In this YouTube video, Dr. Zoe Shaw addresses women who feel trapped in painful relationships and have become bitter or angry. She outlines a step‑by‑step process for recognizing, owning, and releasing bitterness. First, she urges viewers to admit they are bitter and write down concrete reasons. If unsure, they should ask trusted friends for honest feedback. She explains that bitterness stems from pain combined with the story we tell ourselves, and emphasizes that feeling bitter is a choice that can be changed by shifting mindset. She advises letting go of unmet expectations and the “door that closed,” encouraging viewers to seek new opportunities instead of ruminating. A major focus is self‑forgiveness—taking responsibility for healing rather than only forgiving others. She then recommends externalizing the pain through writing, therapy, or safe expression, and developing a daily cue to speak up when boundaries are crossed, turning resentment into assertiveness. Finally, she stresses living in the present and future, reframing thoughts toward health rather than revenge, and seeking professional help when needed. The video concludes with a client example who took ownership of her bitterness and is actively working to change it, reinforcing that viewers can do the same.
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Hey there, I'm Dr. Zoe and welcome to my YouTube channel. I help women stay strong in difficult relationships. So today's topic is how to not be that bitter, angry woman. So let's dive in. So I wanted to do this topic because I have a client right now who is literally saying he made me that bitter, angry woman and she wants to work on it. So here's the deal. Number one, and you've probably heard this other places because it's darn true, The first thing you have to do is admit that you are the bitter, angry woman. Now, you got to admit it, okay? And now you got to write down why. So literally, I want you to write down, I'm a bitter woman because John, Jason, and Andrew treated me badly, and now I'm taking it out on Kevin. That's a reality. Or, life hasn't turned out the way I deserve, and now I'm angry and bitter about it. You got to admit it. Write it down. Writing it down isn't what's going to hurt you. It's not acknowledging it that's going to hurt you. Number 2, and if you're here and you're not quite sure if you're bitter or not, ask your friends. If you're really bitter, you might not have a lot of them left, but your true friends will tell you. They'll be like, yeah, you're kind of bitter. They might say kind of because they're trying to be really nice, but if they say it, it's because you are. So it's important to understand why do we feel bitter? Bitterness is something that comes from pain, and it's not just Pain, but it's what we tell ourselves about the pain. And when we get to a place where we feel stuck and like there's nothing we can do about it, then we can choose to feel bitter. Now remember, it's a choice. The reality is that you do have choices. We are never really stuck. And you might be saying, Dr. Zoe, you don't get it. You don't know my situation. I'm in a horrible marriage, or I'm, you know, stuck in this place in my life. And I'm not saying that you can always change your situation. You cannot control anybody, but you can always change your mindset. What's often happening is that it feels too hard and too difficult, and you don't want to do the work to change your life. And so you're bitter. But remember this, as long as you have a functioning brain, and you do because you're watching this, you can always change your life. You are not required to be who you were 5 minutes ago. So what do you have to do? You gotta let go of the way it was supposed to be. Now, I know me saying that makes you feel like, you're telling me to give up my hopes and my dreams? I have to let go of my expectations? Yeah, it may sound painful, but what you're not recognizing is that when a door has closed, when it's not yours to walk through anymore, if you stay knocking on that door, if you sit down and get pissed because you can't get through that door, that's hurting you more than if you turn around and go find another door. Sometimes things don't turn out the way we want them to, and so your job is to recognize that, work on letting it go, and when you do that, you'll find that the doors do open and it can be better than you even imagined. One of the last steps is that you have to learn to forgive. Now, everybody says forgive other people, that's important, you got to forgive other people, you got to forgive the person who did the thing to you. But here's what you need to understand: What was done to you was 100% somebody else's fault, but it is 100% your responsibility for fixing it. If you don't live up to that, you are letting yourself down. So I'm not talking about forgiving other people; I'm talking about forgiving yourself. Forgiving yourself for staying too long. Forgiving yourself for leaving too early. Forgiving yourself for allowing. somebody to hurt you the way they did, forgiving yourself for putting yourself down, for hurting yourself. I'm talking about forgiving yourself. That's one of the biggest ways that you get rid of bitterness. Now, when you walk through those steps, the next thing that you have to recognize is that bitterness is like a pressure cooker. And you might be a strong woman, you might think that you say everything that you think, but you don't if you're feeling bitter. If you're feeling bitter, it's because you, you're holding things in. So what you have to do is you have to start speaking the pain that you feel. Don't do it to other people right away because you've got a pressure cooker and you are going to explode on them in a very unhealthy way. Start writing it down, talk to a therapist. You need to get it all out, all of those things that you're hurting about, all of those, those, those pains that you feel, all of the things that were done to you. You need to get all that out. And then what you have to do is determine on a daily basis that you will speak up when you feel resentful. So whenever you begin to feel resentful, you need to know that that is a cue to you that your boundaries have been passed. Someone has crossed your boundaries and you need to speak up. When you speak up on a regular basis, it doesn't come out as bitterness. It doesn't come out as anger. It comes out as assertiveness. When you hold it in, it pressurizes, it gets ugly and yucky, and then you are being mean and nasty and you are throwing out zingers to everybody, and that is not health. So you get rid of bitterness by actually speaking up. You gotta know that you are bigger than bitterness. Bitterness is the big lie. It is an infection and it can run deep and hard and destroy you from the inside. Bitterness is about the past and you need to live in the present. And the future. Work on changing your focus to future thoughts and not past thoughts, and not future thoughts of revenge, but future thoughts of health. And get help if you need it. The client that I talked about in the beginning of this episode took ownership of her bitterness. She knows that's not where she wants to be, and she's working on changing that. And you can too. You've got this.
