Hangry Isn't Anger: Understanding Frozen Stress Response

""Hangry" has become such common vocabulary that most people know exactly what it means: that irritable, snappish state when you need food. Recently, people have suggested extending the pattern-"slangry" for sleepiness-related irritability, "shanger" for shame-triggered snappiness, "franger" for frustration-fueled reactivity. It's clever, and naming these states does help create awareness. But I think these neologisms accidentally reveal something more important: We've lost the ability to distinguish between our stress response and actual emotion."

"When you're hungry and irritable, here's what's really going on: Your blood sugar is low, your body perceives this as a threat to survival, and your sympathetic nervous system activates. In our evolutionary past, low blood sugar meant you needed to hunt-to go toward food, which meant fighting for it. The irritability you feel is the fight response: a confrontational readiness aimed at anything that stands between you and what you need."

"This is fundamentally different from the flight side of the stress response ( anxiety, avoidance, wanting to escape). They're physiologically similar, but directionally opposite-fight moves toward, flight moves away. When you're tired, the same pattern emerges: you need to go toward sleep, and anything that blocks that can trigger the fight response. Here's the key insight: in modern life, we almost never complete this stress response."

Hunger-induced irritability results from low blood sugar triggering the sympathetic nervous system, which the body interprets as a survival threat. The resulting activation reflects the fight side of the fight-or-flight response, a confrontational readiness to move toward needed resources. Flight responses move away and produce anxiety and avoidance. Tiredness produces the same pattern because the body needs to move toward sleep. Modern social and professional constraints usually prevent completing these responses, so the physiological activation lingers as irritability rather than resolving. Labeling these states with slang like "hangry" obscures the distinction between a stress response and a discrete emotion. Recognizing the difference changes how such states should be managed.

Read at Psychology Today