The first time I blacked out from anger was in first grade… good memories.

I was playing rock-paper-scissors with Maren over who got to be Kenzie’s best friend. Looking back… not sure why I wanted to be Kenzie’s best friend so terribly, because I already had friends, the A Club, which consisted of two other girls I had started preschool with two years prior whose names started with A, and myself. I digress.

I was playing rock-paper-scissors, and I was winning. Hallelujah!

Except wait. Maren wanted to change the rules. This time we were going to do rock, paper, scissors behind our backs and then pull it out to show what we had. Now I was suspiciously losing. Every. Single. Time.

Naturally, I accused Maren of changing the signs behind her back, because her hands always flew out a few seconds after mine.

Now this was quite literally 20 years ago, so I don’t recall what was said, but I DO remember Maren shoving me and calling me a liar. And I also remember my dad telling me that the next time that girl tried something on me, I was to defend myself. Okay, that’s a kosher way to put it. My dad encouraged me to hit this other 6-year-old back.

See, this wasn’t our first rodeo, and I was my father’s only child… a girl. Therefore I was raised in many ways like a boy. So I shoved her back.

And honestly, that’s all I remember. Honest.

But in the principal’s office 15 minutes later, Maren accused me of getting on top of her and hitting and punching her repeatedly. And I vehemently denied this. I did not!

Then Mrs. Martell came in and told us she saw everything that happened, and that I had indeed been straddling Maren when she found us, and I was indeed throwing punch after punch.

I was aghast. Offended. How could this teacher lie about something like this?

The principal accused me of lying and called my parents. I was with my dad that day (it must have been a Tuesday or Wednesday, because those were dad days), thank God. Imagine if my mother had had to come in and deal with it… the horror.

Luckily, my dad told them that he had told me to hit her, since we had complained multiple times about her hitting or shoving me and nothing had been done.

I was then free to go with zero consequences.

Well, zero consequences until I went to my mother’s on Thursday, and she gently but firmly reminded me that my dad wasn’t always right and that he himself has anger issues. Therefore, I have to be careful about getting too angry. Oh, and she does NOT condone lying. Ever. No matter what.

I was confused. I hadn’t lied.

After much back and forth, my mother assessed me for a few minutes. Then she called my dad. Then I started therapy.

It turns out it’s not normal for 6-year-olds to lose track of time and memory out of anger on the playground.

Luckily, that was one of the last times that happened (that I know of… haha… oof. Okay, moving on).

I do recall many times being treated horribly in high school by a group of choir and band boys who apparently made it their mission to regularly slut-shame me because I WOULDN’T sleep with them. Solid logic, for sure. Of course, the situation was more nuanced than that, as most human interaction is.

The point, though, is that I kind of had to become a bitch in high school as a defense mechanism against these assholes. And boy, was I good at it. All words, no hands.

Then in college I started out as the super nice girl I am inside. As soon as I learned niceness = getting walked all over, the bitch came out again. And I LOVED being that person. I was bitchy, but I was kind when it mattered. I like to think I still am.

One thing I didn’t do was lay hands on someone again.

Boy, do I regret that. The amount of young men who deserved to be slapped or worse. The amount of sexual assault that happens on college campuses that administration does nothing about. I had to hold it in. I had to go about the proper routes. I had to smile and nod while someone told me rape wasn’t treated as a criminal offense on campus, but smoking weed was.

College was when I developed my autoimmune disease. It started by attacking my eyes. Yes, supposedly I will be going blind at some point in my life, because they cannot get the inflammation to stop damaging my retina. Every girl’s dream when she’s going to college for publishing and digital design. Not.

That was six years ago.

And being the psycho, stubborn academic that I am, I have researched and researched and researched chronic illness and holistic treatments while undergoing surgeries and constant scans telling me that my inflammation was spreading throughout my body.

My genuine conclusion from this reading is that if I had slapped a few more people, shoved a few more kids on the playground, I would not have so much pent-up fury and therefore, through psychosomatic understanding, so much damage and inflammation in my body.

Once I learned that women are significantly more likely to develop autoimmune disease, it all made sense.

I think every angry woman out there knows exactly what the fuck I mean.

Sigh.

If only castle law applied to people trying to invade our bodies as much as it does to our homes.

Now there’s a chance you’re wondering what I could possibly mean by this ridiculous and slightly problematic claim. In that case, we need to discuss what “psychosomatic” means and how it’s relevant to anger, especially in women.

To preface, please know that I am not a doctor of any kind. This is not medical advice. I’m just a woman who reads chronically and finds research to be one of many personal hobbies. I am also chronically ill, have been for a hot minute, and above all, my doctors have decided my illness is “idiosyncratic” (which loosely translates to, “We don’t see anything obvious in your basic blood work, so we’re done investigating.”

Psychosomatic does not mean imaginary. It does not mean dramatic. It definitely does not mean hysterical, though historically that word was conveniently assigned to women anytime their bodies reacted to something society didn’t want to deal with.

Psychosomatic just means the brain and the body are not separate departments. They’re in constant communication. The brain is an organ. The immune system is an organ system. They talk to each other.

When you’re stressed long-term, your stress hormones shift. Cortisol changes. Your nervous system stays switched on. Your body produces more inflammatory markers… things like C-reactive protein and interleukin-6. That’s not woo-hoo. That’s measurable. There’s decades of research in psychoneuroimmunology (yes, I had to Google it too) showing that chronic stress alters immune function.

The CDC’s Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) studies, which tracked tens of thousands of people, found strong correlations between prolonged early stress and higher rates of chronic illness later in life, including heart disease and autoimmune conditions. Trauma doesn’t just sit in memory. It shows up in the body.

As Bessel van der Kolk (controversial in some circles, because of course he is) titled his book: The Body Keeps the Score. And while that phrase has become a bit Instagrammable, the underlying research is real. Trauma affects physiology.

And autoimmune disease? Roughly 75–80% of people diagnosed are women. That statistic comes from the American Autoimmune Related Diseases Association and is widely cited in immunology research.

Now, researchers are still debating why women are disproportionately affected. Hormones matter. Genetics matter. X chromosomes are complicated. But chronic stress also matters. Trauma matters. And so does the way girls are socialized.

Because anger, especially in women, is socially unacceptable.

We’re allowed to be anxious (kind of). We’re allowed to be overwhelmed (-ish?). We’re allowed to cry (preferably quietly).

We are not allowed to rage. This is why I theorize that women love movies and literature where female rage is written as absolutely barbaric and larger than life. It makes us feel oh-so-seen.

Little boys who hit are “spirited.” Little girls who hit are “unladylike.”
Teen boys are “growing up.” Teen girls are “dramatic.”
Men who yell are “passionate.” Women who yell are “crazy”.

So what happens to all that energy that’s been building up from the age we could talk?

It doesn’t just evaporate.

Some of us turn it into perfectionism. Some into overachievement. Some into compulsive niceness. Some into people-pleasing. Some turn it inward.

Dr. Gabor Maté (I’ve also heard there’s some controversy there? Ah! Men in exploratory medicine!) writes about this in When the Body Says No, arguing that patterns like self-suppression and hyper-responsibility show up frequently in patients with autoimmune disease. His work is debated in some medical circles, correlation is not causation, but the broader framework aligns with mainstream research: chronic stress dysregulates the immune system.

Even outside of Maté’s work, studies consistently show that emotional suppression is associated with increased sympathetic nervous system activation, meaning your body stays in fight-or-flight mode longer than it should. And long-term fight-or-flight is inflammatory.

The brain doesn’t always distinguish cleanly between emotional threat and physical threat. If you are constantly bracing–socially, emotionally, relationally–your body learns to stay braced.

Now, I’m not saying I caused my autoimmune disease because I didn’t slap enough boys in high school. I am saying that a lifetime of swallowing anger has physiological consequences.

Having to smile when you want to scream does something to your nervous system. Being told to be nice when you need to set a boundary does something. Being told your rage is unattractive, irrational, sinful (Catholic guilt, am I right?), or hysterical rewires you.

And when I learned that women are dramatically more likely to develop autoimmune conditions, something clicked. Not in a simplistic “this is the cause” way. In a “why are we not studying gendered stress more aggressively?” way.

Because the same culture that polices women’s anger often minimizes women’s pain.

Autoimmune disease is, literally, the body attacking itself. That metaphor might be imperfect, but it’s not random.

So yes. Sometimes I wonder if six-year-old me blacking out on the playground was the most honest my nervous system has ever been. If safe, expressed anger might be healthier than anger converted into hyper-functionality and containment.

Fire, after all, is part of most ecosystems. It clears what’s dead. It makes room for new growth.

Maybe rage (expressed, not suppressed) does something similar. That's all I'm saying.