STRESS AND THE HARD CHARGER: RECOGNISING THE HARD-CHARGER

There are a number of categories of hard-chargers that I have come to recognize over the years. They are broad categorisations that don’t take into account individual nuances. I’ve included them here to help you decide whether or not hard-charging is a problem for you. Because humans are such varied creatures they cannot be categorised rigidly. For this reason you may find you can fit into two categories, being, for instance, 60 per cent one and 40 per cent the other. If you can identify with any of these categories, but don’t have any symptoms, take heed now. Ill health could be just around the corner if you don’t slow down.

Hard-chargers fall into one of two camps, the adrenally competent and adrenally fatigued. The adrenally competent have all the symptoms of stress but have enough life left in their adrenal glands to be able to whip them along and keep themselves going. They are still able to produce enough beta endorphins to kill some of the pain and moderate the intensity of their symptoms. So long as they keep going they are OK. The moment they stop, they take a dive and start to feel lousy. Recognising that action is the only thing that makes them feel good they reason they should keep at it, so they get going again, not realising that it’s an excess of that particular action that has them feeling the way they are.

The adrenally fatigued are those hard-chargers who have pushed too hard for too long. They can no longer produce enough adrenalin to force their tired bodies to perform. Chronic, unrelenting fatigue that reduces only a little when they push themselves is the main symptom. However, they seldom get to push themselves, for now they lack the enthusiasm to do so. The adrenally fatigued are easily recognised by the way they flop into the armchair in my office on their first visit and say. ‘I don’t really know why I’m here, I’m just a bit tired, that’s all.’ Having said that, they then proceed to verbalise a litany of symptoms.

Hard-chargers are the classic Type A personalities described in life insurance company premium tables and popular psychology texts. They are forever tearing around like scalded cats. Type As in the workplace resent the Type B personalities who, being less ebulliently dynamic, are perceived as lazy under-achievers. At the end of the day, Type Bs are invariably more productive and make far fewer mistakes, a fact that is seldom ever admitted to by Type As.

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