Is It Worth Dying For?

By Jill Cody

(Part 1 of a 4 part series)

IS IT WORTH DYING FOR? A synopsis of Dr. Meyer Friedman’s research into Type A behavior

“Self-confirming nature of thought is amazing - we only see what confirms our thoughts.”

- Dr. Roger C. Mills

“There is nothing wrong with being a Type A personality. Some of the most interesting people are Type A’s. It’s just that Type B’s won’t kill themselves”. When I was in his Institute, I heard Dr. Friedman make this point. He is the cardiologist who identified Type A behavior and has amassed over 40 years of research into the personality. Along with Dr. Ray Rosenman and Dr. Sanford Byers, Dr. Friedman (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meyer_Friedman) began to suspect that behavior might be involved in the development of coronary heart disease. They were implementing a cholesterol diet study of 46 San Francisco Junior League women and their husbands, when they realized that something more must be at work to raise cholesterol levels. The men’s levels were higher then the women’s, yet the women ate just as much animal fat. The president of the Junior League told them that she knew what it could be. She said it was the stress their husbands encountered in their jobs.

Dr. Friedman writes in his book (coauthored with Diane Ulmer, R.N., M.S.) Treating Type A Behavior And Your Heart that the thought “coming as it did after the negative results of the dietary study and on top of our own suspicions about the possible role of emotional stress, it made us realize that we had to cease armchair philosophizing and start some serious investigative work.” Now, the concept that stress effects our health isn’t even questioned any longer, but many people still don’t believe they can do anything about it. Well, you absolutely can and that’s what has been keeping Dr. Friedman busy since 1954. (An article written by Dr. Meyer Friedman can be found at: www.sfms.org/AM/Template.cfm?Section=Home&CONTENTID=1732&TEMPLATE=/CM/HTMLDisplay.cfm&SECTION=Article_Archives)

Definition of a Type A Personality

A Type A personality (as quoted from Dr. Friedman’s book) “is above all in a continuous struggle to accomplish or achieve more and more things, or participate in more and more events in less and less time. This struggle fosters the emergence of a sense of time urgency. A Type A personality is dominated by covert insecurity of status or hyperaggressiveness, or both. As the struggle continues the hyperaggressiveness shows itself in easily aroused anger termed free-floating hostility. Finally, if the struggle becomes severe enough and persists long enough, a tendency towards self-destruction develops.” In other words, time urgency plus free-floating hostility may equal self-destruction.

A year after I had been diagnosed with Lupus I went for a check up with my doctor. I was feeling slightly better. I had taken the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People workshop a few months before and was starting to integrate what I had learned. At my first appointment with him I confessed that I still didn’t think I’d live to fifty. I was tired. I just didn’t think I was going to keep it all going and that I would just exhaust myself before then. He looked at me hard when I said that, but he didn’t say anything at the time. During the second visit to go over my lab results, he told me that Lupus wasn’t my main problem, that it was my personality. I was stunned. What? You mean I have something else to worry about? He told me to read a book and to call him when I finished and that if I felt it was on target, he would give me further information. The book was Treating Type A Behavior And Your Heart.

I read it cover to cover and thought that Dr. Friedman must be a psychic. It was me. It was my history. It was my childhood. The chapter about Type A women stated that they will find surrogate fathers … which I did! I walked too fast. I ate too fast. I never felt there was enough time in the day to do everything. I was in a constant state of struggle. There was no doubt about it, I was a Type A personality. It might be interesting to note here that we view the words “Type A” now as a cliché. Back when Dr. Friedman was studying the behavior pattern he needed a method to identify one personality from another. In a non-judgmental way, he called one behavior pattern “A” and the other ”B” just to distinguish the two. I think the history is good to remember so that we fight labeling personality traits as negative. When I had completed the book I called my doctor who then told me about the Dr. Meyer Friedman Institute. I signed up for two years.

(Part 2 covers "Time Urgency" and "Free Floating Hostility")