THE PERSONALITY DRIVERS AND HEART ILLNESS: TRYING HARD PERSONALITY
The great double-cross in the lives of people who are driven by Trying Hard personality scripts is that they feel deserving of rest and enjoyment only if they are exhausted from excessive work and worry. Of course, not much pleasure is possible when you are exhausted, so Trying Hard personalities seldom have much fun. Rather, they tend to stress themselves into chronic, mild levels of depression of the sort that results from working too hard at being a hard worker.
This excessive work ethic interferes with the Trying Hard individual's ability to be comfortable with a reasonably paced rehabilitation process. An inner sense of urgency propels these people to expect and demand an accelerated rehabilitation course. Such people also tend to put enjoyment of life on hold until the rehabilitation is over with. They make the mistake of conceptualizing cardiac rehabilitation as an event that can be shortened by extra effort. One such individual verbalized this attitude in reaction to her husband's participation in a cardiac rehabilitation program this way: "We figure our lives will get back to normal once my husband's rehab is done.
Everything is on hold until then. If this program is based on exercising three times a week, wouldn't he cut his rehabilitation period in half if he exercised six times a week?''
The truth, of course, is that cardiac rehabilitation is a lifelong process, and not an event with a clear beginning middle, and end. The urgent and impatient spirit of the Trying Hard individual often leads to poor rehabilitation choices, such as exercising excessively or adopting unrealistic expectations about how quickly rehabilitation goals will be met. Such excessive Trying Hard typically leads to feelings of being demoralized and frustrated, both with oneself and with others. These feelings interfere with maintaining supportive, encouraging relationships of the sort that are necessary for the Trying Hard personality to learn a new coping pattern in reaction to illness.
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