New research published in the journal Menopause shows that as women get older, they get better at handling their anger. Researchers looked at health reports from over 500 women aged 35 to 55 years old who are part of the Seattle Midlife Women’s Health Study.
On the whole, “state anger,” which refers to feeling mad, increased as the women aged, according to the study. At the same time, other indicators, such as hostility, anger reaction and “anger expressed aggressively” decreased. The only indicator that did not change with age was “anger suppression.”
“These results suggest better emotion regulation may occur during midlife,” researchers said in a press release. “Additional study of women’s anger in context of everyday life is recommended to effectively inform emotion regulation and anger management strategies and their consequences for midlife and older women.”
Nancy Fugate Woods, a professor in the Department of Family and Child Nursing at the University of Washington and one of the study authors, told Newsweek that this emotional regulation comes because women develop certain strategies that can help them reduce reactivity. This includes cognitive reappraisal, or the act of seeing situations from different perspectives.
There have been previous efforts to look into how women experience clinical depression and sadness during perimenopause and early postmenopause, but not anger. This is likely because of the way women are discouraged from expressing anger because of the risk of social rejection, researchers said.
While the “mental health side of the menopause transition” can significantly affect women’s personal and professional lives, Dr. Monica Christmas, the associate medical director for The Menopause Society, said they have not always been acknowledged.
“Educating women about the possibility of mood changes during these vulnerable windows and actively managing symptoms can have a profound effect on overall quality of life and health,” Christmas said in a statement.
