Fibromyalgia, Chronic Pain, and the Rage You’re Not Allowed to Feel.

If you’ve ever found yourself angrier the longer your illness went on, you’re not crazy.

You’re in the rage phase.

When Rage Shows Up

Rage doesn’t always come first.

It sneaks in later—after the confusion, the appointments, the optimism.

After you’ve done everything “right” and still find yourself in pain.

At first, you’re focused on hope. On solutions. You try every supplement, stretch, scan, specialist. You track symptoms and triggers. You play by the rules.

Then one day, it hits:

• This isn’t working.

• They’re not listening.

• I’m still in pain.

  
  

And beneath the exhaustion, something sharper breaks through: rage.

Not irritation.

Not stress.

Actual, visceral, body-shaking rage.

The Three Layers of Rage in Chronic Illness

There isn’t just one kind of rage with chronic pain syndromes. I've identified three:

1. Rage caused by the pain itself

• The frustration of canceling plans again.

• The humiliation of being dismissed or disbelieved.

• The heartbreak of watching your life get smaller while everyone else moves on.

• The thousand tiny betrayals of a body that won’t cooperate—and a world that expects you to keep up anyway.

  
  

2. Rage buried beneath the pain

• The years you spent being agreeable, compliant, silent.

• The trauma that was never named, let alone resolved.

• The swallowed grief, the self-abandonment you thought was survival—until it turned into symptoms.

  
  

3. Rage at not being allowed rage

Even when you finally let yourself feel it, you hit another wall:

• Doctors call you “difficult.”

• Friends pull away.

• Family says you’re ungrateful.

• Wellness spaces hand you toxic positivity instead of truth.

  
  

Society doesn’t want sick women to be angry. You’re told it’s unladylike, dangerous, or bad for your healing.

💥 That’s its own kind of betrayal—the punishment for telling the truth.

How Suppressed Rage Fuels Pain and Fatigue

Most people don’t know what to do with anger—especially women with chronic illness.

So we’re told to calm down, to breathe through it, to “focus on the positive.”

But here’s the thing:

The nervous system doesn’t respond to toxic positivity. It responds to truth.

And when you bury rage, it doesn’t dissolve. It mutates:

• Into muscle tension and jaw clenching.

• Into insomnia and migraines.

• Into shame, anxiety, and flare-ups that “make no sense” until you trace them back to everything you’ve had to hold in.

  
  

Research backs this up. Studies show that suppressing anger increases pain perception and fuels physiological stress responses. Trauma researcher Bessel van der Kolk calls it “the body keeping the score.”

💥 Chronic pain isn’t always caused by repressed emotion—but emotional suppression can absolutely magnify it.

Why Toxic Positivity Fails People With Chronic Pain

When people say, “Don’t be so negative,” what they often mean is: Don’t make me uncomfortable.

They don’t want to hear the full story—so they hand you a tidy mindset cliché and call it care.

But managing your pain doesn’t mean silencing your truth.

👉 You can be angry and healing.

👉 You can be grieving and growing.

👉 You can hold rage without being consumed by it.

How to Work With Rage (Not Against It)

Rage isn’t the problem.

Avoiding it is.

Here’s how to let it move:

1. Name it.

Write: “If I let myself feel it, I’d be angry about…” and finish that sentence 10 times.

No edits.

No censors.

Just let the unspoken out.

2. Move it.

Rage lives in the body.

Stomp. Punch a pillow. Scream into a towel. Shake. Cry. Growl. Draw angry spirals.

You don’t need to explain it—you just need to let it go somewhere other than inward.

3. Map it.

List what you’re angry about—big and small.

Then underline what still needs a boundary, a shift, a release.

That’s your next step.

4. Say no.

To the pressure to perform wellness.

To conversations that drain you.

To the guilt that says you should be endlessly patient and sweet while in agony.

Saying no to what hurts is a healing act.

Rage Isn’t the Enemy—It’s a Portal

This isn’t just about being frustrated your back hurts.

It’s about:

• The slow burn of not being believed.

• The grief of not being who you used to be.

• The injustice of doing everything “right” and still not being okay.

• The pressure to smile through it while silently falling apart.

• The punishment for daring to be angry about any of it.

  
  

This is about the rage that never had a safe place to land.

And here’s the truth:

Suppressed rage becomes tension. Ignored fury becomes illness.

But felt, acknowledged, and directed?

• Rage becomes movement.

• Rage becomes a boundary.

• Rage becomes fuel.

  
  

💥 Rage isn’t a detour away from healing. It’s a doorway into it.

Rage Remakes You

This isn’t just your rage.

It’s the rage of every woman who’s ever been told her pain was “all in her head.”

The rage of every patient whose labs came back “normal” while their life fell apart.

The rage of everyone told to smile, stay positive, and quit making people uncomfortable.

So no — rage isn’t the enemy.

Rage is the line in the sand.

💥 It’s the “enough is enough” moment.

💥 It’s the fuel for boundaries, truth, and actual healing.

💥 It’s the sound your body makes when it refuses to be silenced one more damn time.

You don’t have to live in the rage phase forever.

But you do have to let yourself walk through it.

Because rage doesn’t ruin you.

It remakes you.

Rage is one part of the story. The next part is what you do with it.

For more support, join my [newsletter]—it’s where I share practical tools and real talk about fibromyalgia, chronic pain, and fatigue.

Or explore [Your Path, Your Pace], a self-guided framework designed to help you track what works, release what doesn’t, and move forward on your terms.