Pushing down anger, prioritizing duty are leading causes of chronic illness

I once worked for a company that is renowned for its miserable working conditions to the point where there are news reports of employees crying at their desks and company offices having designated "wellness" rooms that serve as unofficial crying spots.

While working at that company, I was miserable due to the absurd timelines and implicit and explicit pressure placed directly and indirectly from managers and senior managers to deliver them. The stress levels were so high that I could barely function in the couple of hours after clocking out, and instead I found myself in a lethargic state. If that wasn't bad enough, my knee started to hurt like hell. I couldn't stand up without spending a minute or so doing a kind of warmup, and even then I couldn't help to limp around. I felt that my knee joint was slightly swollen too. I endured this for a few months.

After a while, I resigned from that job. Managers were bad at establishing milestones and deadlines, and the senior manager was the worst of them as he systematically over promised his higher ups to afterwards try to catch up with threats of dismissal.

A couple of days after I handed over my resignation, my knee stopped hurting. Moreover, in a timespan of a week or so, I went from barely managing to stand up on my own two feet to actually running for extended periods of time without any hint of joint pain or even discomfort. I only noticed it when I was late for a flight and I had to run from one terminal to another. Once I boarded the plane it dawned upon me that I was sweaty and my heart was racing, but my knee was perfectly fine.

Correlation is not causality, but the link between arthritis and stress is a known fact.

https://www.arthritis.org/health-wellness/healthy-living/emo...

It turns out when they say "yes, the stress is *literally* killing you", they mean it.