The Cult Of Personality
Why your personality traits cause real physical pain.
Our personality traits guide our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. By doing so, they often lead to stress, and thus pain. Most of us learned these personality traits young and they continue to run on repeat habitually with a certain automaticity. Similar to how you run or ride a bike or breathe, you don’t likely think of your personality traits despite them calling many of the shots in your life. While our personality traits are sacred, they are not fixed. Following is an article I wrote for Lin Health a few years ago. I’ve adapted it for my Substack readers. Enjoy!
Living Color, “Cult of Personality” - 1988
An important part of supporting athletes in overcoming long-standing pain is building a case that the body is not damaged or injured, despite very real pain. This shift in belief about the cause of pain is central to the process of overcoming it. But how people arrive there can differ. In my experience, the ultimate goal is to support people in making meaning from symptoms to insert an alternative explanation as an alternative to the body. In doing so, we’re always looking for the ah-ha moment where everything suddenly makes sense in a new way.
I’ve seen this ah-ha moment happen over and over again when athletes see a list of personality traits that correlate with physical pain. Athletes with more of these traits are more likely to have symptoms that stick around long after the body is healed, or come on with no physical injury at all. While all of our personality traits belong and serve an important role in our lives, they can be too strong at times affecting our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors in ways that cause stress. When this happens, the nervous system will become more sensitive and so you’ll be more likely to experience physical symptoms, like pain. Pain becomes your brain’s way of getting your attention to alert you that something is out of balance, or not ok.
If you’ve never seen the list, we’ll get there in a sec. But first, here are a few examples of how normal and common personality traits create challenging thoughts, feelings, and behaviors in people.
Personality Trait Examples:
Julio is a perfectionist who’s made it to the top step of the podium racing bikes, and to the top of his company, by assuring things are always “dialed”. His bike, his training, his recovery, his slide decks for meetings, and his research. However, as deadlines near at work, and as race day nears this season, Julio experiences foot pain that starts to affect his training, racing, and his home life. He finds himself increasingly worrying about whether his training and/or his work will be good enough, despite loads of past evidence that he’s doing well in sport and in life. He also worries that his foot pain is due to a medical condition and that he’s stuck with it because of what the doctor and physical therapist told him. And because of the common (albeit false) narrative that he’s physically beaten up his body so much over time. While he always gets his work done on time and his training done based on his plan, the pressure of perfection comes at a cost to him as his foot pain sticks around despite good medical treatment.
Stephanie has always been conscientious and caretaking with everyone in her life. She’ll drop everything to help, and, as a result, her friends and family love her. She recently developed back pain that kept her from pacing her friend at a big ultra-running race. Her friend was upset with her for letting her down and Stephanie, in turn, beat herself up about it. As time went on, her back pain came and went but started to affect her training more and more. As she stopped attending group runs, she began to notice how her friends expected her to show up for them but that they weren’t always there for her, Especially on days when she needed a training partner or simply emotional support with something stressful going on in her life. She also realized that not only were her friends not meeting her needs, but she had not been meeting her own needs. This was creating tension in her primary relationship as well because her partner always needed a lot of support and she was his caretaker as well. As she continued to put others’ needs over her own, she started to feel frustrated, even angry. Her back pain got worse making it harder for her to exercise. As Stephanie became less active, her “friends” disappeared from her life leaving her feeling abandoned.
David has a hard time expressing how he feels. He’s quick to make friends because he’s so light-hearted and steady. This persona has always made him the most popular guy on the tennis court and at work because he always seems stoked, regardless of the team dynamics. Rather than express his feelings when things weren’t going well, David just moves on and gets back to work as though everything is ok. He’s the same way with his family, with his friends, and with everyone else he interacts with in life from the car mechanic to the waiter to the not-so-helpful customer service agent. When things don’t go his way, he shrugs it off and bury’s his feelings. He’s always felt like this M.O. kept him safe from conflict. But his neck and shoulders began to hurt after his first son was born, just as his boss pushed him to take on a bigger role in his career. He took this role at work against his best interest to appease his boss and avoid the discomfort of saying no. As he sought treatment for his shoulders and found it harder to make it to the tennis court, he realized his world was getting smaller and he started to retreat into himself to avoid uncomfortable interactions. His fear grew as he fell into a depression, began to experience anxiety, and his neck and shoulder pain worsened.
The Implications of Personality:
As you understand your’s more, you’ll start to see patterns when your personality traits influence your pain experience. But why does possessing more of these, or stronger versions of them, so often result in chronic pain? The answer is the key to overcoming pain as well as understanding yourself better so you can grow in your life. All personality traits serve us in important ways, but can also hold us back and/or create stress at times. Our personality traits develop because we learn that they keep us safe and get us love as we navigate the world. This is reinforced starting at a young age, even before we’re consciously aware that it’s happening. We learn these behaviors as we interact with, and respond to, the adults in our early lives. When a parent gives us praise for perfecting something, we learn that perfection is good. When a friend reacts negatively to a moment of outward anger, we learn anger creates conflict. When a family member expects us to “be good” (even though we’d rather not) and scolds us when we misbehave, we learn that always doing what others want is the safe play. In this way, the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that result from these personality traits become automatic and subconscious. In other words, we’re not really “choosing” them.
These traits are critical to our survival. They keep us safe and earn us love when we’re young. But when we reach adulthood, they become habitual responses to everyday life, sometimes for good and other times…not so much. As they become dominant and automatic reactions to certain triggers we experience stress internally and in our relationships. If the stress from these traits continues over time or is triggered suddenly and strongly by a significant life event, we start to suffer psychologically and physically. The feelings literally start to express through the body. The stress from these traits often stays dormant and builds subconsciously over the course of our lives. There may be no pain for years or decades between young adulthood and older life, despite the fact that we’re still acting out of old patterns. We’re just used to them and have learned to tolerate them over a lifetime of experience. That is until something significant happens that sends the brain into danger alarm. Suddenly you can’t ignore the reality of your own thoughts, feelings, or behaviors anymore and are unable to tolerate the stress any longer.
Because our personalities develop through our lives as a result of nature and nurture, they are plastic and always flexible. We have an opportunity to become aware of these patterns and make new decisions. To take the power back! it’s important to appreciate, accept, and understand the source of, and nature of, all of our traits. Then, we can get clear on why, when, and how they serve us. More importantly why, when, and how they’re causing us (and others) to suffer. Once we see how our personality traits show up in life day to day, we can make conscious choices and find a new level of autonomy in life around our interactions with self and other.
People who are very caring of others at their own expense, like Stephanie, who are “successful” perfectionists like Julio, or who subvert their feelings, like David, will manifest stress from these traits at some point during their lives. Interestingly, this starts to happen near the midpoint of life when we’ve had more experiences, have more perspective, and start to become more aware of our patterns through work, relationships, kids, friendships, etc. The awareness of our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors starts to feel overwhelming. Especially in the presence of other life factors, like training volume or having a kid. The pain and other symptoms that emerge is simply the brain trying to get your attention and let you know something isn’t ok. It’s your brain looking out for you.
Remember this is not a conscious process. These subconscious “feelings” show up as physical pain when we aren’t aware of them, suppress them, or continue to ignore them. This pain is your brain checking on you to let you know the stress of the situation is too high. But if we don’t see these pattern and address them, not only will we have pain, but we’ll find our behaviors tend to come out sideways. The consequences usually reflect back at ourselves as negative self talk, self judgement, regret, shame, frustration, etc. But when that’s too much, it’s unleashed on others. Guilt around not being perfect might come out as judgment or frustration. Grief around relationships being imbalanced can show up as anger or sadness. The fear and avoidance that leads to habitually burying feelings can transform into amazing athletic performance (like Michael Jordan or Lance Armstrong) fueled by anger and rage. These feelings, if left unexpressed, can eat us alive from the inside out. The subconscious thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that emerge are merely a message from our brain that something is not ok. And as an athlete, because the brain doesn’t speak english (or whatever language) physical pain is the best way to get our attention.
When a personality trait shows up in an imbalanced way, the stress can trigger the danger/alarm system in the brain. Because the brain is in charge of all of our symptoms (pain, digestion, illness), it will choose some way to let us know that we’re in “danger” and need to make a change. As I’ve said before, pain is the common choice for the athlete’s brain to make. And the brain can choose any symptom it wants. If our personality traits aren't serving us in a certain moment, or over time, the brain’s danger/alarm system keeps doing exactly what it was meant to do. Protect us from what it predicts is a threat in order to keep us safe. Remember though, in case you haven’t read my prior posts. THIS PAIN IS NOT PHYSICALLY DANGEROUS AND IS NOT DUE TO A BODY PROBLEM, TISSUE DAMAGE, OR PHYSICAL INJURY.
Because stress related to our personality traits leads to increased muscle tension, pain or other symptoms can show up anywhere in the body, including our heart or digestive system. These symptoms create more fear and often more symptoms, especially if our personality traits continue to drive unhelpful behavior. The more of these traits you have, and the stronger the traits are, the more your pain is likely to be driven by the stress they create. Luckily, as we start to understand the light and the dark of our personalities, how they protect us, and how they hold us back, the danger/alarm system will turn off and symptoms will stop. As an adult, you have the power to make a new choice that your younger self wasn’t able to make. This takes reflection, introspection, awareness, curiosity, support from our loved ones, and intention on your part. Old habits die hard. But this activity gives you autonomy and the opportunity to make new choices to grow in your life, and in sport.
Personality Trait Evaluation Tool:
Below is a list of the personality traits that show up most often in people with chronic pain. Please take a second to indicate which traits you think you have. (For reference, your author checks 11 of the 15 boxes)! I feel like these make me the strong athlete and the special person I am as I continually learn how they impact my life. And I’m always learning when they show up in unhelpful ways becoming my best teacher. Check all that apply:
____ Having low self-esteem
____ Being a perfectionist
____ Having high expectations of yourself
____ Wanting to be good and/or be liked
____ Frequently feeling guilt
____ Feeling dependent on others
____ Being hard on yourself
____ Taking on responsibility for others
____ Often worrying
____ Having difficulty making decisions
____ Following rules strictly
____ Having difficulty letting go
____ Holding thoughts and feelings in (as opposed to expressing them)
____ Tending to harbor rage or resentment
____ Not standing up for yourself
Ratings:
How many of these traits do you have? ____ (up to 15)
You’ll notice that this list defines some of your favorite people. People who possess many of these traits are likable, high achieving, popular, successful, talented, highly skilled, and the people you want in your life. Sadly, many of these people also deal with recurrent or ongoing pain, subverted emotions, and deal with anxiety and/or depression. Remember, this list is not meant to stigmatize any of these traits. Understanding how personality traits show up in your life simply allows you to investigate when certain traits are helpful, and when they may not be so helpful.
If you’re ready to investigate your personality traits in your own context, please reach out. If you’re a clinician or person living with chronic symptoms who wants to learn more about how to integrate these ideas into practice, please register for the paradigm-shifting immersive LIVE course I co-teach with Dr. Howard Schubiner, MD coming up June 9-11 2023 in Boulder, CO. We only have a few seats left!
Finally, below is a video of my brilliant friend and colleague Dani Fagan (@myTMSjourney) talking about the upcoming course. Regardless, please share your thoughts in a comment or message me directly. Understanding our personality traits is an ongoing process that takes a lifetime. And it’s never too late to start!
Thanks for reading to the end! You must be very conscientious and people-pleasing in the best of ways! Yay you.