Character Study

Learn how to embrace the starring role you play in your life without pushing others off the stage.

- Lindsay Geller

Sweat pours down my face. My thigh muscles ache as my sneakers pound the pavement. I want to give up, but I don’t. I can't. So, I put on Breathe” by Michelle Branch. By the time the chorus reaches its pinnacle—‘Tf I just breathe...everything will be all right”—I'm in a full-out sprint. I’m the star of my own early-aughts rom-com in which, after the requisite heartbreak, self-discovery, and tear-filled reunion, everything really will be all right. 

It’s both a privilege and a too-of untapped power to believe that it'll work out—happily ever after—but having faith in the outcome allows me to have faith in my ability to get there. Now, whenever I run to a song that allows me to tap into what's called main character energy,’ I feel myself increasing speed, improving form, even smiling between breaths. And all because I think, it had an audience, what would I want them to see?

I've spent enough years navel-gazing, both at the personal and the professional level, that when "main character syndrome" started trending on TikTok and Instagram in 2020, I wasn't surprised that a term had emerged to define this tendency. I only wondered why it took so long.

From a psychological perspective, main character syndrome (MCS) is an "intentional way that a person thinks of themself as the key player in their life and views it through a storytelling lens, like a movie or TV show," says clinical psychologist Ramani Durvasula, PhD, a professor emerita of psychology at California State University at Los Angeles and the author of Don't You Know Who I Am?: 

How to Stay Sane in an Era of Narcissism, Entitlement, and Incivility. In other words, to be the main character is to see everyone else as a potential sidekick or nemesis. Either way, they only matter in terms of their connection to you.