If Being a Bitch Means Having Boundaries, Maybe We Should All Be Bitches

Eda Dolunay
4 minutes ago
6 min read

Lying in my hospital bed, trapped in the cold, sterile silence of the ER, I was desperately trying to hide from my phone and the relentless stream of messages waiting for me. Just before coming here, I had to cancel plans I’d been looking forward to for weeks, the kind that included all my closest friends.

I have long since lost count of how many events I’ve had to bail on over the last three years because of these recurring hospital visits. But this time, the familiar sadness was laced with a sharper, more piercing guilt; in a heartbeat, I felt like I had let twenty people down. Even though I knew they cared, I simply couldn't bear the weight of explaining myself one more time. As chronically ill people, we are so exhausted from over-explaining ourselves. We don't cancel because we don't care. We cancel because sometimes our bodies decide for us. It is just a normal flare-up day, a reality that is so difficult for me, and for anyone else living through this, to make others truly understand.

So, I did what most of us do when reality becomes too heavy: I started scrolling. That's when I came across a video of Gabor Maté. In one of his most well-known theories, Gabor Maté argues that the chronic suppression of emotions, relentless people-pleasing, and years of abandoning ourselves may contribute to the development of chronic illness. Pointing to the fact that women account for roughly 70–80% of autoimmune diagnoses, he asks whether the way many women are conditioned to live could be affecting not only their minds, but also their bodies. He outlines four distinct behavioral traits associated with these health battles. As I lay there, waiting for the IV fluids and the medication to lose their grip on my veins, I found myself listening to him break it all down. And I could not help but wonder: did I actually do this to myself? Had I been betraying my own body for years? Do I have to be a "bitch" in my 20s just to avoid having an autoimmune disease?

Maté explains that we are often "over-accommodating" individuals; we thin our boundaries until we vanish, all to ensure others don’t get upset, we avoid conflict, and keep the peace. Reading through his list was like looking into a funhouse mirror; the reflection was me, distorted by years of playing the "good girl." Whether or not his theory tells the whole story, I couldn't ignore how much of myself I saw in it. These four patterns felt less like a diagnosis and more like a biography.

First, there was the habit of prioritizing others’ emotional needs over my own. Maté calls this the "self-sacrificing" trap, where we learn that our own needs are secondary to the comfort of the room. I was the girl who would work until my spirit withered, then go to drinks just to ensure no one felt neglected. I was the human equivalent of a "please" button, always pressed but never heard.

Second, I spent years identifying strictly with roles, duties, and responsibilities rather than my personal needs. In my corporate life and at school, I didn't just do the job; I became the job. I crushed myself under the weight of tasks I had no business knowing how to do just to prove I was essential. As Maté notes, "Society rewards emotionally repressed individuals as 'high-performing' or 'self-sacrificing,' but this success is won at a heavy cost to the body. Illness often emerges at the point where one has sacrificed their inner truth to sustain external success." Success became a cage I built around my own body.

Third, I spent years suppressing healthy anger. Maté explains that this anger is actually a vital immune mechanism; it’s the body’s way of saying "no." I let mobbing slide because I thought being "mean" was a character flaw rather than a vital survival tool. I swallowed my fire until it started burning me from the inside out.

Fourth, I lived by feeling inappropriately responsible for how everyone else feels. This is the ultimate "good girl" burden, where we take on the world’s emotional weather as our own forecast. Treating their emotional baggage like my own carry-on luggage was my default setting. My empathy was a full-time job with zero benefits.

As Maté poignantly notes: "If you cannot say 'no,' then your 'yes' has no meaning. A person who cannot say 'no' does not own their own 'yes'; they are simply adjusting to expectations. Over time, this leads to a disconnection from one’s own reality, and the body begins to set the boundaries that the mind could not.”

Even as I felt the crushing tightness and chronic tension in my body, I chased the hollow high of "success" to fill the void. I ignored the warnings because, as Maté says, "Your body never lies. Your mind may invent stories to suppress emotional pain, rationalizing or covering it with achievements, but the body holds that emotional reality as a biological record. If you cannot find a channel to express your emotions, your body becomes that channel."

And then, it hit me. These aren't just personality traits; they are the patriarchy’s favorite syllabus. Not because women are born this way, but because we're rewarded for becoming this way. We’ve been taught that being a "good woman" is synonymous with being a shock absorber for the world. I thought that by being over-accommodating, I was earning my seat at the table. But I wasn't earning a seat; I was paying for it with my health. I swallowed my anger to keep the peace, never realizing that the "peace" I was protecting was actually a war zone inside my own body.

To anyone still trapped in this cycle: please, change it while you still can. If I could go back and talk to the version of myself who believed saying "yes" to everyone else was the price of being loved, I'd tell her this: your body will eventually start saying "no" for you. This life is harder than anyone realizes. Most of us are secretly mourning the versions of ourselves we used to be, missing our old lives in silence. We are tired of the unsolicited advice to "just exercise" or "sleep more", as if a yoga class could fix a systemic betrayal of the self. Remember, looking "well" does not mean we are not sick, and every time we force ourselves to work through the pain, it has consequences.

But to every woman fighting this battle, to those who show up for their dreams every day, who fall, who get back up, and who keep going despite everything their body is throwing at them, I want you to know that I see you. I am in awe of you. And I am so incredibly proud of us. And maybe that's exactly what led me to question everything I'd been taught about what it means to be a "good" woman. Somewhere between hospital rooms, impossible expectations, and years spent trying to be agreeable, I found myself asking a question I never imagined I'd ask.

Was the patriarchy literally making me sick? I still don't know. Neither science nor medicine offers an easy answer. But I do know this: my body spent years saying "no" while I kept forcing it to say "yes."

I used to believe that being "difficult", or, as the world prefers to call it, a "bitch", was the opposite of being lovable. But maybe we've been taught to confuse self-abandonment with kindness, silence with grace, and self-sacrifice with virtue. Maybe being a "good woman" was never about goodness at all; it was about convenience. Convenience for everyone but ourselves.

Maybe the real choice was never between being "nice" and being a "bitch." Maybe it was between betraying myself and protecting myself. Because every time I swallowed my anger, ignored my limits, or made myself smaller to make someone else comfortable, my body was keeping score.

If choosing myself means being called difficult, then so be it. I'd rather disappoint someone else than spend another night in a hospital bed wondering whether I disappeared so completely that my body had to speak on my behalf. If that makes me a "bitch," then maybe "bitch" is simply what the world calls a woman who has stopped abandoning herself.