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#28 Type C Personality: Do You Set Yourself on Fire to Keep Others Warm? · College Is Fine, Everything's Fine

I think a lot of people, it's almost easier to just suck it up and stay than it is two leads. I don't wanna bother them with my problems, like I'll just deal with it myself. I'm just a little freshman. We're kind of degrading ourselves as people at that point. . Yeah. We're not very, very nice to ourselves.No. I feel like we lose track of it when life gets busy and we're only focused on, shoot. You know, I have this assignment and then I have to wake up in five hours because we have to go lift and like it just goes so fast. I personally always forget to just settle down and then, and take a second for myself.I'm Dr. Sarah Olivo. And I'm Dr. Liz Seidler. And you're listening to college is fine. Everything's fine.All right, so we are so excited to have our guests today. We've got an Anna White and Dr. Corey Gleed, who are here to talk to us a bit more about Type C. They have a pod predicated to this issue. And I'll let them go ahead and introduce themselves. Tell us about you guys. Great. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for having us.It's super fun to be here. I'll start Corey. So, I'm Anna White. I am a former executive Investment executive. I spent about 20 years working on Wall Street. I worked for a lot of different firms from capital markets to private equity, equity research, asset management. And at one point in my career it's been about, I guess 13 years ago.I experienced really severe burnout, which led to a chronic illness that's taken a really long, long time to understand and diagnose and recover from. And so I spent a lot of time reflecting on what made me so sick and realize that these, this types seek personality was a really big contributor to my declining health.So I ultimately ended up leaving corporate. I started a specialty care package business called Rest and Heal. And then Corey and I have known each other for a long time and we decided to just really do something with this type C personality. I So we launched this big initiative type C toolbox that we'll talk about more.I am Corey Gleed. I'm a clinical psychologist. I am from New York City. I see patients that have anxiety, depression, stress, and I practice evidence-based treatments, which is why I know Sarah. And Anna and I have known each other for a long time, not in the health area because of our kids. And then we teamed up.She introduced me to this idea of the Type C personality, which I recognized in a lot of my patients, but really never understood what it was specifically before. Anna read this very interesting book by Nasha Winds that talked about The Type C personality. Basically, it's this person who is excessively nice.To the point of ignoring their own needs. Someone who people pleases to excess, who really avoids conflict, who's excessively focused on other people and really worries about upsetting other people. So you're noticing me use the word excessive a lot. It's fine to be thoughtful and caring to other people.It's fine to wanna do things for other people. It's absolutely fine to, you know. Really feel good when you're thoughtful in caring to other people. But what we're really talking about with type C traits is when you take it too far. And we also talk about, in the same idea about saying no, that a lot of times people that have type C traits really struggle with saying no.And we are trying to talk about how. Saying no can be a good thing. So we want everyone out there to realize some type C is not bad. It's when it's taken excessively too far. But being thoughtful and caring to other people and really enjoying when other people are happy with you is fine. It's when you completely forget about yourself and all these types of emotional and physical problems start to happen.People can have excessive migraines, stomach issues, sleep issues. Just feel fatigued all the. Real excessive burnout. And that would be when you would wanna go talk to someone. But on the lesser degree, being thoughtful and caring is a wonderful thing. Yes. And I can absolutely imagine that there can be a tipping point where it feels like it goes overboard.So I wanna talk a bit more about burnout For sure. But a couple of questions first, and the reason I'm saying I wanna talk about burnout for sure is cuz I'm assuming that a lot of college students experience burnout. And we, it doesn't mean that if you're burnt out that you have type C traits necessarily.There's a lot of things in the world , that lead to burnout, societal pressure, social, you know, social media pressures, academic pressures, et cetera. So let's talk a little bit about burnout. But before we do, could you tell me, cuz some of the things you're describing, could also be a bit of social anxiety, you know, fearing saying no because of some negative judgment in some way.How do you distinguish between somebody who feels a bit anxious in social situations versus having type C traits? Let me think about that. I mean, I think there, there's definitely some overlap, but I think when I think about myself as a type C person, It was really driven more by rules that I had in my mind, beliefs that I had, that I can't disappoint other people, that I ca can't let them down.I have to be the responsible one. I have to be the one that sort of holds it all together. And so that was kind of really the driving force for me. And my real burnout happened after my second maternity leave, which I know is not as relevant to. Students. But at that point I just felt like, and when your college students get into the work world and you're under the, in these workplace situations and you feel all this pressure and you feel like you have to prove yourself and I have to be the one that's, yeah, the strong team player, then that's when it really started to manifest a lot more for me.I would say that the difference between type C and social anxiety really. It's semantics. It's the types of rules that are in your head. For someone that has social anxiety, it's more about really worrying excessively about upsetting sorry, not upsetting. Embarrassing yourself. Doing something stupid, having other people not like you more from a behavior that you've done versus people with type C are much.Focused on worrying about kind of anger, people being upset with them, people you know, burdening other people. So I think it's a slight, it's slightly different, right? And it might not necessarily be as relevant for those people listening, but have type C traits, meaning you have these kind of rules in your head about needing to.Please others you can have social anxiety, which means I'm sort of worried that people are gonna judge me negatively and that I'm gonna you know, so it might keep you from crucial situations maybe more so than being type C where they wouldn't be necess fearful of social situations, but they still have that sort of anxious to please peace. We also know that college is a time when people are exploring a lot of ideas, a lot of different identities. I remember actually myself, I took a personality disorder questionnaire in my early twenties and I decked myself with about five different personality disorders, .And I was like, oh my, all right. So I want people to out there to hear like, oh, just because, you know, if they start to Google type C, they probably are gonna see a few things like type C, cluster personality chores, et cetera, et cetera. But that's not really what we're saying here necessarily. Can you talk about the difference between having some type C charact.Versus having a more defined personality disorder type C personality disorder. We always say that type C is not really a problem unless it's hurting you in some way. A lot of the characteristics of Type C are. , you're generous. You're giving, you're a strong team player, you're very responsible. Mm-hmm. , you're very reliable. But when you take it too far, like I did, and you neglect yourself and you completely, you know, focus on everyone else's needs and put your needs at a very low priority, and you neglect your own self-care and it affects you physically and mentally, that's when it really becomes a personality problem as opposed to, you know, just some.Corey, you might wanna add to that. Yeah, so I like to talk to my patients about the idea that anxiety is really about caring about things that you feel very uncertain about. So it's very, very similar. I think it's, I like to actually get away from diagnoses in general. My patient earlier today just asked me like, so is this O C D?And I was like, let's go back to the philosophy that I'd like to share, which is, , you know? So being a caring, thoughtful person is wonderful, and it's really all about whether it's social anxiety or your type C traits. What's the cost for you? Are you ignoring the cost? So I think that you can 100% be caring and thoughtful to other people, but are you?completely ignoring yourself, and are you just floundering? Are you exhausted all the time? Do you feel angry and resentful? What's the depth of your connection? You know, do you fear sharing how you really feel? Like if someone says, Hey, do you want pizza, or do you want sushi tonight? And you're like, oh, whatever.Yeah, you know, you always do that. Ultimately, your friends don't know if you know your friends. Say, Hey, do you wanna stay in tonight or go out to a bar and you never, or whatever you want it. So it's, it's also something about like noticing what is the cost. I would say that's really important to think about when you're talking about that diagnosing the personality disorder, right?If you, you can be lots of different things and that's great. It's just, it's really about is there a cost on you? Are you exhausted? You know, do you feel like people don't really know you? Are you angry, resentful? Are you noticing physical symptoms? And the challenge is, we talked about, Anne and I were talking about this the other day, is that for a person that really has type C, it's hard to.Your head is in the sand. And so I think a lot of times maybe with someone who's socially anxious, they actually are aware. I, I just get really anxious in social situations. I worry a lot about what other people think, but a type C person really often be, and this can happen due to early invalidating environments, that there's this super protective ability to just shut it out, to shut yourself out.And so that's the first. Really, which is recognizing you're not doing well. And unfortunately in Anna's case, she can talk more about this. It took her a really long time to realize that she wasn't doing well. Well, one phrase that comes to mind a lot that I'll say to people and it, it is setting yourself on fire to keep others warm.Hmm. and yeah, like then every now and then, and they're like, actually, I think I might be right. It's okay to keep others warm. That's nice. But if you're setting yourself on fire. That's more of a problem. And it sounds like you were on fire. I was a percent on fire. I was just this person who defaulted to yes, when someone asked me to do something, because I needed to be the, that strong team player and be the one that was, you know, the glue that held it all together and the one that could, you know, carry the weight on her shoulders.And , I was in a really, really bad place. I had this horrendous fatigue. Had a really hard time resolving it took years to resolve it, but it also took me a long time to just admit that I was not in a good place. I just kind of kept on going and kept on going because that's what I'd always done instead of listening to my body and like these very specific signals of, okay, you're like glued to the bed when you wake up in the morning and you're like, you know, limbs are paralyzed.This is not a healthy place, but I just, you know, work cup of coffee and try to keep on going. . Well, Anna, I'm hoping that you know our college students that are listening to this, right? You can hear what your experience was like, and maybe we can share what are some things that people type C personality traits can kind of pay attention to?So what I'm thinking about is if either in your clinical work or thinking back to college, where it really is about navigating relationships, whether it's with professors building or maintaining, you know, healthy friend. Being a good roommate, having a great rooming situation. And then of course, you know, the whole hookup culture, trying to figure out what kind of relationship romantically you're gonna be in.What do you think are some common difficulties that you could see people with type C personality traits getting into in any of these different domains of relationships in college? I, I would say for my college experience, I, I think, there was a lot of pressure to be a cool girl, a low maintenance, low drama girl who, you know, just was a lot of fun.Didn't make waves, didn't challenge anyone, and that was kind of what was rewarded, especially in the dating world. You know, the guys just really wanted to hang out with a cool girl and. That can get you in a lot of trouble. It can take you in a lot of, down, some troublesome past in terms of drinking or drugs or sex or you know, just defaulting to, yes.Instead of really thinking about your own needs and what's gonna be best for you, as opposed to, I wanna be, you know, I wanna be the girl that, you know, can do it all and can hang out with everybody and the, you know, the guys girl or whatever it is. I think, you know, in, in college, just, you know, thinking. . If you are that person who is, is living up to other people's expectations of you as opposed to, this is what I need, these are my long-term goals, these are my values.When I look back, that's not what I was focused on at all. And I think it's hard , but it is something to just, to start thinking about a lot. I think things to notice, to help get you going is loneliness anger or resentment that you may feel in relat.Because these are really common things, surprisingly, people with Type C who spend so much time thinking about other people and doing so much for other people actually, and can be great friends, people, I mean, come on, you're a great friend, right? Like people love you because you drop everything, you help them.but amazingly, you, you may have many friends, but you feel lonely or you feel angry or resentful because your friends never do nearly as much for you. Dump a ton on you emotionally. And just so I think that can be something to think about. Are you experiencing this? And again, just like Sarah said earlier, like, just because you're experiencing loneliness, Does not mean you have type C, but it can be really, really hard to notice the warning signs.So that might be something to just pay attention to. I also think I've had a lot of type C patients in college and again, , whether it's anxiety or type C or, or a mishmash leading to a lot of procrastination about contacting professors leading to like asking questions, getting really stuck in not handing things in.And it's all just about worrying about messing up or, so the perfectionism can definitely take a role, a role in that. And so if there's any type of way, whether it's a mindfulness exercise or any type of. Slow down and notice this can be through hanging out and doing activities with your friends.What are you feeling? We talk a lot about this on our website type C toolbox, that noticing what's going on in your body. A lot of times we are just stuck in our heads. We live in a generation and the world right now that we're just very in our heads. And so, you know, are you having a lot of stomach issues?Are you really not sleeping well? Are you really fatigued? Now it may not necessarily be that that's because of type C. . Don't ignore that. Right. Don't drink tons of coffee or take Adderall to ignore that. Right? Like what's going on? Slow down. Well, so if we are thinking about like the campus, right? And what people have access to there, what are some be some life, some skills that people could use that are pretty quick to learn and do.You wanna talk about our cheat sheet? We have a, so on our website type C toolbox, we have a cheat sheet of just a couple of strategies that, you know, we could go on and on and on about our strategies, but we try to make them really simple. So the first part is noticing what you're doing, but things so.whether you do that through a mindfulness exercise or some sort of meditation practice, or just sitting and breathing, , how's your body? Right? That's the first thing. What's, you know, what are you worrying about? What are the rules in your head? And again, it. We can't change the rules in your head. They may come from things that were really helpful earlier on that were protective earlier in your life.If you grew up in an environment where there was a lot of criticism, a lot of perfectionism, maybe a parent that had mental health issues or a substance abuse issue, or just you got rewarded tremendously for always obeying and do and going along, but how is this hurting you now? Being kind to yourself with, oh, right, of course.I think these things, and these things are really important to me, but wow, they're really keeping me stuck now. And then would I be willing to do this really scary thing, which is do something different than I always do, which is really, really tough. It's like if I said to you, okay, Sarah, okay, Liz, you guys are gonna now be left-handers.If you're right-handers right. Every time you're gonna pick up the pencil with your right hand, you're not gonna be, you know, immediately. So you pick up the pencil with your right hand, and then you realize, oh, I'm trying to work on picking up the pencil with my left hand, so, you know, you have to kind of be kind to yourself, but definitely sitting with anxiety, noticing these rules.We have a bunch of other tools. Anna, you wanna talk about some of them? . I mean, one of my favorites is just a very simple delay tactic when somebody comes to you and asks you to do something or do you know, and you're, if you're somebody who defaults to, yes. When someone is coming to you with something, just buying yourself a little bit of time and saying, you know, can I get back to you on that instead of, sure, I'll take that on.And then really, Think about all the pros and cons of taking that on. Is that good for you? Is it furthering your goals in some way? Is it in line with your values? What's the cost? How much time is it gonna take? , what's gonna be the impact on your day? And that's just a really simple thing to do, but something that could have save me a lot of, a lot of trust.I look back over the years. Something similar to the delay tactic is also trying to work on noticing how you always say yes. Right? And can you say no more? And this, you know, there's flexibility in all of this, right? We're not saying, you always say no now. But just trying to be more aware of how often you always default to, yes, that's part of the delay tactic.Buy yourself some time and then start small, right? These things are really hard. Can you just dip your toe in the water? Who's a, who's a friend of yours who you can say no to? You know, hey, I, can you help me on this test? Can you come over tonight and help me study? And you would say, you know what? I really can't tonight, but can I come by tomorrow morning?Right. Like, that's a, just a gentle way of starting to put your needs out there. Or the pizza sushi thing where someone says, what's your, you know, do you want pizza, sushi tonight? Instead of just saying whatever, just say, well, I really want sushi. Right? So that's not necessarily saying no, but it's put starting to put your needs out there.And I'll say something that. Maybe someone on this podcast also has some types of traits. , something that someone said that resonated with me and it helped was like, if, you know, you don't, it's not just saying no, you, you're saying yes to something else. So think about when you say no. What are the thing that you're saying yes to that you can say yes to because you're saying no to that.I was like, oh, okay, that'll, I'm gonna work on that. That'll help. . So there's two things I just wanna quickly say about that, which is one of the things that's been so helpful personally to me is working with Anna, I've realized, oh wow. Like I'm definitely not type C in work stuff, but I can definitely get sucked into type C traits with my kids.So this has been very personally helpful. But another thing, you know, based on what you were just saying, that it can be very helpful to realize that the more you say, In the right situations, you actually are building your own strength back up to be able to say yes to situations that matter more to you, and that is helpful for you and that is helpful for people that are really important to you in your life.I was just gonna say that you started with Corey kind of talking about paying attention to our physiology and it seems like a lot of, like the first step is just some like awareness training around like what's going on with your body and then. putting a stop to kind of proceed mindfully with your choices that you're making.And Sarah and I definitely talk a lot in our podcast about, you know, mindfulness and, and the benefit of it. But when you were talked about it, I know Anna, you talked about this earlier, The physiology component, I feel like is one of the first signs, at least for me, that I know I'm burned out. It's like I'll even, I tell my patients, like usually right before I eat lunch, I just do like a three minute breathing exercise to just kind of see what the pace of my breath is.And I'm always amazed like, What my breathing tells me what's going actually on with me emotionally, that I might have my head in the sandground. And I'm like, oh my gosh. Like I, I'm like basically not even exhaling and I had no idea that I'm kind of carrying more attention and stress in my body than I even realize.But I thought maybe we could end on a term that we all hear nowadays and probably experience around burnout. and maybe what, what are some of your tips since it seems like type C personality trait, people tend to experience it and so we, what are some of the signs that they might experience and what would be some of your recommendations to kind of prioritize more self-care?well, I'll start on that one. I think some of the signs, at least for me I was getting sick a lot, like a lot of recurrent sinus infections, and then that turned into fatigue. That wouldn't resolve with sleep. When I would wake up, it would be I would be unrefreshed. So unrefreshing sleep, I had some stomach issues that for me, it was mostly around this.This inescapable fatigue that just didn't resolve. So I think in terms of self-care, you know, the things that have helped me the most have been well, first of all, just sort of understanding type C and really working to, to prioritize self-care, which was always a real struggle for me to put my, my needs first.But just, you know, making enough time in the day for, for nutrition, that takes some planning. It takes time to eat nutritious meals, but nutrition has taken me a long way in my recovery. exercise. Sunlight I think is so important just to make sure that we're up and around and, you know, just kind of being really, like you said, more in tune with your body.Are you breathing in a shallow way? Are you getting sick over and over again? Are you stiff, you know what's going on? And really just pay, paying a lot of attention to what's happening in there. Cause it's so easy just to gloss over it and make excuses for yourself, or, oh, this is fine, or this is because of this.But no, just to really think about it and, and analyze it and, and try to understand. . I think another component is recognizing it's a journey, right? And so it could take you a while to sort of figure out and just trying to be patient. Obviously, you know, whenever you have any type of physical symptoms, you always want to go and check it out and roll out anything that's going on with the doctor.But Many of my Type C patients do really struggle with insomnia, fatigue. a lot of stomach issues. So you know, you wanna start, see, see if there's any tri right type of treatment that can be helpful for that. That's medical. But just recognizing that our bodies do really talk to us and oftentimes we ignore them.And so, you know, what are you doing? One of the things that I always ask my patients in the first session is, what do you do for fun? What do you do to relax? And I'm. always Sadly not surprised that many of them, you know, don't have that. And so trying to think about what are you doing, whether it is reading or exercising and also what are you doing that helps your body unwind?I am just thinking of my kids and if I ask them that question, they would say, play video games, mom. And, which is great. It's fun and they can talk to their friends and do stuff like that, but a lot of the things we often do really wind us up. So, That's fine. Play your video games, be on Instagram. All that stuff can be fine as long as you are also doing things to unwind.And so I think that's a big thing to think about for. Anyone out there, whether they're struggling with anxiety, stress type C traits, just what are you doing to unwind? Whether it's breathing, reading, meditating, going for a walk. And I'll just add one more thing. Doing one thing at a time. Multitasking is awesome.It's great. Gets a lot done. But people with type C definitely do a lot too much. So trying to do one thing at a time, even if it's just, you know, sipping. I love the idea of being told by two important smart people. Yes. And have more fun and relax more. So I'm gonna take your advice, . Yes. my gosh. And we hate that we have taken up so much of your time.You have been such lovely guest. Oh, thank you so much. So if anyone's listening, make sure, and if this sounds familiar to you and you're listening, make sure to subscribe to the Type C toolbox and we'll make sure to put that in our show notes as well. Awesome. Thank you guys. Thank you. Thank you. On just a whim of mental, just strategizing, what am I gonna do?I just sent an email to my professor saying, Hey, I'm so sorry, but I have had the worst day. I've had everything piling on top of each other, and I just need to take another day on this assignment. And he got back to me in 20 minutes and he said, Isabel, take a week. Sometimes it gets too much. And the best thing you can do is walk.And I can't express enough that that is okay. You don't need to just put this in, in one day. It's, it's okay. Trust me. I'm glad you reached out and I'm glad you're taking care of yourself. So it's advocating for yourself and maybe putting yourself in a position that might be uncomfortable, but it could also.Lead to better things. For me, it's recognizing that I'm burnt out too. If I keep ignoring it, if I keep shoving it down saying, no, I, I can't be weak. I have to be tough. It just ends up so much worse in the long run. Thank you to our guests for sharing their stories and their advice. This podcast is for college students and we want input by college students. So please reach out by text, email, or voice memo to colleges find podcast gmail.com or 9 2 9 502 2 3 1. Tell us your story. 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