The Anger of Things Not Being as They Should

This is the first book of a new collection, and it opens with a question I’ve been sitting with for years: How much of our suffering comes from the event itself, and how much comes from our fight against the fact that it doesn’t match what we expected? I used to think my anger was about the migraine itself — the pain, the canceled plans, the closed curtains. Looking closer, I found something quieter underneath, running through almost every angry moment I could remember: a single sentence, said so automatically I never noticed I was saying it.

This shouldn’t be happening. This book is about that sentence — where it comes from, what it costs, and what becomes possible once you learn to hear it. It’s rarely the pain alone that ignites anger. It’s the pain arriving exactly when it wasn’t supposed to — the morning you’d planned around, the meeting you couldn’t miss, the evening you’d been looking forward to for weeks.

The migraine doesn’t just hurt. It cancels a promise the day seemed to be making. That cancellation, more than the pain itself, is often where the anger actually begins. Underneath most of my anger, once I finally slowed down enough to listen, was the same short sentence, repeating itself so quickly I’d never noticed it before: this shouldn’t be happening.

Not a decision. Not a conclusion I reasoned my way toward. Just an automatic verdict, arriving before any conscious thought had a chance to catch up. “This shouldn’t be happening” is rarely a fact. It’s a quiet contract with reality, broken every single time reality does something we didn’t approve in advance.

Once that sentence fires, the body follows fast: jaw tightening, chest hot, thoughts sharpening into blame — at my own body, at bad timing, at whoever happens to be nearby when the words come out harsher than I meant them. Anger rarely stays quietly internal. It reaches for somewhere to land.

On the body itself, as frustration at its own limits. On other people, who happen to be present but aren’t actually the cause. On the day, the timing, the unfairness of it — a target too large to actually resolve anything with. Here’s the pattern worth naming clearly: anger often measures the distance between what’s happening and what we expected to happen, more than it measures the event itself.

The same migraine, on a day with no plans, might produce disappointment. The identical migraine, on the day of a long-awaited event, produces fury — not because the pain is different, but because the gap between expectation and reality is so much wider. Experience: the day doesn’t go as planned.

↓ Automatic thought: ‘this shouldn’t be happening.’ ↓ Emotion: heat, tightness, a rising need to blame something. ↓ Reaction: snapping, withdrawing, or silently fuming. ↓ Observation: ‘I’m not just angry at the migraine. I’m angry at the gap between this and what I expected.’ ↓ Possibility: naming the gap out loud loosens its grip, even before anything about the day itself changes.

The last time I felt real anger about my condition, what was the quiet sentence underneath it? What did I expect the day to look like, before the migraine rewrote it? Simply noticing the gap — between what happened and what you expected — already does real work, before any acceptance or letting go even enters the picture.

I expected today to look like X. It looks like Y instead. That gap is where my anger is actually coming from. Said plainly, this observation starts to separate the anger from the day itself. Letting go here doesn’t mean the migraine stops mattering, or that canceled plans stop being a real loss.

It means loosening the contract that said today had to go a certain way in order to be acceptable. The day was never obligated to keep that promise. Neither was your body. The day doesn’t owe you the version you imagined. Neither does your body. That isn’t resignation.

It’s the beginning of peace with what’s actually here. Underneath so much of our anger sits one quiet sentence: this shouldn’t be happening. Hearing that sentence clearly, instead of simply obeying it, is the first step this whole collection is built around. How much of our suffering comes from the event itself, and how much comes from our fight against the fact that it doesn’t match what we expected?

Next in the series: The Mind on Guard — on hypervigilance, and when protecting yourself becomes living permanently braced for something. to explain another symptom, but to sit with the feelings that so often ride alongside one: anger that things aren’t as they should be, and grief for the versions of days, people, and himself that pain quietly rewrote. One question runs underneath every book here: how much of our suffering comes from the event itself, and how much comes from our fight against the fact that the event doesn’t match what we expected?

He doesn’t have a tidy answer. He has ten honest attempts at sitting with the question anyway. Want the whole journey? Times — the full story, with every practice, every episode, and every lesson in one place. The Identity Series — on reclaiming yourself from the condition: Person on the Horizon Movement & Parenting — by Sarah J.S.: Hormones & Migraine — also by Sarah J.S.: Caregiving & the Sandwich Generation — by Steven Albert K.S.: Your Aging Parent About Their Migraine Healing & Lightness — by Jake R.: Grateful Body Visual Health Anxiety — by Amanda Q.