😡 Bottled Rage, Burning Pain: How Suppressed Anger Fuels Chronic Pain

What if your back pain isn’t just about your spine—but about your suppressed rage?

Modern neuroscience is painting a bold new picture of chronic pain, especially the kind that lingers despite clean scans and countless treatments. It turns out that emotions like anger—especially how we suppress or express them—can literally shape how pain is processed in the brain.

Two landmark studies reveal a crucial truth: suppressing anger may not only make us feel emotionally worse—it may increase physical pain.

Let’s dive into the science.

Monsieur Parrot was done playing

😤 Study #1: Suppressing Anger Makes Pain Worse

A 2008 experiment by Burns et al. tested how chronic low back pain patients responded when provoked and then asked to either suppress their anger or express it freely.

💢 First, participants were harassed by a rude teammate in a frustrating maze task.

💥 Then, they performed a movement task that triggered back pain.

🤕 Result? Those who suppressed their anger reported more pain and displayed more pain behaviours like wincing and bracing.

Why? The authors proposed the Ironic Process Theory—when we try not to think or feel something (like “don’t get angry”), our brain keeps monitoring for it… which actually makes it more prominent.

🧠 Study #2: Anger, Brain Plasticity & Nociplastic Pain

A 2022 mini-review by Yarns et al. brought this idea into sharp neuroscientific focus, proposing the Anger–Brain–Nociplastic Pain (AB-NP) model.

Here's what they found:

🧠 Nociplastic pain (like fibromyalgia or chronic nonspecific back pain) isn’t caused by tissue damage. Instead, it’s linked to maladaptive changes in the brain—especially in regions such as the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and amygdala, regions that handle emotion and pain processing.

😤 Suppressed or unprocessed anger seems to increase activation in these areas, amplifying pain signals—even in the absence of injury.

💡 Conversely, when anger is expressed constructively or consciously felt (after the event this might be through journaling or physical activity), those same brain regions deactivate, correlating with reduced pain and muscle tension.

The implication? Suppressing anger may neurologically “turn up the volume” on pain.

🧬 Toxic Forgiveness: A Cultural Driver of Anger Suppression

Anger gets a bad rap. There is perhaps no other emotion targeted so negatively in the self improvement space. Forgiveness appears again and again, harking back to our Judeo-Christian roots, but this societal emphasis on forgiveness, even in cases when no accountability or change of behaviour has taken place, isolates victims who have every right to be angry and encourages unhealthy anger suppression.

Fortunately, voices like Josh Connolly's are emerging to highlight this issue.

Josh Connolly on Toxic Forgiveness

🧠 The Neuroscience is Clear: Pain Can Be Rewired

The old view: "Pain = damage." The new view: "Pain = protection." Sometimes, that protection is firing because of unresolved emotional conflicts.

When anger isn’t acknowledged, it simmers beneath the surface, keeping your brain in a state of threat and hypervigilance. Over time, this rewires the brain to amplify pain—even when there's no increase in tissue damage.

But there's hope. Neuroplasticity means that just as pain circuits can be amplified, they can be dialled back. It often starts with a conversation you never had, a boundary you never set, or an emotion you never allowed yourself to feel.

References

• Burns, J. W., Quartana, P., Gilliam, W., Gray, E., Matsuura, J., Nappi, C., Wolfe, B., & Lofland, K. (2008). Effects of anger suppression on pain severity and pain behaviors among chronic pain patients: evaluation of an ironic process model. Health psychology : official journal of the Division of Health Psychology, American Psychological Association, 27(5), 645–652. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0013044

• Yarns, B. C., Cassidy, J. T., & Jimenez, A. M. (2022). At the intersection of anger, chronic pain, and the brain: A mini-review. Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews, 135, 104558. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2022.104558