🔥 Rage Is Not a Liability — It’s Data
Reclaiming anger in a chronically ill or neurodivergent body
When you live in a chronically ill or neurodivergent body, rage can feel… complicated.
We’re told that anger will make our symptoms worse. That our flares are our fault. That our nervous systems are too sensitive and our reactions are too much.
We are gaslit out of our own emotions — especially when we live at the intersections of being sick, disabled, femme, queer, or historically excluded in the healthcare system.
I’ve been told to meditate instead of medicate.
I’ve been told that if I just “calmed down,” I’d get better.
I’ve even been told to stop reading the news because my body “couldn’t handle stress.”
But here’s the truth:
Rage is not a liability. It’s data. It’s power.
It’s your nervous system saying: This is not okay.
It’s your body alerting you to harm.
It’s your spirit refusing to normalize injustice.
So why does it feel so hard to hold rage?
Because we’re taught — implicitly and explicitly — that rage makes us difficult.
That it makes us unwell. That it’s something to “manage” or repress.
And yes, unprocessed anger can get stuck in the body.
But rage itself isn’t the problem.
The problem is when we’re denied the tools, time, and space to feel it, move it, and make meaning from it.
This is where nervous system literacy and collective care come in.
Rage, especially when we’ve been chronically ignored or dismissed, can push us into sympathetic overdrive — fight-or-flight mode. But for many of us with chronic illness, the more common response is freeze or fawn: going numb, collapsing, people-pleasing to stay safe.
So we cycle — between explosive rage, total shutdown, and shame for not “handling it better.”
But there is another way.
We can move with rage.
We can regulate without suppressing.
We can listen to our rage — and act in alignment with what it’s telling us.
This is why I believe in spaces like the BIG BEAUTIFUL B*TCH SESH.
Because collective rage needs collective containers.
On Monday, July 21 at 5 PM PT, I’m co-hosting a virtual, trauma-informed Recharge Room with coach and disability inclusion expert Sam Berman (@CerebralPosi).
We’re calling it:
💥 BIG, BEAUTIFUL B*TCH SESH
A rage + regulation gathering for our overstimulated, outraged, chronically exhausted selves.
🔗 RSVP here
We’ll guide gentle somatic grounding, offer co-regulation, and hold quiet space for processing — no forced sharing, no fixing. Just a space where you don’t have to be “okay.”
Because sometimes, the most radical thing we can do is let ourselves feel — safely, in community, with tools.
🌱 Where does rage take you in the ecosystem of change?
One of my favorite frameworks to help understand this moment comes from Deepa Iyer’s Social Change Ecosystem. It reminds us that there are many roles in movements — and that we don’t all have to be frontline disruptors to be part of the work.
Rage can live in:
The Disrupter, who challenges the status quo
The Caregiver, who nourishes the community
The Guide, who offers wisdom and grounding
The Healer, who transforms trauma into growth
You don’t need to channel your anger into activism in the traditional sense.
You can write, you can make art, you can hold space, you can rest.
You can process emotion as a form of resistance.
🔄 Let’s reclaim rage — gently, together.
If you're feeling like your nervous system is at capacity — you’re not broken. You’re responding to ongoing harm without enough resourcing.
And you deserve to find your way back to yourself.
🧠 Regulation is not compliance.
💛 Rest is not giving up.
🔥 Rage is not weakness.
Come sit with us.
Cry, rage, breathe, or just listen.
🔗 Register here for BIG, BEAUTIFUL B*TCH SESH
You’re not too much.
You’re a body that knows injustice when it feels it.
Let’s make space for that truth — and each other.
With softness and fire,
Lauren
@ChronicCoachLauren