Cure is Freedom

Personalities

State of being

The term personality is used here in a special way. A personality is a state of being. It is a living, complex state of motives, views, thoughts, emotions, sensations, and diseases. Personalities express themselves on all the above levels of life. And these levels form a logical whole. Illness is the physical expression of this state. 

Goal

An essential, central feature of a personality is its goal. This can also be called aim, desire, need, motivation, or drive. It is the desire to be someone or have something: doctor, director, father, mother, artist, scientist. It can be the desire to be rich, famous, loved, or recognised. It is the motivator of action.

Role

The goal of a personality is expressed in the role one plays in life. A mother personality wants to have children. A king personality wants to become a leader. A child personality wants to be safe in his family, house, and with his parents. It is like acting in a theatre play. 

Confusion arises when one thinks to be a certain personality, instead of having such a personality. The role can also be a defence mechanism as Sam Keen expresses this: “For the adult, all the world is a podium and the personality is the mask one wears to play the assigned role”.

Thoughts

The goal expresses an idea of how the world should be. The idea of an ideal world is a collection of thoughts. The goal is associated with considerations, judgments, convictions, and condemnations. Often they are expressed in sentences that contain words like, always or never, everyone or no one, should or shouldn’t.

The personality expresses itself especially in recurrent and persistent thoughts about events in life. The personality can hang onto those stories of life and tell them repeatedly to others. 

Emotions

Goals result in fears. If the personality has not reached his goal there is fear of not reaching it. When the personality has reached his goal there is the fear of losing it. If we approach or achieve a goal, we are happy and rejoice. If we lose it, we are unhappy, sad, and gloomy. As long as we can live in and maintain prosperity, depression and fear seem to be absent. As long as a person is healthy, the fear of illness and death usually seems to be far away, only to reappear when he is ill. The fear of losing a good position may stem from the need for a certain prestige. The fear of illness or death arises from the goal to be healthy and strong. 

Every personality has a certain type of fear that is typical for that personality type, for example, the fear of poverty. A widespread basic fear is that of illness and death. It is the fear of losing health.

Sensitivity Susceptibility

The goal makes the personality susceptible to events. It leads to a desire to go away from something or to go to something. He wants to have something or get rid of something. Personalities are vulnerable to trauma, allergic to noise, food or chemicals, pollen, tastes and smells, light and darkness, criticism and cursing. We can recognise personali-ties by their vulnerability to certain issues related to the original trauma. It is like recognising a tree by its fruit.

Triggers, Events, Life stories

Diseases mostly start from stressful, traumatic experiences. They lead to worry, brooding, being absorbed in the problem. Where a solution cannot be found, they can trigger diseases, whether the expression is physical or mental. In the triggering event, we can see the essence of the personality. We can see what it does to people and how they react to it. They are a kind of fractal of a personality. 

Important events can become life stories, which are expressions of personalities. That is what makes novels and films so interesting: we more or less recognize our own personalities in them. We identify with our history, with our “story”. And when it shows up again, it means that it has not yet been resolved and that there is still a pain about it. Eckhart Tolle calls it “Me and my stories”.

Triggers and life stories make cases and their diseases understandable.

Compensations Diversion Distraction

One way is to look for compensations. Diversion, distraction and entertainment are common tactics. They are compensations, like sweets or a band aid. It can lead to addictions like Gabor Maté has shown very well. And the addiction can be anything: drugs, medicines, food, shopping, money, power, gambling, working, honour, praise.

Action Handling

An important aspect of personalities is their action, how they are handling the goal. 

Depression like that of the patient described can occur with any illness and with any personality. This happens when the compensatory capacity of a personality no longer functions. It is the organism’s call to turn its attention inwards instead of outwards.

Trauma

Personalities usually develop after a trigger or trauma. Personality and trauma are like two sides of the same coin. Trauma is the acute manifestation of a chronically developed personality. Personalities emerge after experiences that may stem from worry, anger, pressure, loss, and others. Therefore, we can see personalities and their disorders as post-traumatic stress syndromes. 

The connection between trauma and personality is also evident from the fact that events that are traumatic for one person have little or no effect on another. If a large number of people become infected with the tuberculosis bacillus, for example, only about 15 percent of those infected become ill. This percentage depends strongly on factors such as poverty and nutrition. In general, however, many infected people get no problems, and others immediately react accordingly due to their affinity with the subject. This is an expression of the fact that the terrain is more important than the infection. In other words, the state of a person’s immune system is more decisive than the fact of being infected with bacteria or viruses.

It can also come back to us in the form of accidents or events. When the personality with its trauma is completely denied or has become unconscious, it can only express itself as accidents or diseases in the physical world. It is as Jung said: “That which we do not bring to consciousness appears in our lives as fate”.

What is not brought to consciousness, comes to us as fate. A similar situation is seen in family constellations. A theme, a personality, is present in a family and gets expressed in one of the family members. It is present in the field and has to become conscious. Patients often don’t know the trauma. In family constellations, it is shown that a person can carry a family problem with him without knowing where it is coming from, and even without knowing what the trauma is. When one is open to the ideas of reincarnation and karma it is easy to envision that one can carry traumas from past lives.

Cause

An important question is where the personalities come from. Often the trauma is seen as the cause. But it can also be seen as the trigger of an existing imbalance. One can see early childhood trauma as a cause, like neglect from a parent. But then one can look for the cause of ne-glect that parent displays. He probably had a similar experience of neglect. Traumas get repeated generation after generation as Gabor Maté describes. In the end there is no definite answer. It is a hen and egg situation. But an answer is not needed for particle purposes, as one only needs to understand the actual state of being, wherever it arises from.

Often the cause is traced to early childhood traumas. Clinically they are a strong indicator of problems later in life (Maté). The guilt can be laid with the parents. But one can see the problems also as arising from personalities that one is born with.

In Buddhism the concept of vasana is used. Vasana means a tendency in the mind, a kind of addiction. It is a pattern of reacting to circumstances formed by impressions of the past. It is a dwelling of the mind, expressed in persistent thoughts about longings, expectations, desires, traumas, and fears. In any case the mind is occupied, engaged, busy.

Talent

Personalities have two sides: the talent and the problem side. Each personality has the talent to overcome or solve a problem. But if one identifies too much with a personality, the personalities becomes rigid. Out of balance. He will act too often, also when it is not suitable. 

Opportunity

A disease is a burden. But it is also an opportunity. It is an opportunity to solve a problem and to disengage form a too strong personality and to become more oneself. One can take the responsibility for the disease and the problem and start looking at the essence of it to understand it and let it go. That will end the chain of cause and effect. Instead of being a victim one becomes the hero. In solving the problem for oneself, one often solves it for more people who are involved. In case of a   family trauma, one can solve it for the whole family. 

Influence of personalities

The influence of personalities on one’s body can be seen directly in some cases of multiple personalities. For example, a woman had about 10 personalities, most of which were blind; if one of the blind persona-lities prevailed, there was no activity in the visual cortex according to the MRI; for non-blind personalities, there was normal activity in the visual cortex (Waldvogel). This shows how strong and directly influencing can personalities be.

Identification

The identification with personalities is an important issue. When the identification is too strong, one loses control over the personality. The personality becomes master instead of servant. Personality is the talent or a method to overcome certain problems. It is the capability to avoid or ward off traumas.