Each day, millions of people across the world experience chronic, recurrent and acute pain. In most of the victims of the pain, neither pharmacological nor surgical interventions fail to stop the pain and suffering in most of the victims due to the physiological and physical influencing factors that trigger the pain. Therefore, there are various personality factors that affect the adaptation and experience to pain. Therefore, the existence of pain prone personalities is embedded on some attributes and characteristics that may predispose people to pain and affect their ability to cope with the pain in various perspectives and circumstances (David, 2010). The pain prone personalities are the individuals that are at a high risk of exposure to extreme stresses with high levels of emotional stimulation that can lead to a trigger of massive pain.
Perfectionists are a typical representation of pain-prone personalities (Main & Michael, 2008). Perfectionists are always conscious about their performance and productivity and they are always motivated by the achievement of good results. Perfectionists are extremely careful about whatever they do and they always want to complete all their tasks to the required standards without any flaws and errors. However, most of the entities and engagements that exist in the world are prone to various errors and mistakes. Therefore, these individuals may not be in a position to manage the stress that may come up as a result of failure or lack of perfection.
The people-pleasers are at a higher risk of experiencing pain and stress. These individuals always orient their action and activities on other people because all their interests may want to serve their comfort. These individuals always want to settle conflicts at the expense of their strong opinions because they do not like being engaged in disagreements (Turk, 2013). The constant engagements for an individual to reduce the amount of conflict with other people is very detrimental to the development of a strong character and this may make other people to take advantage of it to advance their malicious intentions which is likely to lead to pain.
Legalists are personalities that always want to do thinks in the right way in accordance to the protocols and set regulations. The operation of the legalists is what always exposes to the risks of pain and stress. This is because these individuals can think of something and they commit their efforts and hearts to the full achievement of their objective. In the course of honoring the commitments, these individuals can experience various setbacks that may be detrimental to their final objectives and this can make these individuals suffer (David, 2010). Honoring commitments without a progressive achievement can also contribute to high levels of suffering.
Stoic individuals always have the fear of expressing strong and extreme emotions like passionate love, deep sorrow and anger. These individuals always do not express their feeling in public and they always have hidden emotional affiliations (Main & Michael, 2008). A typical characteristics of these individuals is that they like hiding their emotions and do not like expressing them to other people. According to these individuals, expression of feelings in public amounts to high levels of exposure and it is perceived to be a weakness.
Fear prone personalities are also susceptible to pain and suffering. This is because these individuals rarely feel comfortable because of the high level of mistrust. As a result, the minds of these individuals have the feeling of the worst case happening in any scenario (Turk, 2013). The level of resilience of these individual sis very low and they can hardly manage a variety of situations which that can present pain and suffering. Therefore, extreme emotional and psychological orientations characterized by radical ideologies are some of the attributes that make up individuals with personalities prone to pain.
- David, F.M. (2010). Health Psychology: Theory, Research and Practice. New York: Sage.
- Main, C.J. & Michael, J. (2008). The Psychology of Pain: Practical Applications. London: Elsevier Health Sciences Publication.
- Turk, D. (2013). Psychological Approaches to Pain Management. Boston: Guifold Publishers.
