Is This Worth Dying For? - Part 2

By Jill Cody

(Part 2 of a 4 part series)

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

“Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.”

— Lao Tzu

Time Urgency

One day before my “enlightenment”, I walked through the front door of the company I worked for and a gentleman sitting on a couch near the door asked “Jill, don’t you open doors when you go through them”? I just laughed and kept on going. At the time I responded positively to this question. In my mind I was thinking, “No, I’ve got things to do. I am woman, hear me roar”! You know the behavior. The one that looks like you’re so busy because you are so important. I look back on that incident now and shiver. There was a message there and I didn’t get it. He was obviously taken aback by the sheer force by which I was walking through the door. One of the manifestations of time urgency is walking too fast. Doing everything too fast such as eating, talking and driving. The urgency we create in our minds by thinking we have to “accomplish or achieve more and more things, or participate in more and more events in less and less time” causes us to rev-up. We become human doings instead of human beings. This thinking causes us to add an extra notch of speed on everything we do so that we think we can get more done. Do we really? How much time did I lose by becoming ill? Probably everything I thought I was saving by hurrying. In fact, Dr. Friedman calls time urgency the “hurry sickness”. Well, I can vouch for that. Relationships suffer too. People respond to character. When you are going to fast -proving yourself- they can’t see it. They can’t see the wonderful person you really are. Slow down and watch your relationships deepen and grow - with everyone.

Remember the part of the Type A definition that says the personality is dominated by covert insecurity? This is why we feel we need to look busy so that we can also look important. Since I have learned this point I came across a quote from Oliver Wendell Holmes, which is so appropriate, I keep it in mind always, “He who is in a hurry shows that what he is about is too big for him”. I’m sorry to say that now when I see people speeding about, driving too fast, talking too fast, or walking too fast, I feel sad for them. I see people who are screaming that what they are about is too big for them. They now look out of control to me and not important at all. I think there, but for the grace of Dr. Meyer Friedman, go I. It saddens me because I see them struggling to get through whatever is occupying them at the moment and on a path of self destruction (definitely not Carpe Momentum behavior) and I am helpless to do anything about it. If I feel this way I wonder how Dr. Friedman must feel?

Another way time urgency is manifested is by doing more then one thing at a time. This is called “multiphasic” behavior. For example, multiphasic behavior manifests itself through such actions as writing a report and talking on the telephone, eating and walking around, or driving a car and talking on the telephone. Our society has created a culture of multiphasic behavior. We wear it like a badge of honor. I recently gave a workshop on living life in the balance to a group of employees of a fast food company. After the workshop, one of the participants told me about their supervisor who always stays late and brags about it. Working late was a badge of honor to this person. To me it says that what he’s about is too big for him. He will eventually make himself sick. We have become frazzled people developing a frenzied sweat covering up covert insecurity.

It is not also just “doing” more then one thing at a time it is also “thinking” about more then one thing at a time. Have you ever driven down the freeway and got thinking about something and realized you hadn’t been paying attention to the road, yet you were driving the automobile. Staying focused to a task is difficult if you feel pressured by time. You want to double up or maybe triple up on the things you want to do. This is how accidents can happen. The word “accident” bothers me a bit because it places the focus of responsibility onto some unknown cause that created the “accident.” But, don’t we really know that an accident means we just blew it in trying to go faster or do more then one thing at a time? How much pain and how many lives could be saved if we just slowed down and focused a little bit more? The life may be your own.

The worst “time urgency” story I ever heard was on the Golden Gate Bridge. It was closed for four hours and someone lost his or her life because another person was in a hurry. A male driver going north towards Marin County became impatient and pulled into the southbound lanes to pass. An illegal act. He caused a nine-car accident and killed an innocent person. I know it would be unrealistic to expect everyone to have infinite patience and to slow down to an appropriate pace, but what would happen if we just raised our patience level a notch and lowered our speed just a notch? Just a notch. I hope you will consider it.

Free-Floating Hostility

Time urgency is only half of the Type A’s story. The root cause of a Type A personality is a lack of self-esteem. I know the phrase “self-esteem” has gotten a bad reputation lately. Call it a lack of a good self-concept. Whatever it is, it causes us to carry anger within us where ever we go. I once heard Dr. Wayne Dyer use an orange as a metaphor for character. If you squeeze an orange, what comes out is what’s inside. If you squeeze a Type A personality, what comes out is judgment and anger because it is what’s carried inside. It has nothing to do with what is happening externally and everything to do with them internally.

I am not saying that anger is bad and you are never to feel or show it. The key is the intensity of the anger; the emotional wrap that envelopes it. The reason why people have trouble coping with a Type A person at the moment the anger flares, is there’s usually a seed of truth to what the individual is angry about. A bystander usually has to agree because whatever infraction happened to cause the anger did, in fact, occur. I can best explain this problem of “emotionally wrapping” with a couple of stories. I’ll leave my personally embarrassing one for last.

A couple of years ago, after I had completed the Institute training and had shared it with my husband, we attended an arts & wine festival in our town. We were standing in line at the purchasing booth when a woman cut in line demanding her money back from the volunteers staffing the booth. It was very easy to determine what had gone wrong since she was yelling her story. Apparently, the item she purchased was no longer with the vendor to pick up after she purchased it. He had sold it to someone else thinking she would not be returning for it. She needed to get a car to transport it and was gone too long or so the vendor thought. Yes, it’s true that her purchased item was gone. Yes, she did deserve her money back. But, to yell at volunteers and stop all lines of transactions occurring at the booth was an intensity of anger not appropriate to the infraction. To make things worse, they didn’t have her check any longer because the Chamber of Commerce staff had just collected the receipts. Upon observing this incident, my husband leaned over to me and whispered, “AIAI Attack”.

What is an “AIAI Attack?” Dr. Friedman sometimes explains the behavior of a Type A personality in four words: Anger, Irritation, Aggression and Impatience. When free-floating hostility lashes out it’s called an “AIAI Attack.” What is really important to remember, if you are on the other side of an “AIAI Attack”, is that it has nothing to do with you. This is especially helpful if the Type A individual is a member of your family or if you deal with the public a lot. You don’t need to take the anger directed towards you personally because you know the anger is carried within them. It just happens to be releasing towards you for the moment. There is a quote by Dr. Stephen Covey that is fabulous in describing what’s going on for a Type A individual at these moments, “Unresolved feelings never die, they are buried alive and come forth later in uglier ways.” Free-floating hostility is always ugly. It’s ugly to watch. It’s ugly to experience. It’s ugly to feel.

One day I was that ugly person. Well, I’m sure there were many other days, but this is one I especially remember. I was going to stop at a shoe repair store and there was a parallel parking space in front of the store. I pulled forward to back into the space when a car behind me zipped into it. Isn’t it true that to park in a parallel space you are to back into it? I drove just a little bit around the corner to another space. As I look back it was really no big deal, but then I was furious. The injustice I had experienced. The woman was getting out of her car just as I was heading to the shoe repair store and I yelled at her. “Don’t you know you are suppose to back into a parallel parking space?” I used my finger and everything. Not the middle one. The other one. The scolding index finger. I’m still embarrassed by that story, but it is a perfect example of a little, everyday incident that can get the ire of a Type A.

Dr. Friedman asks, “What is the Type A doing to their life?” “What is the personality doing to itself?” Where did the personality go?” What are the things in life that get its ire?” “What is it doing to the body?” Right now, ask yourself the same questions.

(Part 3 covers “Constant State of Struggle” and “Self Destruction is Not Inevitable”)

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")