The dark-green fruit bowl, intricately shaped like a leaf, stood proudly on our kitchen table. A friend brought it back from Venice in 2012, and it was one of my favourite pieces of china.

But that didn’t stop me picking it up and hurling it across the room.

Gripped by an uncontrollable rage, I watched as it soared past my husband’s head, missing him by inches. How it didn’t break I’ll never know. Almost immediately I felt an overwhelming sense of shame and fear.

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Rachel Rounds found herself hurling her favourite piece of china at her husband in a fit of rage, and it seems she's not the only unable to control their intense feelings of anger

How had I let my anger erupt like this? The kitchen floor was a mess of fruit. The dog hid in her basket, terrified. And my husband gave me a look of such weariness, I instanty regretted it.

Then he turned and left the room without another word. It was such a banal argument too — a row over whose turn it was to pay the childminder. Yet I had turned it into a full-blown attack, the kind of incident that ruins trust and ends relationships.

A former RAF officer and veteran of two wars, my husband might justifiably have rung the police that night, and joined the 2.3 per cent of married men who last year reported domestic abuse, according to the British Crime Survey.

That he didn’t says much about the strength of our relationship and how well he understood me. In our 14 years together, he has seen me fly off the handle on the odd occasion, but we both knew that this — this irrational, violent anger — was a new development. We both knew that I had a problem.

Rachel (pictured) says that anger in women is far more unexpected because she is a woman, saying that although it is more prevalent than many of us realise, it's rarely seen

I’m not alone — and nor are the husbands the only ones paying the price. A startling 87 per cent of working mothers, for example, say that stress causes them to shout at their children, according to the British Association of Anger Management. And since 25 per cent report suffering stress on at least eight occasions each week, that’s an awful lot of yelling at home.

It’s not much better at work. A quarter of us, we’re told, suffer serious office-rage, and regularly kick furniture, flip keyboards or slam down phone receivers in fury.

Women react particularly badly to sleep deprivation, a recent American study found, and are angrier than men who get the same amounts of rest.

A former RAF officer and veteran of two wars, my husband might justifiably have rung the police that night, and joined the 2.3 per cent of married men who last year reported domestic abuse, according to the British Crime Survey. Rachel Rounds

Other researchers suggest that women who turn anger inwards are more likely to become depressed, and that a rise in anger partly explains the increased rates of depression among women. But why? Why are we all so cross?

Recently my friend Abigail was cycling to work when a woman in a Mini shot past her at a set of lights. Abi was hit on the elbow — not badly, but enough to fray her nerves.

At the next set of lights she confronted the driver. And something seemed to snap. The red mist came down with such speed, she not only yelled at the woman but slapped her in the face. A full-on smack.

The whole incident was witnessed by a policeman a couple of vehicles behind them.

He put Abigail in the back of his van and told her to calm down while he talked to the other woman, who rather generously decided not to press charges.

Afterwards, like me, Abi was horribly shocked at herself. We are not nasty people. We do not get into shouting matches, still less physical fights, with strangers — or loved ones. Abi is kind and intelligent and fun. I’d never have believed her capable of hitting another person.

And her action was all the more shocking, of course, because she is a woman. Despite its prevalence, women’s anger is still rarely seen.

Society gives permission for men to be angry, in the proper places. Men watch sports on TV and curse and froth with anger. But women have no obvious outlet for it.

Rachel, pictured here on her wedding day, found herself succumbing to her anger more and more often, to the point where she lost her temper explosively in response to minor issues

Part of the problem lies in the ridiculously high expectations we set for ourselves: the perfect house, the beautiful body, the clever children, the top-notch career.

But no one can achieve all of this, all of the time, and so we constantly find ourselves filled with frustration and guilt.

But instead of sitting down and giving ourselves a break, we merely pack this frustration away, put a lid on it and let it simmer. We dare not admit to ourselves that we can’t cope with caring for our children, doing almost all the housework — as we still must, it seems — and holding down a full-time job at the same time. The disappointment and dissatisfaction builds and builds. Until it spills over.

Last year, that was happening more and more often to me. At times when I got behind the wheel, I felt on-edge. I once got into a spat with a man in the car behind me who objected — with expletives and insults — when I stopped to let someone else into our queue of traffic. On that occasion I got out and yelled at him, calling him selfish and inconsiderate; telling him that I would simply leave my car in the middle of the road and walk off, and see how far he’d get then.

I was late and I was stressed, and under those circumstances, when things don’t go right for us, or someone questions our judgment, we throw a tantrum. Rachel Rounds

I was so blinded by my anger, I didn’t even see how shocked my 16-year-old passenger was. She was the daughter of a friend and we were on our way home from church.

Then there was the time I had a stand-up fight with a woman whose drive I parked across. It was the pettiest row I’ve ever had, yet somehow it evolved into much more than that.

I was picking up my son from his childminder next door to her, and running late, so I parked where I could, partially blocking her drive. Not for long, of course — I was dashing in and out. But as I came out again to put my son in his car seat, the woman opened her door and started to shout at me.

Far from being apologetic, I lost it. I started yelling back at the top of my voice. She was a silly, narrow-minded woman who was making a fuss out of nothing. I had only been a matter of minutes. She should find something more important to worry about, and so on.

And all this time I was holding my two-year-old son.

As I put him in the car, she told me I was the rudest human being she’d ever met. My considered response? I stuck my fingers in my ears and started singing loudly and shrilly: ‘La da de da, I’m not listening to you, you pathetic old bag.’ I am 43 years old, by the way.

But again this was typical. I was late and I was stressed, and under those circumstances, when things don’t go right for us, or someone questions our judgment, we throw a tantrum.

The modern world leads us to expect that life will always run smoothly — our cafe latte will always be perfect, our satnav will tell us the quickest way to go, that pretty new dress will come within hours of our online order. And when it doesn’t — like toddlers, we kick our legs in the air and scream.

Rachel (pictured) became so troubled by her outbursts of anger she decided it was time to seek help. Her therapist has helped her to deal with her anger more reasonably and learn to step back from situations

But now I was getting angry so easily, and so quickly, and over nothing. Numerous studies show that explosive anger triggers the ‘fight or flight’ response, rasing blood pressure and sugar levels and speeding up one’s heart rate.

Trigger it too often, and your heart really begins to suffer.

Finally, I decided to get some help. It was the horrid thought that exposing my son to my anger that propelled me into counselling. And over months of hard work, my counsellor and I pieced together the reasons for my anger.

Some are deeply personal to me — most obviously, the death of my father when I was 13.

None of these things were fair and I couldn’t understand why they happened to me. But at the time I held the anger in, and there it festered for 30 years.

But I also discovered other, far more common reasons for my rage. Like many women, I want everyone to like me, for example, and so I don’t often tell them what I really think. And in the end that lack of honesty turns into self-reproach. I never say ‘no’ to people, and end up resenting them for it. I want my house to be immaculate, but it rarely is. I’m tired of trying to be perfect all the time, and I am tired of doing all the ironing.

Thanks to my therapist, I’ve learned to express my anger in a more reasonable way. He taught me about ‘mindfulness’ — a way of stepping back from the situation getting control of my anger. When I feel it coming on, I freeze (or better, sit down) and pretend I’m in the other person’s shoes so I can look at things from their perspective.

Other tricks he’s taught me include counting slowly down from ten and taking deep breaths in through the nose and out through the mouth (this slows the heart rate, making you much calmer).

I even swallowed my pride and sent the woman next door to my childminder a letter of apology. Since then, I have never again exploded in front of my son.

And the leaf-shaped fruit bowl still sits on the kitchen table — an emotional reminder of the progress I’ve made, and how much I love my precious family.