Characteristics of Type a Personalities: Are You a TABBER?

A TABBER is someone who exhibits the signs of type A behavior. Type A behavior was initially considered just a personality type, but experts now are considering it a medical disorder because of its harmful effects on health and relationships. The relationship between type A personalities and heart disease has become common knowledge among physicians. People with type A personality tend to have more health issues and it affects the body in many ways. People with type A behavior tend to overwork their nervous system because it is chronically hyperactive due to their need to hurry and hostility. Type A behavior produces constant, high levels of stress that are not good for the heart and overall health. Stress also has been found to raise cholesterol levels.

Type A behavior, or TAB, has not been studied a lot in women, so it has mainly been considered a male disorder. I personally believe that in this day and age many women are affected as well.

The criteria for type A personality types and behavior is vague, though. Two main features of type A personality are defined as people who exhibit the following signs:

Time urgency or time impatience

- You eat fast and leaving the dinner table abruptly.
- You are told by others to slow down and/or relax.
- You become easily agitated if waiting in a cashier's line or waiting to be seated at a restaurant.
- You read the paper and/or watch television while eating.
- You are always doing something while on the telephone.
- You are not good at listening when being spoken to because you are too busy thinking things of other things.
- You are always in a hurry to get things done.

Always present hostility

- You have difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep because you are upset about something someone has done.
- You believe most people are not honest and they are not willing to help others.
- You are often irritated while driving - swearing or road rage.
- You are easily upset by other people's inadequacies such as tardiness and mistakes.
- You feel your spouse is critical of your inadequacies.
- Constant apprehension of future disasters or "what if" thinking.

Dr. Friedman, who is considered a pioneer researcher in this field, also notes that there are six physical signs of type A behavior:

- Excessive perspiration of the person's forehead and upper lip.
- Teeth grinding
- An indentation of the tongue due to its chronic pressure against the top teeth.
- Tic-like movement of the upper eyelid.
- Tic-like movement of the corners of the mouth.
- Lower eyelid skin has brown coloring.

Some traits exhibited by those with type A behavior include being extremely ambitious, extremely competitive and always present with a sense of time urgency and the need to be in control of every situation. Dr. Meyer Friedman and Dr. R.H. Rosenman define type A personality as a "person who is aggressively involved in a chronic, incessant struggle to achieve more and more in less and less time; and if required to do so, against the opposing efforts of other things or other persons."

A TABBER can be very hard to please. They want everything done exactly the right way. Because of this, they do not like delegating to others. When they do delegate, they feel out of control and feel as though no one can do the job as well as them.

A TABBER will also impose unnecessary deadlines on themselves. Severe TABBERs impose artificial deadlines because they think they can only work inside a pressure cooker. They act as though their deadlines are a do or die situation. A TABBER also feels that the only way to get ahead in life is to drive themselves extremely hard. This actually becomes the reason they don't succeed.

There is hope for someone with type A personality, though. These behaviors can be changed. A TABBER just needs to:

- Learn to change their attitude about time. Look at time as your friend instead of your enemy.
- Learn to accept other people's faults and be patient with their mistakes.
- Learn to forgive and face unavoidable consequences from your own mistakes or those made by others.
- Replace anger and hostility with forgiveness, empathy and compassion.
- Learn to be more affectionate with others and learn how to receive affection also.
- Learn to listen to what others are saying - avoid interrupting.
- Try sitting and doing nothing for 15 minutes. Do not think about what you have to do or what you could have accomplished during that time.