundaries. And express your needs. Remember you are 100% responsible for your own life. And [00:25:00] for creating the joy that you want to feel. Stop living on autopilot. Slow down, check in with yourself and please above all. Take care of yourself because you, my friend are worth it.