Jen Gallagher is here to break the silence around women's rage. She explains why anger is a vital, neurobiological survival system and how accessing somatic wisdom helps us alchemize inherited emotional patterns. Learn how to dismantle the taboo around rage, heal ancestral silences, and discover the clarity, power, and freedom on the other side.
About Jen
Jen Gallagher is a therapist, writer and activist with over 20 years of clinical experience. She's passionate about breaking the silence around women's rage in midlife, and dedicated to helping women discover the clarity and power in their own rage.
In This Episode, You’ll Learn:
- Recognize Rage as Accumulated Anger: Neurobiologically, rage is a primary subcortical brain system. Unlike fleeting anger, rage is the accumulation of decades of suppressed boundary violations, unmet needs, and unresolved systemic or personal traumas.
- Understand the Purpose of Anger: Anger acts as a critical alarm system that signals when a boundary is violated, when we need to pull back to protect ourselves, or when our nervous system is overtaxed and flooded.
- Bypass Cognitive Talk Therapy with Somatic Metaphor: Because rage lives deep in the subcortical brain beyond conscious words, untangling it requires visceral, somatic, and experiential approaches like non-dominant hand drawing, color mapping, and imagery.
- Trace Systemic and Ancestral Patterns: Unexpressed rage often stems from family systems where ancestors had to suppress their anger just to survive. Placing your personal feelings within a multi-generational genealogy helps remove individual shame and spreads the emotional weight across history.
- Balance Regulation and Activation for Real Change: The brain cannot rewire itself if it is completely calm or overwhelmingly flooded; real emotional transformation happens at the intersection of nervous system regulation and gentle emotional activation.
Resources
Juliane Taylor Shore
Learn more about genograms:
Connect with Jen Gallagher
Episode art features Jen's Grandma.
Theme music written and performed by Carter Penny.
Connect with Just Like Nana's Website.
A proud member of the Feminist Podcasters Collective.
