Autoimmune diseases disproportionately affect women, accounting for nearly 80% of cases worldwide, according to a 2020 study. Women also face higher rates of anxiety, PTSD, and eating disorders like anorexia, revealing a complex health crisis.
This correlation led many to question whether behavioral factors—such as suppressed anger—might contribute to women’s declining health alongside biological causes.
For many women, expressing anger is challenging. Therapy reveals that societal conditioning encourages self-silencing, politeness, and caretaking roles that discourage open expression of emotions like anger, often viewed as a “masculine” feeling. But when anger remains unexpressed, could it manifest physically as illness?
In the late 1980s, psychologist Dana Jack identified a common pattern among female patients she called “self-silencing”—suppressing personal needs and avoiding conflict—which was linked to higher rates of depression. More recently, a University of Pittsburgh study found that suppressed anger in women of color was associated with a 70% increased risk of atherosclerosis, raising concerns about heart disease.
Many women relate to this idea of “bottled-up” anger affecting health. Sarah, 37, from London, has lived with pernicious anemia, anorexia, and later fibromyalgia, conditions she connects to unprocessed emotional pain. “I felt unheard,” she says. “The anger towards those around me settled in my body as pain—in my gut, chest, and shoulders.”
To release this trapped emotion, Sarah uses ecstatic dance, massage, diaphragmatic breathing, and grounding techniques. These practices help prevent flare-ups of her fibromyalgia symptoms such as fatigue, headaches, and memory fog. While medication helps, Sarah emphasizes the importance of physical somatic methods to manage her condition.
Stress, Emotions, and the Immune System
Dilly, 29, also from London, has Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, an autoimmune disorder affecting her metabolism and mood. After a stressful year, her symptoms worsened, leading to a diagnosis. She reflects on how suppressing her emotions may have impacted her health and medication needs.
Experts like Dr. Jolene Brighten, a naturopathic endocrinologist, explain that suppressing emotions—especially anger—can increase stress, disrupt immune function, and trigger chronic inflammation, all factors that may worsen autoimmune diseases such as lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, and multiple sclerosis.
Emotional repression can cause prolonged activation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, which dysregulates immune responses and inflammation.
Dr. Sula Windgassen, a health psychologist, highlights that health is shaped by biological, psychological, and social factors together. While research on suppressed anger and immunity is ongoing, psychoneuroimmunology shows emotional suppression negatively affects immune function.
How the Body Reacts to Suppression
Emotions trigger complex brain and hormonal responses. Suppressing feelings like anger activates brain regions involved in cognitive control but dampens emotion-processing centers, increasing cortisol production.
Elevated cortisol can either suppress or over-activate the immune system, leading to inflammation and immune dysfunction, which may contribute to illness.
Finding Healthy Outlets for Anger
To prevent emotional suppression from harming health, experts recommend developing emotional awareness through journaling, therapy, and somatic practices.
Physical activity, mindfulness, and breathwork help regulate the nervous system and ease the physical toll of suppressed anger.
Setting boundaries, practicing assertive communication, and nurturing supportive relationships are also key.
Dr. Brighten advises, “Expressing anger constructively reduces stress and the risk of immune dysfunction.”
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