Linking Disease with Personality Traits

          Dr. Gabor Maté has been a doctor for many years. In his eighties now, he has compiled the following list in his latest book, The Myth of Normal Trauma, Illness & Healing in a Toxic Culture: cancer, autoimmune disease (MS, MD, Parkinsons, Rheumatoid Arthritis), persistent skin conditions, migraine headaches, fibromyalgia, endometriosis, myalgic encephalomyelitis (chronic fatigue syndrome).

What do these varied conditions have in common? The people who suffer from them have one or more of the following personality traits: an automatic and compulsive concern for the emotional needs of others, while ignoring their own; rigid identification with social role, duty and responsibility; overdriven, externally focused multitasking hyper-responsibility, based on the conviction that one must justify one’s existence by doing and giving; repression of health, self-protective aggression and anger; and harboring and compulsively acting out two beliefs, “I am responsible for how other people feel” and “I must never disappoint anyone.”

          When you read the traits listed above, do any of them resonate with you? (I found mine, instantly). Do you suffer with any of the chronic illnesses listed in the first paragraph? Do you believe, as Maté does, that there is a link between the chronic disease you live with and one of the personality traits listed in the second paragraph?

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