Why positive thinking can give you autoimmune disease.
If you are the kind of person that:
- swallows your anger instead of expressing it
- pretends everything is OK when it isn’t
- says YES when you mean NO
- believes you are not an angry person
- feels uncomfortable around expressions of anger
Then you may be at risk of developing autoimmune disease.
Here’s why.
MY STORY
As a child, when unkindness was directed my way in an angry tone, I learnt to associate anger with being mean.
When I was shouted at, I learnt to associate anger with shouting.
I internalised these violent experiences and took them to mean that anger was dangerous, unkind and harmful.
As a result I made a vow to myself that I would NEVER be an angry person so as not to hurt people the way I had been hurt. So as not to be mean to anyone as I had been mean to. So as not to humiliate anybody the way I had been humiliated.
HOW DID THIS WORK OUT FOR ME?
It went pretty well for a while.
Or so it seemed.
Superficially, everything appeared great.
- I got on with many people
- I never rocked the boat
- I maintained an external self-image of calmness
- I got to stick to the image I had of myself of being a “nice girl”
But inside my body was starting to show signs.
I started getting ill.
The anxiety and stress of maintaining my cool outer exterior was beginning to take its toll on me.
And on a blood test, my inflammation was sky high.
Eventually I was diagnosed with underactive thyroid and Hashimotos Autoimmune disease.
The effects were horrendous:
-extreme fatigue
-no energy to climb up stairs
-anxiety
-depression
-brain fog
-thoughts of “what’s the point?”
-dry skin
-constipation & hemmaroids
-bloated belly
-wondering how I would make it through the day.
At the time I didn’t understand that my repressed emotions and lifestyle were causing this illness.
And why would I?
No one talks about this in school, university or in traditional medicine.
But I knew something had to change.
Through a 5 year journey of self-discovery including plant medicine, psychotherapy and coaching, I was finally able to release a lot of my trapped emotions.
WHAT I DISCOVERED
I saw how throughout my life I had deluded myself that I wasn’t an angry person, and that I didn’t get angry.
And yet I judged other people who displayed violent expressions of anger.
Of course I felt anger because anger is a NATURAL human emotion that everyone experiences.
Take toddlers.
They natural display their anger and don’t think twice about it. Until they get to around 5 or 6 and they are taught (often in a violent way) that anger is BAD. This is when many children learn to shut down their anger and replace it with a more acceptable emotion.
I, like so many of us in society, learnt to disassociate from my anger so much that eventually I became numb to it.
And that became my base level emotion.
Dissociation. Numbness. Cutting off my emotions.
It lasted until all of the suppressed rage that I had swallowed my whole life wouldn’t fit inside me anymore.
It lasted until it started seeping out of the seams where I was trying hard to keep it all together.
And it looked like:
- a hot angry rash all over my body
- extreme anxiety
- feelings of intense annoyance, frustration and resentment
- intense inflammation in the body (as shown on blood tests)
- diagnosis of underactive thyroid & Hashimotos Autoimmune disease.
THE AHA MOMENT
There was a particular moment that changed things for me.
I remember thinking to myself that if someone came up to me in the street and tried to kill me, I would die. I would die because I would be unable to get angry enough in the moment to defend myself.
I’d just wait until afterwards and then go and complain about it to someone else.
By by then I’d already be dead.
This thought scared me.
Then I rememebered a time I was around 13 and went on a camel ride on the beach in Dubai. The camel herder started to touch me inappropriately.
My typical freeze response came into action.
Do nothing. Hope that he stops.
He didn’t stop.
Because of my belief that anger was BAD and should never be expressed, I was unable to defend myself in that moment.
I hadn’t yet learnt that anger plays a crucial part in being able to say NO.
SEPARATING VIOLENCE FROM ANGER
I, like so many others, didn’t know that violence and anger are not the same.
Violence is not anger. Violence is is the uncontrolled expression of anger that can be physical or verbal.
But when we grow up in a society where anger is expressed as shouting, silent treatment, threats or physical violence, we are unable to distinguish one from the other.
This is nothing new for our generation. It goes back eons.
I found a note in my one of my Granny’s beloved Rudolph Steiner books after she passed away. The note was written to herself.
It said:
“There are two aspects of my own nature. The “bad” me is intolerant and aggressive. The “good” me abhors that aspect and strives to hold any subjects of that intolerance and aggression in the light…I need constant work on this and am not sure I have time now to complete the transformation. No doubt I will have to continue the lesson in a future incarnation”.
First of all, my granny was a spiritual badass believing in reincarnation.
Second of all, I wish I could have released her from believing that a part of her was bad. She wasn’t bad. She just didn’t know any better. She had never been taught how to safely and respectfully express her anger. As a result it came out the only way she had been taught: as violence.
After finding this note I started reading up on anger, in particular the work of Dr Gabor Maté.
In his Book “When the Body Says No”, Maté discusses the power of anger in our own healing.
He shares how harbouring anger and forcing it down causes more harm than good. Anger, when unexpressed, can breed hostility, resentment, and aggression. This leads to more stress in the body and that does not aid in our healing. In particular the stress manifests as inflammation, which is a key marker in diagnosing autoimmune disease.
That’s why getting in touch with you anger is so important. ESPECIALLY if you are the kind of person who, like me before, tells yourself you are not an angry person.
HOW MY ANGER HAS HELPED ME
Once I started actively getting in touch with my anger, I saw its utility as a catalyst for change.
The first time I used my anger was pretty epic, I have to say.
I remember my ex partner chasing my cat around the flat. She was terrified. I had already told him I was not OK with this. But he turned it round on me, saying that I should stop judging him and instead support him to heal this within himself.
The old boundary-less Abbey accepted that because she needed to maintain the exterior mask of being a “nice person” and not judging people.
This was, until I saw him do it again and my cat defecated on the kitchen floor because she was so terrified.
And that point I felt the anger surging up inside of me and instead of repressing it, I allowed it to flow out in its natural, healthy expression.
I SHOUTED something at him that definitely would not have been printed in the bible and left dramatically, slamming the door behind me.
When I eventually came back home we talked. It turned out that my anger had enabled him to connect with an event in his past that was causing him to act out in a certain way.
I saw that my anger had a POWER that was healing for both of us.
And more importantly, I learnt a life lesson that I will never forget:
You will never be able to say NO until you have integrated the anger within you.
“Sometimes the biggest impetus to healing can come from jump-starting the immune system with a burst of long-suppressed anger” – Candace Pert
WHAT ELSE DID I LEARN?
By accepting and expressing my anger in a safe, respectful way, I feel energised.
And I see how this acceptance improves other areas of my life, such as the quality of my relationships and the health of my body and mind.
STEP BY STEP GUIDE TO GETTING IN TOUCH WITH YOUR ANGER
If you find it difficut to connect with and express your anger, and it shows up in the body as stress, anxiety or worry-loops, here is a framework that can help you release it.
1) EXPRESS YOUR ANGER
Try one of these this week:
-Buy a foam noodle and SMASH it against your bed
-Get a pillow and thump it as hard as you can
-Twist a towel with both your hands as hard as you can
-If you need to verbally express, scream into a pillow.
2) JOURNAL
When you wake up in the morning, set aside 10 minutes and put pen to paper.. Just let the words come out – like a stream of consciousness. By getting it out onto the paper it is no longer swirling around in your head. If you feel 10 minutes sounds like a lot, ask yourself the question “how important is my health to me?”
3) ASK PERMISSION TO SHARE YOUR ANGER
I’m not saying get violent. I’m saying talk about your anger. There is a beautful framework for this in the book “Anger, Boundaries & Safety” by Joann S. Peterson in which she gives you a process for expressing anger.
#1: ask permission. “may I share something with you?” By asking permission, the recipient is energetically much more open to listen to what you have to say.
#2: take responsibility for how you feel without blaming the other person: “I feel frustrated/annoyed/angry when I see this behaviour”.
4) CHOOSE GUILT OVER RESENTMENT EVERY TIME.
Gabor Maté shares that if he has to choose between feeling guilt and feeling resentment, he would choose the guilt every time. For him “resentment is soul suicide”. This means that he would rather say NO to someone and feel guilty afterwards than say YES when he doesnt mean it.
All of these tips are things I have tried and tested myself with great results.
I understand it can be scary to take ownership of our health and wellbeing. Especially when traditional medicine still doesn’t recognise the relationship between emotions and illness.
But what’s the alternative?
This is necessary work if we are heal our bodies and minds, avoid unnecessary illness and create a better world for the generations yet to come.
If you are struggling to connect with your anger and it it causing you pain or discomfort in the body, or if you are suffering from Autoimmune disease and are ready to say goodbye to chronic pain and inflammation, get in touch.
Love from Abbey xxx