Is Your Personality Making You Sick ??

Many have heard of the ABC type personalities and their assocoation to certain diseases. However , reading a text book tonight revealed that studies have linked high concordance rates between specific moods, attitudes and personality types to very specific health problems. As one who has always been geared towards the holistic approach to medicine , and my favorite saying " That science will more and more align with spirituality" , I found it interesting. I did a search and didn't see anything as specific as this . So sorry if it's all been said and done before .

I'm curious if any of this rings true to you ???
Source : Carol Ren Kneisl , Eileen Trigoboff " Contemporary Psychiatric-Mental Health Nursing".
Arthritis
"Self sacrificing , masochistic, inhibited, perfectionist, and retiring. "
Asthma
" Extreme Inhibition , covert aggression, marked dependent needs, a high need for affection and those prone to depression, anxiety and disturbances of self- esteem ."
Peptic Ulcer
"hostility, irritability, hypersensitivity , and impaired coping ability"
Inflammatory Bowel Disorders
"compulsive personality lifestyle with the following features: neatness, orderliness, puncuality, indecisiveness, emotional guardedness, humorlessness, conscientiousness, obstinacy, conformity, moral rigidness"
Cardiovascular Disease
" Persons who perceive lack of control over work situation, and experience high demands at the same time .lack of both job resilience and personal resilience.
Coronary Artery Disease
" anxiety and depression , a behavior pattern involving feelings of hostility and anger, work overload , life stress , and lack of social support."
Hypertension, cardiac dysrhythmias,cardiac neurosis
"people who have conflict between their dependent and aggressive inclinations which causes repression of all displays of anger or resentment. "
Skin Disorders
" Flare ups associated with :
generalized pruritus: aggression
genital and anal pruitus: sexuality
hyperhidrosis : anxiety
urticaria: anger
atopic dermatitis : longing for love


Does any of this ring true for anyone, or is it bunk science ? One can find a correlation between ice cream sales and violence but it doesn't make ice cream the cause of violence. I'm just curious to hear what you all have to say!

reply to post by paleorchid13


From what I can tell it is a matter of categorizing. Each person has a lifestyle that creates habits and meal preferences that can cause some of these conditions. Arthritis for example self sacrificing I believe it said and masochism these are things where a person would push themselves to the limit or allow people to test their physical limits. I think it does have some merit yet it is simple personality profiling and stereotyping based on average human responses.

I hope that helped if even just a smidgen.

reply to post by paleorchid13



Interesting idea. I was just diagnosed with Microscopic Colitis.

Inflammatory Bowel Disorders "compulsive personality lifestyle with the following features: neatness, orderliness, puncuality, indecisiveness, emotional guardedness, humorlessness, conscientiousness, obstinacy, conformity, moral rigidness"

A lot of it fits. I would say that except for humorlessness and moral rigidity it is spot-on.

reply to post by paleorchid13


As you can see this is my first post. I was thinking of joining for a while but this post really caught my attention. I have asthma (diagnosed as a toddler) and all I can say is holy hell that is frighteningly accurate description of my personality. I need to look into this further..

OP, I found your post interesting. I would liken what you say as a resemblance of phrenology and acupuncture. Who knows? You may very well be right. Great first post. Your off to a great start.

Cool you brought this up, I just started a chapter on stress in my Psych class. I think its very true when you think of the possibility that your personality causes you to behave certain ways that would predispose you to interact with your environment more or less, thereby causing some amount of physical stress which could prompt illness or well-being. For example, the correllation between self-sacrificing people and arthritis could be due to the fact that selfless people will go out of their way and commit to activities that were unplanned - more activity, less time for proper diet, weak joints. Pretty general but you get the idea.

Then again, the amount of stress derived from a task is dependent on person's perception of the task and how it makes them feel. Example would be the cardiovascular + lack of self esteem, where people are stressed more often creating a physiological response that produces more cortisol (chemical that stimulates flight or flight) than would be considered normal or healthy, over exhausting their body and weakening their immune system due to the body's overstimulation and need for recovery. In fact cortisol directly affects the immune system by suppressing it. Too many highs and lows and you can see its like overcharging a battery and letting it die out - it shortens longevity, makes it weaker. Conversely, a person who has confidence and see's a stressful situation as fun rather than demeaning won't produce so much cortisol and rather may produce more dopamine which is a stress reliever!

There are lots of explanations one could think of. Although I think personalities can predispose one to certain illnesses, i wouldnt make the assumption that personality traits are the cause.

edit: udderlyinsane has a good interpretation

reply to post by UdderlyInsane

reply to post by UdderlyInsane

Yes, correlation does not = causation. I'm not certain science can ever fit us into neat little nutshells , however it's interesting when medicine studies "mind-body-spirit" connection.
One thing that's for certain , is that I never saw a study on how laughing or being happy made someone sick or prone to disease. I think there is a lesson here.

For an in-depth examination of personality and how it influences physical health go to the free online article at:

Social and Personality Psychology Compass 5/1 (2011): 76–87, 10.1111/j.1751-9004.2010.00331.x

This gives all the current research on the matter and very informative.

reply to post by Spiral0ut

I'm not reading too much into it at this point , however I do believe that Any way of negative thinking is harmful . These studies caught me by surprise as well.

reply to post by aaronez

Thanks , wow ..what a read ! I'll be spending some time with your resource .

reply to post by paleorchid13


I agree- I don't think there is necessarily any causation here, especially because I was diagnosed as a happy little kid. I just find it very interesting and certainly a striking coincidence. There could be something to the notion that physical health and spirituality are increasingly connected.

reply to post by asperetty

Are we not predisposed to certain emotional responses by genetics? A most fascinating study (and i will try to find the source for you ) was a documentary , about switching on and off genes in reaction to our emotional responses .
It also gives light that we can , in a way control and manipulate our own genes by stress management.

reply to post by paleorchid13


I don't think my personality is negative. Many of my traits are quite useful, particularly at work. It's helpful to be neat, concientious, and organized - in fact I have made a career of it (what else is programming besides organizing everything according to business rules?). Being obstinate is both a pro (assertive) and a con (can sometimes be inflexible). Likewise with the other traits I recognized.

I'm with the person who points out that correlation does not equal causality. My traits may be useful, but I also recognize they can lead me to make unhealthy decisions. For instance, my job requires that I am on-call every two weeks, to be woken up in the middle of the night if there are problems with the application I support, while still working the normal work-week. I don't know anybody who has an on-call job who would say it is "healthy". My personality traits led me to a place where I am desireable to employers for a position like this. It pays a reasonable wage, can't complain about that. But does it affect my health? I would guess my personality enabled/drove me to live a less than optimal lifestyle, but did not cause the condition. None of my co-workers have this problem, but they do share my personality traits.

I certainly haven't been secretly desiring or "psyching" myself to have stomach pain and the screaming runs (oh sorry, I meant to say "no solid bowel movements") for the past five months. I can't imagine anybody who would. My diagnoses was from a physical biopsy of the tissue from my lower intestine, taken during colonoscopy. There is no other way to diagnose the particular flavor of IBD that I have.

This is very interesting. The only one that remotely applied to me was this:

Inflammatory Bowel Disorders "compulsive personality lifestyle with the following features: neatness, orderliness, puncuality, indecisiveness, emotional guardedness, humorlessness, conscientiousness, obstinacy, conformity, moral rigidness"

Although... I don't really have any bowel disorders, but rather, I have extreme stomach problems. I'm easily nauseated. Not by gore or anything like that, I've seen some pretty horrid stuff in my short life and it hasn't turned my stomach. But whenever I get anxiety: it manifests itself in nausea. Same with whenever I get sick... it will always hit me in the stomach. It's my weakest point.

The personality traits that apply to me are: compulsive personality, neatness and orderliness, punctuality, emotional guardedness (big time), conscientiousness (almost to a fault), obstinacy, and moral rigidness (although that could be my upbringing).
Whereas, I didn't see many traits of mine being listed beneath any of the other disorders mentioned.

It's possible that these can be traits of stomach disorders as well as bowel - after all, they're part of the same system.

reply to post by gwynnhwyfar

I would hate to think , that you think my post was all about assumptions. What I was citing out of a text book doesn't convey my personal interjections .
However , in many ways I can relate to some of the studies I posted. As a manager , and my personal life and struggles ..I ended up in the emergency room plenty of times for chest pains , and hypertension. It came down to a choice between my health and my job. I decided that working for some corporate ass wasn't my thing ..and I've taken the hard road , to getting an education and helping ppl.

reply to post by paleorchid13

Nope, I didn't think that at all. I think it's a great topic for discussion. And I do think there is a lot of correlation which is very interesting! I was just responding to this particular comment (which I totally agree with, by the way):

Any way of negative thinking is harmful.

In this discussion, I didn't want us to confuse the detrimental effects of negativity or negative thinking on one's health with the potentially detrimental effects of one's personality traits on one's health. Sure, in some cases those two do go hand-in-hand, but the OP was about correlating some pre-defined personality traits (not necessarily negative) with particular disorders, so just trying to keep that distance and avoid people drawing some kind of morality conclusion.

LOL - see how obstinate I am? :-D

reply to post by paleorchid13


Oh this is very true. I havent looked too much into the idea other than what I read in my textbook, but that has been proven. its sort of a one-causes-the-other thing, like a symbiotic relationship that all is determined by environment in the end. please do send me that link in a private message im very interested

reply to post by gwynnhwyfar

I can't really argue with you . However , many people do incorporate a cynical , critical way of thinking into their person. I can't agree :somehow we integrate negative thought-values into our personality.

reply to post by paleorchid13


Isn't that pretty much like blaming the patient for becoming sick?