When Pain Disguises Itself as Personality

I was treated to a free drink to Costa Coffee today. As I was feeling a bit adventurous today, I ordered something I had not ordered for over a decade.

Cappuccino.

It’s a big deal because I cannot drink caffeinated coffee. I used to get so hyper after drinking caffeinated coffee I once… maybe I should keep this story to myself. But what I’m not going to keep to myself is the idea that came to me while I’m in this caffeinated state.

That’s a terrible segue, I know. So if this reads like a slightly over-enthusiastic caffeine-induced ramble, you’ve been warned. But stick with me, because what I’m about to say might just change the way you see yourself. Or at least help you forgive the version of you that mutters, “I’m just a strange person” whenever life gets a little socially awkward.

Let’s start with a picture. Imagine your arm has been burnt, and every time you move it, even slightly, you’re reminded of that tender, unforgiving pain. So you start holding it differently, and you’d adjust how you live around it, wouldn’t you? Maybe you cradle it awkwardly when you walk or change how you put on your jumper. Now imagine that no one else notices the scar on your arm but the calculated dance you perform with your arm. Soon enough, someone may say, “that’s an odd way to hold your arm.” You smile sheepishly and reply, “Oh, I’m just like that” because eventually even you forgot why you twist your arms like that.

But let’s pause here. Are you really just like that, or is that your body’s very clever way of avoiding more pain? Even when then pain may be invisible, repressed, forgotten?

Now swap the arm for your emotional wounds, like the heartbreaks, disappointments, losses, and traumas. Just like the burn, these pains can leave you compensating, adjusting, behaving in ways that might seem odd to others, or even to yourself. Maybe you flinch at affection, go blank when someone asks how you’re doing, or get irrationally annoyed when someone borrows your favourite pen. It feels weird, sure, but it’s not weird you. It’s pain, quietly pulling strings in the background and shaping your reactions without sending you the memo.

If you’ve ever said, “That’s just who I am,” I want to challenge you gently but firmly. Because some of those “just who I am” traits might actually be “just what I do to keep myself safe.” Pain has a sneaky way of dressing up like personality. It hides in habits, tucks itself into routines, and whispers, “This is just how you are.” But you’re not your pain. You’re the person trying to navigate life while carrying it. And the more you understand that distinction, the kinder you can be to yourself.

But the tricky part is, when the actual source of the pain quietly slips into the background, it becomes nearly impossible to recognise these changes in ourselves as just that, changes. After all, how can you call them a response to something if you’ve already forgotten the pain they were responding to? Suddenly, them being part of who you are becomes the only sensible explanation for these behaviours.

Unprocessed pain works silently long after its name is forgotten, influencing everything from your tone of voice to the way you hesitate before saying yes to an invitation. It’s like the world’s worst puppeteer, tugging at strings you didn’t know were attached. And when people call out the oddness of your behaviour, it can feel like they’re calling you odd. But they’re not (at least, they shouldn’t be). What they’re really pointing to are the adaptations you’ve made, adaptations that might not serve you anymore but made perfect sense in the moment they were created.

And that’s where therapy comes in. Therapy doesn’t burn your arm for you, but it could turn on the light so you can see the burn that’s been there all along. And sometimes, that clarity stings, because not only your therapist may turn on the light, they may also take away the “painkillers” you’ve been taking to numb the pain. Suddenly, you notice how much of your life has been choreographed around dodging pain you didn’t even realise you were carrying, and that your pain may be deeper than you thought. The process goes a bit like this: you walk into a therapy room thinking, “This is it. I’m going to leave here a brand new person, all sunshine and light.” Then the therapist hits you with something deceptively simple like, “And how does that make you feel?” And before you know it, you’re spiralling and crying into a box of tissues that you swear wasn’t there when you walked in.

Therapy has this knack for making you aware of feelings you didn’t even know you were avoiding. Repressed anger? Oh yes, it’s coming out. Lingering sadness from three heartbreaks ago? Let’s bring that to the surface too. And just like that burnt arm, your emotional pain starts dictating how you act.

It may sound counterintuitive, but this rediscovered pain is progress. I know, it doesn’t feel like it. Progress should feel empowering, like running through a field of flowers with inspirational music swelling in the background. Instead, it feels like you’re trudging through emotional mud, and the shoes you’re wearing are two sizes too small. But that discomfort is where the transformation happens.

When you start to see which parts of you are you and which parts are adaptations, it’s like untangling a knot you’ve been carrying in your chest. You get to decide, with compassion and curiosity, what to keep, what to heal, and what to gently let go.

One of the biggest hurdles is accepting that feeling worse before you feel better is a normal part of the therapeutic process. We’re conditioned to think that healing should be linear, like climbing a staircase where every step is a little higher than the last. But emotional healing is more like hiking up a mountain in the fog. Sometimes you trip, sometimes you take a wrong turn, and sometimes you sit down on a rock and wonder why on earth you started this climb in the first place. During therapy, you might notice yourself feeling like a stranger to yourself. You could find that you’re snapping at people more often, feeling hypersensitive to things that didn’t bother you before, or reacting in ways that leave you puzzled. This isn’t therapy making you strange, it’s you adapting to the newly discovered pain that therapy has brought to light. It’s like shining a torch into a dark room and suddenly tripping over furniture you didn’t realise was there. These surprising changes are your responses to pain happening in real time, as your mind and body work through what’s been hidden or suppressed. While it might feel disorienting, it’s a natural part of the healing process. Adapting to pain doesn’t mean it defines you; it means you’re learning to face it and move through it, even when it gets messy. You’re not “a snappy person” or “a downer.” You’re someone who’s brave enough to face the pain head-on, someone who’s rewriting their story, one uncomfortable but necessary sentence at a time.

If this resonates with you, I want to say something directly: You’re not strange, broken, or fundamentally flawed, and therapy is not turning you into a stranger to yourself. You’re someone who has adapted to life’s hurts in the most creative and human ways possible.

So here’s where my over-caffeinated brain finally parked itself: life may have burned your arm, and therapy may have exposed you to some forgotten pains, and during this process you may have adopted some behaviours that appear strange to others, but you’re not your pain, and you’re not the awkward or downright baffling ways you’ve adapted to it. You’re the person who’s been doing the best they can to navigate life while lugging that invisible weight around. Therapy might feel like someone’s rifling through your emotional junk drawer, pulling out embarrassing bits you’d rather leave buried, but it’s also where you start figuring out what’s yours to keep and what you can finally let go.

It’s messy, uncomfortable, and occasionally makes you want to fire your therapist and run off to a remote cabin to live among squirrels. But it’s also the process where you find out who you really are when you’re not just surviving. And that, readers, is worth every snappy retort and every awkward stumble along the way.

With that, I’m going to wrap this up before my legs fully detach and start breakdancing. The caffeine demands movement, and who am I to argue with such insistent biology?