When does being “nice” start hurting your health? We explore the surprising science that links suppressed emotions—especially healthy anger and buried grief—to immune function, inflammation, and long-term disease risk. Drawing on affective neuroscience, we break down the core mammalian systems wired for rage, fear, panic and grief, care, seeking, and play, and explain why these circuits exist to protect boundaries and connection, not to create chaos.
Gabor Maté's website: https://drgabormate.com/
I share how anger operates as a boundary-setting signal that says something vital: this is not okay. When that signal gets muted to keep relationships intact, the immune system can mirror the shutdown. You’ll hear clear, practical language for telling the difference between healthy and unhealthy anger, plus simple steps to honor your limits without escalating conflict—naming the feeling, identifying the crossed boundary, and choosing proportionate action. We also unpack how childhood survival strategies, like staying quiet to preserve attachment, can turn into adult patterns of chronic niceness, migraines, flares, and burnout.
We look at striking research: longer survival among people with ALS who expressed anger, and a large study of women showing higher mortality when marital unhappiness stayed unspoken. The takeaway is not to explode; it’s to listen to the body’s early alarms and speak plain truths before stress hardens into illness. If you’ve ever wondered why “the good die young,” this conversation reframes goodness as self-respect, not self-erasure.
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Episode Transcript
I I hear you talk about rage and anger a lot.
Do you feel like the suppressionis I mean, if you had to like
have a pie chart or percentageof different emotions that
people typically suppress, wouldyou say most of the time it's
say rage or sadness or fear?
(00:20):
Or is it even possible toseparate those?
SPEAKER_02 (00:23):
Well, it's interesting.
There's there was, sadly, he'snot alive anymore, a
neuroscientist, his name is Dr.
Yak Panksap, who looked at theneuroscience of emotions.
Affective neuroscience, hecalled it, affective
neuroscience, not effective,affective neuroscience.
(00:45):
And he distinguished some brainsystems that we share with other
mammals, some rudimentary butessential brain systems, and he
capitalized them just fornomenclature's sake.
And each of these brain systemswere associated with certain
brain chemicals and certaincircuits in the brain.
(01:07):
And they were not, you know,they were very much
intermingled, but there was acircuitry for rage.
He called it R-A-G-E, rage.
There was also circuitry forpanic and grief.
He called it panic grief,capital panic slash grief.
There's one for fear.
(01:29):
There's one for lust.
There's one for seeking.
There's one for play.
And one or two others.
And each of these are necessaryfor human life.
Mammalian life, actually.
Now the rage system isn't anaberration, it's part of our
(01:52):
apparatus.
It shows up, it gets activatedwhen we're threatened and our
boundaries are threatened.
You want to find out what rages?
Try to mess with the bear cubsof a bear mother.
You'll find out what rages.
It's there for a good reason.
(02:14):
We have a system for care,C-A-R-E, which makes us care for
one another, especially for theyoung of the species.
Without that, mammals don'tsurvive.
If the adults didn't have a caresystem in their brains, no
infant would survive.
We have a panic and griefsystem, panic grief, which is
(02:38):
what the young feels when thecare is absent.
They feel panic, they feelsadness.
Now, what I find is that themost commonly repressed are the
rage and the panic and grief.
And when you repress that, no,when you repress anger, healthy
(03:03):
anger, you're actuallysuppressing your immune system.
Why?
I could go into the science ofit, but in a nutshell, mind and
body cannot be separated.
And when you look at what is therole of healthy anger, is to
(03:23):
protect your boundaries.
That's emotionally or physicallythe case.
Sean, if I were you are in thesame room with you, if I were to
attack you, you should mount arage response.
Oh, you can't do this to me.
(03:45):
You know?
And you might do the same thingif I was emotionally intrusive.
That's to keep out what isunhealthy.
In fact, the role of theemotional system in general is
very simply let in what'shealthy and nourishing and keep
out what's not.
That's basically the role ofemotions.
(04:08):
Now, what is the role of theimmune system?
Trick question.
It's to keep out what'sunhealthy and let in what's
healthy.
It's the same as the emotions.
In fact, the immune system andthe emotional system are part
and parcel of the sameapparatus.
When you're suppressing rage,your healthy rage, I'm talking
(04:31):
about, there's such a thing ashealthy anger, then there's
unhealthy anger.
When you're suppressing healthyanger, you're suppressing your
immune system.
Documentably so, physiologicallyso.
But this is where therapy andinquiry comes into it.
Because why would somebodyrepress healthy anger?
(04:52):
Well, let me put it to you.
Why would somebody represshealthy anger?
What would you people say aboutthat?
Anybody want to answer that?
Melissa.
SPEAKER_01 (05:02):
Because it's not safe to do so.
SPEAKER_02 (05:05):
Under what circumstances?
SPEAKER_01 (05:08):
I agree with connection, relationship.
SPEAKER_02 (05:10):
Exactly.
And exactly when?
Particularly when, let me put itthat way.
SPEAKER_01 (05:17):
A caregiver, somebody that is is needed for
care, it would sever therelationship that would give you
the care that is needed.
SPEAKER_02 (05:27):
I'm completely with you, and I totally agree with
you.
And but when most particularlyin life?
SPEAKER_01 (05:33):
Oh, when you're a child.
SPEAKER_02 (05:34):
Exactly.
You know, so that in that case,you would agree with me that the
suppression of anger is actuallya benefit because it allowed you
to keep that relationshipwithout which you can't survive.
But that same benefit becomes adeficit later on.
So most commonly it's what I seesuppressed is anger.
And of course, if you look ateven the language, like we call
(05:56):
depression this mental healthdisorder because of chemicals,
nonsense.
Look at the word depression.
What does it mean to depresssomething?
It means to push it down.
What do we push down?
We push down our emotions.
Why do we push them down?
Because as Melissa points out,it's too dangerous to feel them
(06:18):
when they would threaten theattachment relationship.
So the the pushing down ofhealthy anger can lead you to
autoimmune disease or cancer,neurological disease like ALS.
And by the way, you know whatsomething they've done studies.
Even people with ALS who expressanger, they live longer than
(06:42):
people with ALS who don'texpress anger.
I could talk at length aboutthat.
There was a study of 2,000 womenin the states.
Women who over 10 years, womenwho were unhappily married and
didn't express their feelings ofunhappiness were in those
(07:04):
10-year periods four times aslikely to die as those women who
were unhappily married, but theytalked about their feelings.
So the repression of healthyanger and unsadness and grief.
They support you, it underminesyour physiology.
I could go on about multiplesclerosis, fibromyalgia, in all
(07:28):
of these conditions, what you'vegot migraines for God's sakes.
Meet anybody with migraines,they got a lot of suppressed
rage.
That's what happens.
And sadness, of course.
If your parents need you to behappy, you'll put on a happy
face.
Yes, everything is okay.
And then you go through life,and everybody thinks, What a
(07:49):
nice guy you are, what a niceperson you are.
Always joyful, always cheerful.
Then they come to your funeraland they wonder why is it that
the good die young?
The good die young because theysuppress themselves.
SPEAKER_00 (08:02):
We provide you with the certification and the
credentials you need to teachmindfulness in professional
settings.
I invite you to check out our uhwebpage at teach.mindfulness
exercises.com to learn moreabout the program, and uh look
forward to seeing you on theinside.
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