Being a Type A personality can be awesome — their personalities are ambitious, hard-working, competitive and career-orientated. It can be a pain too, since they’re also perfectionists, unstable, easily stressed and often have an unhealthy relationship with external rewards (wealth, status, or power). It can have serious consequences on your health and your relationships, but it can also lead to a fulfilling life if managed correctly. Here are 15 problems that all Type A personalities will understand.
- Winning isn’t everything to you — it’s the ONLY thing. Competitive is too light a word for a person with Type A personality. You have to be the best at everything, and perfection is the only option.
- Type As see laziness as a choice, and often don’t have much tolerance for it. Laziness grinds a Type A personality’s gears. It’s intolerable and painful to watch and be around, and you won’t stand for slackers under any circumstances.
- You’re stressed out most of the time. And in fact, not being stressed out feels unnatural to you.
- Things can get emotional very fast. Because it feels like everything needs to be now, and done perfectly, your emotions run really high all the time.
- Stress and lack of sleep are common. The endless all-nighters that you spend studying or preparing for tomorrow’s meetings can wear you down.
- Even on nights out, Type As are still checking their email. “Yes, I’m having fun. I just have to check this one thing…”
- Type As can find it hard to keep relationships. Or even make time to date. Career often takes precedent over romantic endeavors (even if Type As really would like a relationship, too).
- Teeth grinding (or some other nervous tick) is a big issue. The stress we experience on a regular basis can often take a toll on our physical health.
- Slow walkers drive you up the wall. There should be two lanes for pedestrians, one for you, and one for everyone else.
- Heart disease will be the death of you. Some researchers predict that people with Type A personalities are almost certainly going to experience heart disease by the time they’re 65.
- You can’t deal with being late. It genuinely makes you feel like you’re on the verge of having a heart attack.
- You can’t deal with anyone making you late. And if someone else is responsibility for your tardiness, they’d better be ready to deal with a whole ton of passive-aggressiveness for the rest of the night.
- People telling you to “calm down” and “relax” have a death wish. Because those two sentences have stalked you for your entire life, you’ve banned them from being uttered in your presence. Plus, wouldn’t you calm down and relax if you could? It’s not like you’re choosing to lose your hair and never sleep!
- “Work hard, play hard” seems like an obvious thing to say. There’s not half-measures with you. It’s all or nothing.
