The Rage You Swallow Turns Into Autoimmune Disease

I Am Made of Gluten-Free Spite and Unprocessed Fury

Let’s get one thing clear: my body has beef with bread. Not just a little intolerance. Not just a cheeky bloat. Full-blown, antibodies-on-alert, don’t-you-dare-look-at-that-brioche kind of beef. I have celiac disease, which means gluten and I are mortal enemies, and every time I so much as sniff a crouton, my immune system throws a tantrum like it’s auditioning for a soap opera.

But here’s the kicker: the longer I’ve lived with this, the more I’ve noticed a pattern. Every time I ignore my emotions, every time I repress my rage, every time I swallow the words I should have screamed? My body keeps the score. And it turns out the scoreboard looks a lot like chronic inflammation, fatigue, and yet another trigger food added to the ever-growing No List.

I collect dietary restrictions the way other people collect vinyl – obscure, expensive, and no one else gets it.. Ginger? Off the list. Cinnamon? Banned. Oats? Absolutely not, even if they’re labelled gluten-free. I can’t help but wonder: is it just biology, or is my body protesting the years of pain I never got to express? Because babe, I’ve swallowed more than just gluten. I’ve swallowed disappointment, betrayal, grief, rage, and every societal expectation handed to me with a smile and a side of gaslighting.

Silent Women and Screaming Bodies

Here’s what they don’t teach you in health class: repressing your emotions might be the most toxic thing you do all day. Especially for people socialised to be polite, agreeable, and non-threatening. We’ve been trained to sit pretty and stay quiet while our nervous systems scream in Morse code. And let me tell you, the body will get its message across. Even if it has to burn everything down from the inside out.

More and more studies are proving what many of us already suspected: chronic stress, trauma, and emotional suppression are deeply linked to autoimmune conditions. When you’re constantly stuck in fight-or-freeze, your immune system gets confused. It starts attacking things it shouldn’t. Like your thyroid. Or your joints. Or your ability to eat toast without becoming a puffy, sobbing mess.

I didn’t just wake up one day and become sensitive to half the food pyramid. It happened slowly, like erosion. Years of unspoken rage and broken trust, of staying small and being palatable. Of crying in bathrooms and pretending I’m fine. It’s no surprise my immune system eventually said, “If you won’t speak up for us, we’ll do it ourselves. Loudly. With hives.”

Don’t Tell Me to Just Meditate, Jennifer

Let me be clear. I’m not saying you can rage your way out of celiac disease. I’m not tossing my medical diagnosis into the witchy wind and blaming my small intestine’s collapse on Mercury in retrograde. What I am saying is that our bodies are more than machines. They’re archives. They hold onto the things we never processed. And that kind of storage gets expensive.

Every time someone tells me to just try yoga or drink more celery juice, I want to scream. Not because those things aren’t helpful (they are, especially if you like celery and being bendy), but because they don’t address the root. You can’t stretch your way out of trauma. You can’t downward-dog your way out of a lifetime of unmet needs and repressed emotion. You have to feel it. You have to get angry.

The trick is letting the anger move through you. Not at people. Not at yourself. But out of your body, so it stops being stored in your tissues like it’s paying rent. Rage is not the enemy. It’s information. It’s sacred. It’s a flare gun from your soul saying, “Something here needs attention.” And when we listen? That’s when healing gets a fighting chance.

Emotional Exorcism As Exercise

I used to be terrified of anger. Not other people’s, but mine. I didn’t want to be the difficult one. The ungrateful one. The one who complains too much or takes up too much space. So I turned every sharp edge inward. I got quieter, sweeter, smaller. Until my body started raging on my behalf.

Now I cry. Loudly. I scream in the shower. I punch pillows like I’m getting paid. I write letters I’ll never send. And you know what? I feel better. Not cured. Not magically inflammation-free. But better. Because the alternative is pretending nothing hurts while my immune system taps out and starts flipping tables.

Rage doesn’t have to be violent or messy. It can be cathartic. Cleansing. Healing. It can be a journal entry, a playlist full of angry girl rock, a rage dance in your living room with no bra and bad lighting. You don’t owe anyone poise or composure when your body is falling apart. Sometimes the most radical act of self-care is letting yourself be furious.

Your Body Isn’t Betraying You. It’s Begging You to Listen.

I know it’s tempting to think your body is the villain. Especially when it feels like it’s working against you. But babe, your body isn’t broken. It’s a bloody miracle. It’s been holding onto all the things you weren’t safe enough to feel. It’s been protecting you the only way it knows how. And now it’s asking for something different.

It wants softness. It wants honesty. It wants you to stop pretending that you’re fine when you’re not. It wants you to scream into the void if that’s what it takes to get the weight off your chest. Because carrying around swallowed rage is heavy. And one day, your body will tap out and say, “We can’t keep doing this.”

So if your joints ache, your gut is wrecked, your hair is falling out, or your skin is throwing tantrums, don’t just reach for the supplements. Reach for the story underneath it. Ask yourself what you’ve been holding in. Ask what needs to be screamed, written, released. Because darling, your health isn’t just about food and medicine. It’s about truth.

The rage you swallow doesn’t disappear. It festers. It inflames. But when you give it air? When you name it, feel it, honour it? That’s when it finally stops devouring you from the inside.

So I’m going to rage, baby. Loudly. Messily. Gluten-free-ly. Preferably in red lipstick and a robe. Lulu watching from the bed. Body listening at last.

We Need to Stop Clapping for Basic Decency – Chaos, Crumbs and Clarity

In today's episode of Chaos, Crumbs and Clarity, we're unpacking why we need to stop clapping for basic decency. You know the script. A man texts back within twenty-four hours and we're screenshotting it to the group chat. A man plans a date more than three hours in advance and we call him a unicorn. A man manages to listen, pay attention, and behave like a fully formed adult, and our nervous systems short-circuit because we genuinely don't know how to receive it.Here's the truth nobody is saying out loud. The bar has been dragged so low that Satan himself needs a chiropractor after a competitive round of limbo. We've been culturally trained to be grateful for behaviour that should not require gratitude. We've been told these things are bonuses when they're actually the entry requirement. And in the meantime, women have been quietly doing the basic decency thing forever, without applause, while men get standing ovations for outputs we generated for them.Today we're talking about why a great man is genuinely just an average woman, who benefits when the bar stays low, the invisible labour women have been performing for free for centuries, and the friend-test that cuts straight through every excuse we've ever made for mediocre men. Let's get into it.For more visit BryJaimea.com or follow over on IG @BryJaimea

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