Why Men’s Anger Is Killing Them – What Lies Beneath It

By Ahi Wheeler, UKCP-registered Psychotherapist & Counsellor

Suicide is the leading cause of death in men under 50 in the UK. Men are three times more likely than women to end their own lives. Men between the ages of 45 and 49 have the highest suicide rate of 25.3 per 100,000.

I want you to sit with those numbers for a moment.

Now consider this: male perpetrators account for 92% of all murders. Men are the victims in 71% of homicides. And in the United States, the leading cause of death in pregnant women is murder, by a partner or ex-partner.

These statistics are not unrelated. They are two sides of the same coin.

The myth of male rationality

We live in a world where men have been conditioned, over centuries, to see themselves as rational and unemotional and to see women as the opposite. And yet, if we measure the impact of unchecked emotion by its consequences in the world around us, men’s unexamined emotional lives are by far the most destructive force we face.

The majority of decisions to go to war are led by men. The majority of people in prison for violent crimes are men. And the majority of people dying by suicide are men.

This is not a coincidence. It is the legacy of a belief system that taught men that emotions are weakness, the domain of women, and that rationality, power and invulnerability are strength.

By: Eri Mowmow Heryawan

Anger is an emotion

Here is something worth sitting with: anger is an emotion. It is not rationality. It is not strength. It is a feeling and one that, when acted out in the absence of any understanding of one’s inner world, drives violence and destruction forward.

Underneath any anger, there is almost always something else. Hurt. Fear. Pain. Vulnerability. A sense of loneliness, of not belonging, of feeling profoundly misunderstood. Anger is rarely the root, it is the surface expression of wounds that have never been allowed to be spoken, let alone healed.

And when that anger cannot be directed outward, it turns inward – as depression, despair, and hopelessness. As suicide.

A system that no longer serves

Men built many of the social structures that enforce emotional suppression and men are now among its most serious casualties. What has come to be known as the male loneliness epidemic is not a mystery. It is the predictable result of generations of men being told that connection, vulnerability and emotional honesty are not for them.

There is no female loneliness epidemic. That is not because women do not struggle – they do, enormously, often under conditions of significant inequality and danger. It is because women have, by necessity, learned to process their emotional worlds. They have had to.

Men, by and large, have not been required to. And that exemption is now proving fatal.

What I want to say to men

By: Tatiana Vdb

We all come into the world as emotional beings.

Before we have language, before we have reason, we have feelings. We are comfortable or we are in distress. We feel joy, delight, fear, pain, sadness, rage. Cognition comes later. Emotion is where we begin – and it is where we remain, whether we acknowledge it or not.

A life without emotional awareness is not a life free of emotion. It is a life in which emotion operates unconsciously, driving decisions and behaviour that we then dress up in the language of reason after the fact.

If you are a man who is struggling – if you are angry, or lonely, or lost, or simply numb – I want to invite you to consider what might lie beneath that. Not as an accusation, but as a genuine question. Because underneath anger, there is almost always something more tender. And that tenderness, when it is finally met with understanding, is where healing begins.

What has been learned can be unlearned. The tools required for that work – humility, grief, gentleness, introspection – are not weaknesses. They are, in fact, the most courageous things a person can bring to their own life.

To see ongoing suffering, or even suicide, as the alternative is a profound waste. There is much hope to be had.

Ahi Wheeler is a UKCP-registered psychotherapist and counsellor with over 20 years’ experience. She works with clients in person in central London and online. You can watch her video on men’s mental health here and book a session through Harley Therapy here.