I Sometimes Feel Like Screaming, and By Sometimes, I Mean All the Time.
Postpartum Rage is a thing.
A Story That Could Be Any Mother's This blog is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
A tale of postpartum rage.
There is a scene in This Is Us that would keep haunting me throughout my postpartum. Rebecca, played by the wonderful Mandy Moore, is in the grocery store with her newborn triplets. She goes to grab a bag of yellow onions. She turns briefly to tend to her babies. Another woman grabs the bag.
Rebecca is furious. She has had it. She demands the woman give her back her onions, which are necessary for the dinner she planned. A store clerk approaches and attempts to de-escalate her outrage by invalidating her and telling her to calm down and have a seat.
Rebecca does not need to have a seat. She needs the damn onions she believes were taken from her.
She begins explaining the importance of those onions, the recipe she decided on, the specific necessity of all of it, and then she is standing in the middle of the grocery store screaming:
"IT'S NOT FAIR! IT'S NOT FAIR!!!"
Rebecca and her daughter Kate laugh about it together in present time and all is well. Except in real life, there is probably not the part where you laugh about your postpartum rage in hindsight. There is mostly just the part where you carry it quietly and wonder what is wrong with you.
The interesting part is that I saw that episode and that scene became a core memory about ten years before I would ever be postpartum. It always stuck with me. And now it feels as though it is my flashback and not Rebecca's.
Drowning Where No One Can See
The rage I experienced postpartum felt so unsafe to ever share out loud. I would question which reactions were postpartum and which were potentially trauma responses. Could it be a little of both? Almost certainly yes.
Here I was again, drowning in a sea of isolation where no one understands yet everyone has a strong opinion if you let them in. Being needed constantly by such vulnerable and helpless beings, my newborn son and my two dogs, who needed everything from me at my absolute worst, while believing that everyone was just waiting for me to fail, felt impossible.
Enter: Future Tripping
My Future Tripping part entered the party uninvited.
"Am I going to die from this? Will this stress cause cancer later on? Is the human brain and body even built to handle this? I'm not sure I can keep this up. My medications that I need to function aren't even fully compatible with sleep, and my needs to function are going to give me Alzheimer's."
These thoughts are not unusual. They are the mind's attempt to make meaning out of a body running on empty. When the nervous system is overwhelmed, the brain reaches for worst-case scenarios the way a drowning person reaches for anything within arm's reach. It is not catastrophizing for its own sake. It is a distress signal.
Research on sleep deprivation shows that even a single night of poor sleep significantly impairs the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for rational thought and emotional regulation. After weeks of fragmented sleep, the brain's threat-detection system runs on near-constant high alert. This is why the fears that arrive at 3am feel so real, so urgent, and so hard to talk yourself out of. You are not being irrational. You are running on a system that was never designed to operate under these conditions.
Can I get a bleeping minute?!
My mom was there to help, and she always is. She told me she was extremely offended by my attitude, tone, and irritability.
Cue the shame.
My mom's feelings were completely valid. She was showing up for me the best way she knew how, and my attitude was hard to be around. Two things were true at the same time: she was hurt, and I was drowning. Neither cancelled the other out.
I had not slept. I was swollen all over. My hair was falling out. The dogs were barking while taking turns with the baby crying. My mom's help was not landing the way I needed it to. And the moment I finally sat down to eat a meal that had been sitting out for two hours:
Someone. needs. something.
The thoughts kept coming:
"This isn't sustainable. No one is understanding what I am clearly and very simply saying. I can't stand anyone. I'm a horrible person for being such an asshole when my dream of becoming a mother to my beautiful and healthy baby boy finally came true. This is everything I have been wishing for my entire life."
"What if I really lose it? What if my only support leaves because I've pushed them away in anger? How much more of this can I take? Why do I resent my dogs right now? They were my babies before my baby."
I would not dare tell anyone I was struggling and filled with anger, spite, and resentment toward how inferior I was feeling. If the curveballs could stop for just a freaking minute so I could catch up, breathe, rest, and recover, I would not be this incompetent.
If I dared to say that out loud or in a text to anyone, they would tell me I brought this upon myself. That this is what they meant when they said it was going to be hard.
I was well aware of how hard this was going to be. This kind of hard was something I prayed for. I have been doing hard things my entire life. I was going to prove everyone wrong who said I couldn't do this on my own.
There was no way I was going to let anyone see me crying and dying inside. No one can ever fully anticipate what postpartum will look like or feel like for them. This type of rawness and darkness could never be risked to fall into the wrong hands.
My therapist brain would creep in every now and then to remind me of the facts. Not everyone has that built in. But the truth is that during every moment of my inner rage, I was also grateful to experience my thoughts and feelings in private.
What Was Actually Happening
Between 21 and 31 percent of new mothers report experiencing significant anger in the postpartum period, making postpartum rage at least as common as postpartum depression, which affects approximately 13 percent of new mothers. Despite this, anger is rarely screened for and almost never discussed.
Postpartum rage is not a character flaw. It is not proof that you are ungrateful, unfit, or wrong for having wanted this. It is what happens when a human nervous system is pushed past its limits without adequate support, rest, or acknowledgment.
After delivery, estrogen and progesterone levels fall sharply. These hormonal shifts directly affect serotonin and dopamine, the brain's primary mood regulators. A drop in the neurosteroid allopregnanolone, which rises during pregnancy to protect the brain from stress hormones, may also play a significant role in postpartum mood disruption.
Research published in Qualitative Health Research found that mothers become most prone to rage when they experience violated expectations and compromised needs, particularly around sleep. Mothers described the intensity of their postpartum anger as greater than anything they had experienced before having a baby. They were not overreacting. They were in genuinely impossible conditions.
The Partner Variable
I would imagine how much worse my anger and feelings of defeat would be if I had done this with the wrong partner. If I were to be judged, critiqued, and invalidated by someone I trusted. The burning resentment of being up all night while a partner snores peacefully and then wakes up refreshed just to tell you that you are putting the diaper on wrong.
For many women, that is not a hypothetical. It is Tuesday.
A 2020 study published in the journal Birth found that postpartum anger was strongly associated with depressive symptoms, unmet expectations in relationships, and a lack of emotional support. Poor partner support and low relationship satisfaction are directly linked to greater emotional distress in the postpartum period, including anger. You are not being irrational. The data agrees with you.
What CBT Has to Say About the Thoughts in Your Head
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT, offers one of the most practical frameworks for working with postpartum rage, not by suppressing it, but by learning to examine the thoughts underneath it.
The core idea is this: our thoughts are not facts. They feel like facts, especially when we are depleted and running on cortisol and no sleep. But they are interpretations. And interpretations can be examined.
Here is what that actually looks like in practice:
THE THOUGHT:
"I'm a horrible person for feeling this way when I have everything I wanted."
CHECK THE FACTS:
Feeling rage does not make you a bad mother. It makes you a human being in an impossible situation. These two things can coexist. Having everything you wanted does not inoculate you against being overwhelmed by it.
THE REFRAME:
"I am exhausted, unsupported, and running on empty. My feelings make sense given what I am carrying. Wanting something deeply does not mean it will be easy."
THE THOUGHT:
"If I tell anyone how I'm really feeling they'll think I can't handle this."
CHECK THE FACTS:
Asking for help is not evidence of failure. It is evidence of self-awareness. The people most likely to judge you for struggling are often the people least equipped to understand what you are actually going through.
THE REFRAME:
"Sharing my experience with the right person is not a liability. It is how I get what I actually need."
A helpful practice is to speak to yourself the way a good therapist would. Not dismissing the feeling, not amplifying it, but getting curious about it. What is this rage pointing at? What expectation was violated? What need is going unmet? What would you say to a friend who told you exactly what you are telling yourself right now?
You already know the answer to that last question. You would not say what the voice in your head is saying. You would say something much kinder. Start there.
So Why Isn't Anyone Talking About This?
If postpartum rage affects somewhere between one in five and one in three new mothers, across age, income, race, culture, education, and family structure, why is it still treated like a secret?
Because anger does not fit the picture of what a good mother is supposed to look like. Sadness is sympathetic. Anxiety is understandable. Rage is threatening. And so women swallow it, and the swallowing becomes its own kind of damage.
A 2022 study in BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth found that anger was slightly more prevalent than depressive symptoms in postpartum women, yet mothers are routinely screened for depression and almost never screened for anger. The researchers concluded that postpartum anger requires close attention from clinicians and researchers. It is not getting that attention yet.
Postpartum rage does not currently have its own diagnosis in the DSM-5. It falls under the broader umbrella of perinatal mood and anxiety disorders, or PMADs. That means it is real, it is recognized, and it is treatable. What it is not, yet, is named loudly enough for the women living inside it to find it before they have spent months wondering what is wrong with them.
What Helps
Name it out loud, to someone safe. The shame shrinks when it gets air.
Protect sleep with the same urgency you protect everything else. Emotional dysregulation is not a personality problem. It is often a sleep problem.
Notice the trigger before it becomes the explosion. Violated expectation. Compromised need. Those two things are almost always at the root.
Discharge the physical energy before you direct it at anyone. Move, shake, step outside, put your face in a pillow. Your nervous system needs an exit ramp.
Use the CBT check-in. Is this thought a fact or an interpretation? What would you say to a friend who said this about herself? Speak to yourself from that place instead.
Get support that is actually equipped to hold this. Not a Facebook group. Not someone who will tell you to be grateful. Someone trained to help you work through what is underneath the rage.
At some point, in the middle of all of it, a quieter thought arrived.
My dogs are just being dogs. My baby is just being a baby. And I am a woman who is postpartum, being a woman who is postpartum.
That is not a failure. That is a fact. And facts, it turns out, are a lot gentler than the stories we tell about them. Postpartum rage is not proof that you are a bad mother. It is proof that you are a human being in an impossible situation, doing your best without enough support, carrying more than anyone should carry alone.
Rebecca needed her onions. You need something too. And you are allowed to say so.
Sources
Ou, C. H. K., Hall, W. A., Rodney, P., & Stremler, R. (2022). Seeing red: A grounded theory study of women's anger after childbirth. Qualitative Health Research, 32(12), 1780-1794. https://doi.org/10.1177/10497323221120173
Ou, C. H., Hall, W. A., Rodney, P., & Stremler, R. (2022). Correlates of Canadian mothers' anger during the postpartum period: a cross-sectional survey. BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth, 22(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12884-022-04479-4
Fitelson, E., Kim, S., Baker, A. S., & Leight, K. (2011). Treatment of postpartum depression: Clinical, psychological and pharmacological options. International Journal of Women's Health, 3, 1-14.
Cleveland Clinic. (2023). Postpartum rage: Symptoms, diagnosis and treatment. https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/24768-postpartum-rage
Postpartum Support International. (2025). Mom rage: Causes, ways to cope, and reasons for hope. https://postpartum.net/mom-rage-causes-ways-to-cope-and-reasons-for-hope/
Beck, A. T. (2011). Cognitive behavior therapy: Basics and beyond (2nd ed.). Guilford Press.
If you are located in Florida, California, or Tennessee and are looking for individual support, I would love to work with you. Learn more about therapy services at bethsiller.com.
Not in one of those states? Beth offers virtual workshops and professional trainings available nationwide. Find out more at bethsiller.com.
This post is for informational purposes only and does not constitute therapy or medical advice. Beth P. Siller, LMFT is a licensed therapist, not a physician. Please consult a qualified medical or mental health professional for personalized support.
