Cold plunges, breathwork and nervous system regulation tips have become a major trend. Online influencers promise simple routines to calm stress and manage emotions. But some experts say the conversation can skip a deeper issue, especially when it comes to women and anger.
Ozarks at Large's Fallon Frank spoke with a counselor and a gender studies scholar about how culture shapes the way women experience and express anger.
Scroll through social media, and it's hard to miss the growing wellness trend around nervous system regulation. Influencers promote breathwork routines and quick resets to calm the body and mind. But behind the aesthetic, self-care content is a much bigger conversation about emotions, trauma and the way people are taught to manage feelings like anger.
Kathryn Sloan is a professor of Latin American history and director of gender studies at the University of Arkansas. She says historically, women's anger has rarely been taken seriously.
"Women's anger has rarely been ignored. It's been managed, medicalized, mocked and even feared."
Sloan says instead of being seen as a normal human response, anger has often been framed as inappropriate for women or even treated as a sign of instability. That messaging often starts early. While boys are generally allowed to show frustration or aggression, girls are more likely to be encouraged to stay calm, be polite and smooth things over when conflict happens.
"Young girls are socialized to suppress those feelings of anger."
And in many situations, girls and women are not just expected to control their own emotions. They're expected to manage everyone else's, too.
"They're not supposed to express anger, but they're also expected to manage other people's anger — to console, to patch things over, make nice."
That pressure to stay agreeable can follow women into adulthood, showing up in workplaces, relationships and everyday interactions.
Joi McGowan sees that pattern often in her therapy practice. She's a licensed professional counselor and the owner of Amani Counseling & Co. in Northwest Arkansas. She says many women struggle to even recognize their anger because they were never taught that it could be a useful signal.
"When we notice anger, it is that some type of boundary has been crossed."
McGowan says when those signals get ignored or suppressed, the emotion doesn't disappear. Instead, it often shows up in other ways, like anxiety, irritability or physical stress.
"I think sometimes when we are suppressing anger, we probably are going to start noticing some somatic, bodily symptoms. You may start noticing more pain or start noticing more headaches. You may even start feeling more sick."
The internet is full of advice about how to calm those physical stress responses — things like breathing techniques and morning routines designed to regulate the nervous system.
One grounded example of this sort of work is therapeutic breathwork. It refers to any type of therapy that uses breathing exercises to improve mental, physical and emotional health. McGowan says some of those tools do have real scientific grounding. Understanding how the nervous system reacts to stress can help people recognize what their body is doing in moments of conflict or anxiety.
"This term of how do we regulate our nervous system — I think it's really great, and I think it is something that I often tell my clients about."
But she says regulation shouldn't mean shutting down feelings altogether.
"It is not to dismiss our emotions. It is to honor them, to listen to the story that they have to tell us and to lean into them."
For some people, techniques like breathwork can help slow down the body's stress response.
"Breath is so important. The one thing we always have with us is our body and our breath."
Still, Sloan says the wellness conversation can sometimes overlook the bigger picture — the social pressures and expectations that may be causing stress in the first place.
"If things are causing me stress and my cortisol levels are going up, am I just going to take a pill to manage it?"
When you don't actually deal with the actual stressor — those stressors often include emotional labor, the invisible work of managing relationships, smoothing conflicts and keeping peace in families or workplaces. Sloan says research shows women take on much more of that responsibility than men.
But anger itself isn't necessarily negative. Historically, it has also fueled social change.
"Women's anger has often been treated as a social problem, yet historically, it has been one of the most powerful engines of political change."
Movements for civil rights, gender equality and social justice have all been driven, at least in part, by women who refused to keep their frustrations quiet.
McGowan says on a personal level, learning to express anger safely can be an important part of healing.
"I think healthy anger looks like grief. It looks like lament and sorrow. It looks like advocating for myself in situations that are safe enough for me to advocate."
For both experts, the goal isn't to eliminate anger or regulate it away, but to understand it.
"Anger says, 'I need to be heard.'"
And Sloan says when people listen to that message, anger can become something more powerful than just a personal feeling.
"What patriarchy fears most is not women's anger itself, but the political clarity that anger can produce."
Frank is one of our student reporters this year with Ozarks at Large, focusing on maternal and women's health in Arkansas. Funding for her reporting is supported by the Women's Giving Circle with the University of Arkansas.
Ozarks at Large transcripts are created on a rush deadline and edited for length and clarity. Copy editors utilize AI tools to review work. KUAF does not publish content created by AI. Please reach out to kuafinfo@uark.edu to report an issue. The audio version is the authoritative record of KUAF programming.
