The risks of the type C personality pattern

The type C personality or “cancer-prone personality” is defined by two of its most consistent characteristics: the lack of expression of negative emotions and the need for harmony.

The interest in demonstrating the influence of psychological aspects on the appearance and development of cancer has given rise to numerous studies. Most of them related to stress and personality characteristics. Regarding the latter, the work of Morris and Greer led them to speak for the first time of the type C personality.

According to these authors, “Type C subjects” would be defined in a basic way as emotionally contained in the face of stress, especially with respect to anger. That is, these would be people who would show suppression or inappropriate negative emotional expression (aggression, anger, rage, etc.). In addition to this characteristic, there are many others that have been discovered over time and that have completed the profile. We will talk about them below.

Type C personality, compared to type B and type A

The type A behavioral profile would correspond to competitive individuals who have an overload in social competition. Their adaptive strategies make them appear to be quite aggressive individuals in the struggle for success and tend to occupy a leadership position.

These people cannot stand passivity and saturate all their time with many activities. It was Friedman and Rosenman who coined this term to describe a personality type that It is related to high blood pressure, cardiac arrhythmias and myocardial infarction.

On the contrary, Individuals with type B behavior patterns are generally quite serene, confident, relaxed and open to emotions, including the most unpleasant ones.. This pattern corresponds to greater emotional balance, which is why many consider it the healthiest.

Type C Personality Characteristics

Lastly, the type C personality It is a cooperative, accommodating, conformist, perfectionist and hard-working personality, which avoid conflict at all costs and seek harmony. They are people who tend to be defensive and do not express negative emotions. As coping strategies they frequently use inhibition, denial, emotional repression and self-aggression.

Type C traits can appear in the following behaviors:

Perfectionistic tendencies. Difficulty adapting to unwanted changes. An interest in small details. Sensitivity to the needs of others. Outward passivity. Pessimism. A tendency to deny or avoid extreme emotions. An internal feeling of helplessness or hopelessness.

The key trait of the type C personality is the inhibition or repression of negative emotions. People with this pattern They often have difficulty coping with stressful situations, especially in a direct and active way. This trait causes depressive-type psychological reactions, such as expectations of helplessness or hopelessness regarding the future.

The above causes that, when cancer appears, the affected person faces the disease and the negative emotions derived from it in an insufficient and maladaptive way, which could seriously interfere with the treatment of the disease.

Causes of type C personality

The tendency to develop a type C pattern comes from the interrelation between genetic and environmental factors such as family interaction. These interactions teach the person to react by suppressing their needs and feelings to stressful events.

When a person is overwhelmed by stress, they tend to react in various ways:

He begins to change and develop a style of coping with stressful events. He feels overwhelmed and feelings of hopelessness, helplessness and depression appear. He may also decide to continue behaving in the same way, increasing his tension more and more. This drives the person to engage in cancer risk behaviors, such as alcohol or tobacco consumption.

The emotional avoidance characteristic of this personality influences the avoidance of situations that produce negative emotions, as well as the failure to confront conflictive events.. An important aspect is that such avoidance may be related to a lower tendency to detect physical symptoms. In this way, even if a person has certain symptoms, they do not go to the doctor, delaying the diagnosis phase and future treatment of the disease.

What relationship does type C personality have with cancer?

Interest in the study of the type C personality pattern has been increased by some data regarding cancer, such as those mentioned below:

In 80% of cancer cases, the appearance or development of the disease is highly conditioned by certain consumption patterns, such as smoking or diet. In this sense, controlling risk habits and adopting healthy lifestyles can save many lives.Psychoneuroimmunology studies have revealed the influence of stress and emotions on the prognosis of the diseaseand in the survival of patients diagnosed with cancer. People with greater negative emotional inhibition are more predisposed to suffering from a type of neoplasia.

Therefore, Psychological factors, such as the type C personality pattern, may have a direct or indirect influence on the development of cancer. Therefore, identifying the personality characteristics of people who suffer from cancer will allow us to know and predict their coping strategies.

This allows and provides a role for psychology to identify certain personality styles and provide conditions that lead these people to develop a more autonomous style of behaviorwith healthier behavioral patterns physically and psychologically.

Likewise, these discoveries can help us develop primary prevention strategies. Both for healthy people who have type C personality, reducing the risk of developing this type of disease, and for people who have already developed it and are undergoing treatment.

At the same time, it is important that the work of psycho-oncology be recognizedsince the constant counseling and the emotional containment or relief given to the patient will avoid confusion, lack of acceptance and other psychological alterations that are not very beneficial for their recovery.

Evidence on the relationship between cancer and type C personality

In the 90s, this personality construct was accepted by many members of the scientific community, but the lack of consistency in the results and research regarding its predictive capacity in cancer soon became evident. Furthermore, the irregularity in the definition of personality pattern C makes comparison between studies difficult.

The literature dedicated to the type C personality and its links to the onset of cancer contains many doubts and ambiguities. The most important, according to Rymarczyk et al., (2020):

Various research results do not confirm the importance of various components of the Type C personality for the appearance of cancer.The description of the Type C personality includes various contents with an unclear structure, which may be due to the method used to construct the psychological variable called Type C.There are deficiencies in the operationalization of Type C. Although the construct is interesting and attracts the attention of many researchers, it has not been adequately operationalized and no robust measure has been developed to assess it.

These authors conclude that, due to the breadth of the construct, its special character and the divergences relative to both the components that are distinguished in it and the results of the research, the current measurement of this personality is inadequate and that an operationalization is needed. integral to this construct.

Finally, it is currently believed that the possible relationship between emotional inhibition and the development of cancer is mediated by intermediary variables and by maladaptive coping styles learned throughout life history.

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