Why You Keep Snapping at the People You Love with Anna Mathur

The sharp words, the slammed drawer, the guilt that follows. If you've ever wondered how you became someone who snaps at the people you love most, this conversation is going to feel very familiar.

On this week's episode of The ADHD Women's Wellbeing Podcast, I'm welcoming back psychotherapist and bestselling author Anna Mathur for a conversation that is honest, warm and full of the kind of insight you don't often get permission to sit with.

Anna is the author of multiple bestselling books and the host of The Therapy Edit podcast, which has reached over four million downloads. She's passionate about taking therapy beyond the consulting room and into the everyday moments where we actually need it most. Her new book, How to Stop Snapping at the People You Love (As Well As the Ones You Don't): A Compassionate Guide to Rage, Regulation and Repair, is out now, and we get into a lot of it here.

Anna and I talk about why snapping isn't a character flaw but a signal, what it's really communicating when everything feels like too much, and how so much of it connects to what we hold inside as women, as ADHD women, as people who were never really taught that anger was allowed. We also talk about hormones, perimenopause, sensory overwhelm, the cheese incident, WhatsApp groups, and why buying calm every day is not a luxury but a necessity.

Do also go back and listen to our previous conversation, which we'll link in the show notes, where we talked about burnout, exhaustion and holding it all together.

In this episode, we cover:

Why snapping and irritability are signals of overwhelm rather than signs of being a bad person

How the good girl conditioning many of us grew up with can turn unexpressed anger inward

Why women with ADHD and neurodivergent women often have a more activated nervous system as a baseline

The connection between perimenopause, hormonal shifts and rising irritability and sensory sensitivity

Why masking all day means the dysregulation has to go somewhere, often home

How circumstantial overwhelm and internal stress create a perfect storm