Type D personality, or "distressed" personality, refers to a tendency to exhibit negative affect (such as gloominess and worry) along with social inhibition (such as lack of self-confidence and reticence).
Personality types were originally identified by cardiologists in the 1950's to help determine patients who might be at greater risk for heart disease. As research has continued to develop, more personality types have been identified and labeled with specific letters to represent a set of patterned personality traits.
You have likely heard of type A personality before, which involves traits such as competitiveness, aggressiveness, and high levels of ambition. People with type A personality are found to be at greater risk of experiencing cardiac health complications such as high blood pressure and heart disease.
When we discuss personality types like this we are not referring to an established mental health diagnosis, but a pattern of traits that can help researchers learn who might be at risk for cardiac disease and other physical health complications.
At a Glance
Do you feel gloomy, keep to yourself, or hide your emotions from others? Do you see the glass as half empty? You might be a type D personality. People with a Type D personality are more likely to experience high levels of distress and anxiety, which may put them at a higher risk of adverse health outcomes. If you have this personality type, talk to a therapist about developing a plan to help you manage your stress and develop healthy coping mechanisms.
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Type D Personality Traits
Type D is a particular personality type first labeled in the 1990s by Belgian psychologist and researcher Johan Denollet. The letter "D" in this type of personality stands for distressed and is referring to a set of personality traits that involve things like:
- Feelings of worry
- Sadness
- Irritability
- Pessimistic outlook
- Negative self-talk
- Avoidance of social situations
- Lack of self-confidence
- Fear of rejection
- Appearing gloomy
- Hopelessness
People with a Type D personality are more likely to be lonely and anxious. Even though many of us can feel a variety of these things at times, people with type D personality experience these traits more frequently than the average person and more consistently over time.
A personality type is not attempting to offer a mental health diagnosis, only a notable pattern of behavior that can be researched as related to physical health, particularly cardiac and immune health.
Comparing the Personality Types
It can be helpful to know more about each of the four personality types to see how the Type D personality compares.
- Type A: Ambitious, hard-driving, and go-getting. People with this personality type tend to be perfectionists that put themselves under a great deal of stress.
- Type B: Low-stress and easy going. People with this type of personality tend to be laid back and adaptable.
- Type C: Highly conscientious. Like Type A's, they are perfectionists who want everything to be just so - but they also struggle to reveal emotions, both positive and negative.
- Type D: Distressed. People with this personality type are often worried, sad, and low in confidence.
How to Know If You're Type D
To better understand type D personality and how it correlates with physical health risks, researchers have developed a standard assessment designed to help identify those with type D personality traits referred to as the Type D Scale-14 (DS14). This tool helps researchers measure social inhibition and negative affectivity, two characteristics that are high in people with this personality type.
Social Inhibition
Social inhibition means that people tend to shy away from social interactions, possibly due to fear of rejection or judgment, and that they tend to lack confidence in social situations.
Negative Affectivity
Negative affectivity means people experience negatively valued emotions such as sadness, worry, and irritability. Because people with a Type D personality tend to hide their negative emotions, they may not necessarily feel or act depressed or anxious. People who know them may be surprised to learn that they are struggling.
Behavioral Inhibition
They also exhibit high levels of behavioral inhibition, meaning they withdraw from new situations they are not familiar with. Because of these tendencies, they may be more likely to develop anxiety disorders.
Questions to Consider
If you are curious if you might have type D personality traits, it can be helpful to consider questions such as the following:
- Do I tend to bottle up my emotions and not show them to others?
- Do I find it difficult to meet new people?
- Do I become easily overwhelmed in sticky situations?
- Do I tend to avoid social interactions when possible?
- Do I often talk negatively to myself?
- Do I often find myself feeling sad or irritable?
- Do I tend to be in a bad mood much of the time?
- Do I worry a lot?
Emotional Challenges
Sharing emotions with people close to us can feel vulnerable to many of us. The idea of sharing emotions with others can feel downright terrifying for someone with type D personality traits.
Type D individuals commonly fear rejection and judgment from others and, in an effort to protect themselves from those experiences, will often work diligently to hide their emotions.
In addition to the fear of judgment and rejection, people with type D traits may find it difficult to trust others, especially in times of emotional distress.
As you might imagine, this effort to keep emotions contained can be a challenge. People with type D personality traits often experience negative emotions and are often left feeling as if there is no one to turn to. In addition to their fears of rejection and judgment, type D individuals may also fear burdening people with their emotional distress, especially those closest to them.
What Are Common Introversion Traits?
Physical Health
Type D individuals work hard to stifle, cover, and hide their most challenging emotions, often leading to health complications and putting them at risk for things like coronary artery disease (CAD), compromised immune function, and chronic inflammation.
While more research is needed, doctors and other healing practitioners are beginning to recognize how emotional problems can contribute to health risks.
Suppressing or hiding emotions takes work. This can cause extraordinary physical stress, such as increasing heart rate, causing blood pressure to rise, and increasing blood sugar levels.
Early research by Denollet suggested just how influential type D traits might be on physical health. In surveying over 300 patients in a cardiac rehabilitation program, they found that approximately 27% of type D patients had died within the following 10 years, as compared to only 6% in the group not identified with type D personality traits.
Additionally, among almost 900 patients who underwent coronary artery surgery, type D patients were over four times more likely to have a heart attack or die within nine months of their surgery.
How Your Personality Type Affects Your Health
Relationships
Type D personalities struggle with worry and sadness and often find engaging in social interactions challenging. This combination of issues often creates significant problems in relationships.
Social inhibition limits the person's ability to connect with others at any level of relationships, from those in more casual roles, such as co-workers or acquaintances, to friendships and intimate relationships.
When type D individuals find that they can connect with someone, it may be challenging to grow and maintain the relationship as their negative effect continues to show up in the relationship dynamic. They can be perceived as pessimistic, gloomy, and potentially unapproachable to partners, friends, and family members.
School and Career
People with type D personality traits can experience challenges at school or work. With a tendency to be more socially inhibited, it can be difficult for type D individuals to develop and maintain connections with others.
People with this personality type also tend to:
- Feel more stressed in their workplace
- Experience more job burnout
- Feel less personally accomplished
- Miss more days from work
This tendency to avoid or resist social interactions can make it challenging to find a sense of belonging and shared interests with others, as well as cause type D individuals increased distress when faced with group tasks or projects that require them to collaborate with others.
Because they are more inhibited, people often view type D individuals as less engaged or less willing to participate.
Knowing that type D individuals are often challenged with experiencing unpleasant emotions and struggle with negative self-talk, it is understandable that they can also find it challenging to set and achieve personal goals.
Stress over work or school assignments creates significant stress for people with this personality type. When people are in this emotional state, they are also likely to make negative predictions about how things will turn out. Instead of seeing the situation with optimism, they'll assume that they'll fail. Because they forecast their own failure, they are then less likely to try.
Steps to Take If You Are Type D
If you think you might have a type D personality, there are things that you can do to help ease this emotional distress. Taking some of these steps can help you live a full, enjoyable life, allowing you to improve your emotional experiences and outlook. Taking some of these steps may also help improve your physical well-being.
Learning new ways to handle stress, increase hope and optimism, and overcome social inhibition can be critical factors in helping type D individuals live their best lives.
Helpful steps that a type D personality can make to improve their quality of life involve the following areas:
Engage in Positive Self-Talk
Identifying and challenging old patterns of negative self-talk is essential. This can help you better understand how your negative thinking has affected your decision-making, behaviors, and relationships.
Taking time to discover and incorporate honest, positive self-talk can be a game-changer for type D individuals.
Strengthen Emotional Regulation
We know how hard it can be to deal with sadness, stress, and worry when you have a type D personality. One way to better manage this is to work on your emotional regulation skills.
Understanding how these emotions work and tuning in to how they can be of help to us can allow for healthier decision-making and less distress. For example, you might ask yourself, "When I feel irritable, what is it that I need?"
When you feel upset, it can be helpful to find ways to calm your nervous system in the moment. Soothing strategies can include engaging in gentle movement or listening to music.
Learn Healthy Coping Skills
Type D characteristics can be more problematic if you don't have the coping skills to manage them effectively. For example, rather than dealing with difficult emotions, you've likely become very good at bottling up and hiding them.
Becoming more aware of your emotional patterns can help you better navigate distress and cope in healthier ways. Examples of healthy coping skills you can work on include learning to say no, asserting yourself, maintaining boundaries, and engaging in stress management techniques.
Work on Interpersonal Skills
Inhibition is a hallmark of type D personality types, so learning how to overcome social challenges is key. Finding ways to reach out to others, looking for common interests and learning how to take small emotional risks with others can offer great practice.
This can be something as simple as saying, "Hello" to someone new, or learning how to initiate conversation with others.
Get Regular Exercise
Incorporating regular exercise into our everyday routines can be helpful on a variety of levels. Physical activity is a great way to:
- Regulate emotions
- Regulate stress hormones
- Relieve tension
- Reduce and prevent symptoms of anxiety and depression
- Improve self-esteem,
- Reduce social withdrawal
- Improve overall mood
Practice Distress Tolerance
Life naturally has ups and downs, so eliminating distress completely is not a realistic option. However, learning healthy ways to manage stressful moments is of great help.
Techniques like breathing, mindfulness, and practicing gratitude are examples of appropriate ways to manage stressful situations.
What Is Distress Tolerance?
Improve Your Self-Efficacy
People with type D personality traits can find it hard to feel hopeful and empowered to influence change in their own lives. Discovering and celebrating small victories can help people to increase their sense of self-efficacy.
Self-efficacy is a concept that refers to how competent we believe we are and the level to which we see ourselves as able to successfully complete tasks.
Celebrating victories, no matter how small, and taking inventory of our strengths can help to increase our sense of self-efficacy.
Work on Relationship Building
Because of their inhibition and fears around rejection and judgment, it is understandable that type D individuals have a hard time building and keeping close relationships. Learning how to trust, communicate effectively, and be a healthy partner can be instrumental in increasing the quality of life in this area.
Counseling can be a great way to learn how to effectively navigate conflict in relationships. It can offer guidance on how to build and maintain close, healthy connections.
Engage in Goal-Setting
Hopefulness and optimism can be tough if you have a type D personality. Learning to set meaningful goals can help you gain clarity about your personal values and priorities.
Short-term goal-setting can teach you how to focus on your future with increased hope, optimism, and confidence.
Practice Mindfulness
Mindfulness, prayer, and meditation can be a great way to find calm, increase peace, and regain hope. These practices offer a reliable method for regulating emotions in times of distress.
There are a variety of benefits, emotionally and physically, to practicing mindfulness and learning how to slow ourselves down when beginning to experience distress.
Exploring the Enneagram of Personality
How to Help a Type D
If you have a loved one with a type D personality, you might recognize how this personality type can create challenges. When your loved one feels emotionally distressed, chances are they try to keep it from you. This can make it difficult to recognize when they might need help.
The type D individual in your own life may have become so good at hiding or stifling their negative emotions that you might find it surprising to learn that they struggle at all.
So, how can you help? There are a few ways that loved ones can offer support and encouragement for those with type D personality traits.
The most important step you can take is to reach out to the person. You don't have to know exactly what to say, it is just important that you make the effort to reach out and connect.
Connect
People with type D personality traits can feel lonely in their distress and become hesitant to want to let anyone into their emotional experience. Because they find it hard to reach out, it can be helpful for loved ones to check in with them every now and then to see how they are doing.
Even if the type D individual finds it difficult to discuss their emotions or let you into their experience, the fact that you took time to reach out is noticed by them and appreciated.
Reach Out
If your type D person tends to withdraw, remember that this sense of isolation is likely impacting their physical health. Try to invite them to the gym with you, to go for a walk, or engage in a fun and healthy activity.
It can be sometimes as small as sending a text, making a phone call, or inviting them to an activity you enjoy. Anything that helps a type D person make connections with others can be helpful.
Show Interest and Support
You can also help someone with a type D personality by offering them an emotionally safe space for them to talk.
Fear of rejection and judgment can lead them to not want to reach out and can make it difficult for them to trust or be vulnerable with people, even those who are close friends and family.
Showing interest in their emotional well-being and providing reassurance that you are available when they are ready is key for helping the type D individual learn how to reach out to others when in distress rather than bottling their emotions and feeling isolated.
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