The Type C Personality: Knowing This Could Save Your Life

The Real Reason My Mom Died of Cancer

On May 24, 2020, my mom died of Merkel Cell Carcinoma, a rare and aggressive form of skin cancer. It was way too early for her to leave.

While I knew there was a link to unresolved, bypassed emotional trauma, it was too late for her to get help. She didn’t totally buy into the connection, either, and so resisted therapeutic support.

Today, I want to share her story with you. I shared this on a podcast episode called The Legacy of Distrust; however, this article takes it further and is really about the dangers of unhealed trauma - how it can make us really sick, and even take our lives.

One of the reasons I want to share this publicly is because the patterning that my mom carried is extraordinarily common, and many of my clients are exactly like her.

And so this is not just her story, it is a wake up call to those that have a similar personality type.

Before I share her story, I want to post an excerpt from Gabor Mate’s book When The Body Says No. Chapter 9 is called, “Is There a Cancer Personality?” and explains a clear correlation between certain personality traits and cancer.

These parts I’m about to share from pages 124-127 made my hair stand on end (I read this after she passed):

“It was in relation to melanoma that the notion of a “Type C” personality was first proposed, a combination of character traits more likely to be found in those who develop cancer than in people who remain free of it.

Type A individuals are seen as “angry, tense, fast, aggressive, in control” - and more prone to heart disease. Type B represents the balanced, moderate human being who can feel and express emotion without losing themselves in uncontrolled emotional outbreaks. Type C personalities have been described as “extremely cooperative, patient, passive, lacking assertiveness and accepting…the Type C individual may resemble Type B, since both may appear easygoing and pleasant, but while the Type B easily expresses anger, fear, sadness, and other emotions, the Type C individual represses ‘negative’ emotions, particularly anger, while struggling to maintain a strong and happy facade.”

Repression, ‘niceness,’ and lack of aggression are life-long patterns, having their origins in early childhood.

The Type C personality traits associated with melanoma have been found in studies of many other cancers as well. Cancer patients were more likely to demonstrate the following traits: “the elements of denial and repression of anger and other negative emotions…the external appearance of a ‘nice’ or ‘good’ person, a suppression of reactions which may offend others, and the avoidance of conflict.”

Repression, the inability to say no, and a lack of awareness of one’s anger make it much more likely that a person will find herself in situations where her emotions are unexpressed, her needs are ignored, and her gentleness is exploited.”

Everything that Gabor Mate outlined in this chapter represented my mother’s personality to a T.

Many people described my mother as an angel. She was overly accepting, never showed anger, settled for less in relationships, had weak boundaries, and always put on a happy face, despite being dealt a tough hand in life.

She worked hard at the job she had to get after leaving my abusive father and didn’t retire until she was in her 70’s, mostly because she was financially supporting her second husband.

When she got cancer at 75, he expected her to continue cooking, cleaning, doing laundry, and hosting guests as if nothing was wrong. She drove herself to and from her radiation appointments. He didn’t step up and lend a hand. These are just some examples of mistreatment that occurred.

It wasn’t until she was on her deathbed that I heard her express anger and frustration at this man for some of his behaviors. It was almost like she woke up at the final hour.

Louise Hay wrote about the connection between cancer and repressed anger and resentment in You Can Heal Your Life (1984). I am sure others may have picked up on the link even earlier.

But despite the clear psychological connection, we are still terribly unsuccessful with the ‘war on cancer.’

In 2020, the year my mom died, an estimated 10 million people died of cancer worldwide.

When I heard that statistic it made me even more angry at the fake pandemic. TEN. MILLION. PEOPLE. These numbers are never broadcast, it’s like we’ve forgotten or have just accepted the staggering number of lives cancer takes every year.

My mom also had colon cancer before she had skin cancer. Otherwise, up until that point, she was seemingly healthy.

The discovery of the Type C personality should be shouted from the rooftops.

Doctors involved in cancer treatment, and even doctors that are not, should be actively screening for Type C personality traits and sharing this knowledge with patients, now. The studies that Gabor Mate quotes in his book are from the 1970’s and 80’s, it is inexcusable that modern medicine continues to ignore these links.

While there are other factors that contribute to the development of cancer, from a psycho-spiritual perspective, this one is huge.

I was also running this Type C personality in my life until I crashed and burned during my dark night of the soul in 2014 - forcing me to face my stuff. I am now a completely different person.

I love my mother dearly and know that she did not have the same opportunities, resources, or support that I have had in my life to overcome these coping mechanisms. By sharing my family story below, including her life, I wish to honor her for all of the lessons she taught me, as well as inspire others to make some changes.

Mom, please know that your life was not lived in vain.

I am working hard everyday to help others recognize these damaging patterns and to overcome them.

I love you so much and will never forget what you have done for me.

Your death, your story, and what you had to go through will not be forgotten.

I will take all of the hardships of our family, learn all of the lessons, and help others to do the same.

THE LEGACY OF DISTRUST

This is where things get personal and I share some darkness that exists in my mother line.

(Based on what I shared about the Type C personality, make note of this when I describe my mother.)

The rage that I have attempted to process through my body, heart and soul sometimes seems never ending.

What I now know is that I carry generations of rage from the women in my family line from inexcusable behavior of men. Most of it was not safe to be expressed in their lives, so it seems to have fallen on me to move it through and alchemize it.

Thank God I have martial arts because I have offloaded mountains of rage onto the heavy bag.

The intergenerational trauma within my family line underlies the work that I do, and is why I was literally born for this.

Here is the story of my mother line, outlining just a little bit of what my grandmother went through, then my mother, and then me. This is just three generations, I won’t go back further today.

My mother was conceived in the summer of 1941. My grandmother was 16 years old when she got pregnant.

Her boyfriend wanted nothing to do with it, and his family blackmailed my grandmother's family, forbidding them to ever reveal the father's identity.

My mother grew up believing that her mother was her sister. She thought her grandmother was her mother.

I'm not sure when she learned the truth of this, but she grew up knowing nothing about her father. Nobody would talk about it.

When my mom was in her 70's, a woman who ended up being her half sister contacted her (she had no idea who this woman was, or that she had half siblings) and told her that her father was on his deathbed.

She invited my mother to come say goodbye to him. In this case, it would have been hello and goodbye. The only problem was that he had dementia and had no idea who she was.

This is the first time I really saw my mom struggle openly. Despite living a hard life and marrying a man who was incredibly abusive (my father), she handled life's challenges with grace and did what she had to do to get by as a single mom. She rarely complained.

But the shock of this invitation to now meet her father face to face stirred up something inside of her that was never healed, let alone acknowledged.

She later learned that her father had grown up (and lived) just a few blocks away from her childhood home.

This was the first time I saw her face the childhood trauma and express anger at the situation.

How could a man knowingly walk through life fully opting out of any responsibility for his child?

What does it take to shut off any care and concern for a daughter you have created?

Between the maternal grandfather I never knew, my father’s harmful behavior, and other men whose behavior was awful, the legacy of distrust was created - distrust of men to be good people.

This belief is/was carried consciously and unconsciously to varying degrees within the family line.

And from what I know about my mother line (and my father line too) this pattern goes back hundreds, if not thousands of years.

This belief was reinforced within me in a more direct way with my father being an abusive mess, creating chaos and harm in my household. He treated my mother terribly - and I grew up witnessing the gaslighting and dysfunction whenever he was home. (He wasn’t home all the time, he was gone with other women often, who would call the house looking for him.)

She left him when I was 5 or 6 but he had already abused me sexually and psychologically starting from age 3, and so from direct experience I learned that men are scary and dangerous and can't be trusted. (This was a core subconscious belief I had to do serious work on to overcome later in life.)

The mind virus of misogyny was also implanted from the start in my life. I saw that women were to be discarded and men can go off and do whatever they please, wreaking havoc and harm without care. Women were left to clean up the mess.

Not surprisingly, there were two major romantic relationships in my life where these dysfunctional male-female patterns played out. My mother also remarried later in life, and although it was a healthier relationship in some regards, overall, she was still putting up with bad behavior.

Bringing it back to the core of what I want to leave you with: when we let people run all over us, when we are people-pleasers, when we stuff down our anger and make ourselves nice and peaceful for everybody, when we have poor boundaries, when we are empaths without a spine, when we are walking on eggshells, when we put our needs last and everyone else first, we are putting ourselves at risk of getting sick.

Skin cancer is so relevant here, because the skin is the organ of a boundary.

The body keeps the score.

So, hopefully now you understand why I am so passionate about helping people overcome these specific characteristics, born out of trauma and conditioning, that not only set us up for lifelong relationship problems, but also physical and spiritual consequences as well.

And also, all of this is why I am so passionate about healing the relationship between men and women, and ending the victim/victimizer cycle born out of the abuse of power.

Thankfully, I have so much faith that all of this can be overcome, because I have seen my clients massively change their lives through strengthening self-love, developing boundaries, building a spine, and becoming truly assertive in a healthy way.

(And of course, I did it first in my own life.)

When I shared a little about this on Instagram a few months ago, I had SO many people message me that they have also seen the devastating outcomes of a Type C personality.

The main purpose for writing this article is to inform you of the dangers of trauma that goes unhealed, ‘stuff’ that gets swept under the rug - and this is just one story of millions within our human family.

What have I seen that works to overcome a Type C personality? Breathwork for clearing and moving stuck energy out somatically, therapy for healing childhood wounds and tracing back dysfunctional patterns, coaching for teaching about healthy relationship skills, and most importantly, the embodied wisdom of someone who has gone through this personally. These are all embedded in the work that I do to help people heal - and to become healthy - physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually.

This article is personal and close to my heart. I am a private person who does not share lightly. If I can inspire just one person to make some changes in a positive direction, I will be truly grateful.

If this article helped you in any way, I’d love to hear in the comments below, and I’d also love for you to share it with anyone who needs to hear about this. Thank you for not turning a blind eye to this difficult topic. Sending love and strength to all.

Leigh-Anne LoPinto is a psychologist, relationship coach, and breathwork teacher with 13 years of experience. She uses a psychological-spiritual approach to help people all over the world heal relationship wounds, overcome codependency, develop healthy self-love, and attract incredible relationships. She specializes in healing attachment style, practicing conscious relationships, and moving towards divine union, using relationships to evolve on a soul level.

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