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Workaholism: How Addiction to Work Manifests Itself and How to Cope With It

It helps experience missing emotions or drown out the intrusive experiences that a person encounters in ordinary life.

But any person who works hard cannot be considered a workaholic.

How Workaholism Manifests Itself and What Its Dangers Are

A workaholic can be recognized by the following signs:

• Considers work to be super important. The person postpones even those activities that make him happy, like reading the official news blog at 22Bet or going out with friends.
• Tends to break down into work. The person cannot control the workload and consciously make a decision to work or not to work.
• Feels the need to work more and more to feel needed.
• Experiences flushes of guilt, shame, anxiety, and longing if less than usual is done.
• Is unable to turn down new offers, isn't willing to hire more staff or ask for help. If a difficult project happens and the person is tired, he does nothing to avoid being in such situations again.
• Neglects important aspects of life for the sake of work: health or relationships with loved ones.

These statements will allow you to diagnose workaholism:

• I tend to take on more difficult jobs than others.
• I often have obsessive thoughts about work that I can't get rid of, even in my free time. For example, on a date or when I'm out with my child. It's hard to switch off, I predict the future or replay situations that have already happened.
• I experience radically different feelings about my work: from excitement and delight to anger, anxiety, and fear. All within five minutes of a work meeting.

Workaholism can lead to negative consequences:

• Low life satisfaction. The person isn't satisfied with the circumstances in which he lives or the way his reality is organized. He feels deficits, such as a lack of socializing with friends or time for himself.
• Health problems. Frequent recycling can lead to a weakened immune system, vision problems, headaches, increased anxiety, and other mental problems.
• Weakening ties with family and friends. When there's no time for anything but work, it's hard to maintain deep contact with loved ones.
• Conflicts at work. Because of workaholism, a person becomes more irritable and anxious. On this ground, even minor disagreements with others can be maddening.
• Threats to career development. Workaholism takes away a lot of energy. In such circumstances, it's difficult to come up with fresh solutions and show themselves from an unexpected side.
• The risk of an unstable financial situation. Despite the efforts of a workaholic, the manager may not be satisfied with his constant fatigue and conflicts with colleagues. This is fraught with even the loss of work.
• A sense of loneliness and isolation. In the life of a workaholic, there is only work. Under such conditions, a person may come to realize that he has no other support in the form of relatives and alternative activities, and if he loses his job, he will lose everything.
• Emotional and professional burnout. At first, a workaholic feels fatigue, apathy, and irritability due to excessive work. Over time, even work doesn't make him happier and may cause negative feelings. This is how professional burnout is formed.

Who Is Prone to Workaholism?

People with the greatest number of general and specific risk factors are more likely to develop work addiction.

General risk factors:

• Reduced motivation and difficulty achieving goals.
• Difficulty controlling behavior, impulsivity.
• Thrill seeking, difficulty experiencing boredom.
• Difficulty experiencing disappointments.

Whether a person will be a workaholic is also influenced by biological factors, such as the peculiarities of the body's absorption of dopamine, which helps achieve the desired and not abandon the goal.

Lack of dopamine leads to ignoring negative experiences, constant attempts to start something, to invest, to not consider the consequences, and to give up and start all over again.

Despite the harms of workaholism, it's still socially endorsed today.

It's considered normal and even right to work as much as possible in the era of achievements.

This distorted attitude of society toward labor increases the number of workaholics.

Why People Become Workaholics: Psychological Reasons

By working hard, a person tries to meet one or more needs:

• Excessive need for love and approval. Working more than others, a person strives to meet expectations, and, as it seems to him, only in this way can he earn a positive attitude toward himself.
• Need for absolute social recognition. If a person's self-esteem directly depends on the opinion of others, he will constantly strive to please everyone. But to please everyone at once is difficult, although it may be possible. Unfortunately, sometimes it happens at the expense of compromised health.
• The need for a partner. In working relationships, a workaholic can play out scenarios similar to co-dependent relationships, where the partner becomes everything, replacing several roles. It seems to the person that he or she can't cope with anything on his or her own and will be lost. Work is such a super-important partner. The impossibility to change jobs, i.e. to leave the partner, hides the fear of loneliness, loss of significance, and social status.
• The need for restrictions. A person artificially limits their desires, chooses a secondary role in some areas of life, and avoids responsibility, shifting it to work. This can explain, for example, the fear of parenthood, where a person has formed a desire to have children but is afraid of the consequences. Or a change of residence or profession, where many changes are expected. Thinking about them leads a person to feel guilty if something doesn't work out. Here, work helps escape from reality and allows you to postpone the decision.
• Need for a sense of superiority. By working hard, it's as if the person becomes superior to coworkers and friends who choose to balance work and leisure.

It seems that by closing one of the needs with an irrational attitude to work, a person can get a bonus (a high position, rapid career growth, and a high level of income).

However, a study published in the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology indicates that workaholics experience less pleasure from work than their non-workaholic counterparts.

Also, workaholics have higher stress levels and depressed moods. In such a state, a person is likely to have a hard time achieving career success.

How to Stop Working to Exhaustion

If we understand workaholism as an addiction to work, then to cope with it, a person needs:

• Awareness of the problem and a desire to solve it.
• Support of those who have already been in a similar situation and managed to overcome it.
• Feeling and understanding that loved ones are on his side.
• Self-help or counseling with a psychologist.

Any addiction is a chronic disease.

So, it's important to constantly monitor your condition and correct it independently or with the help of a specialist.One exercise or a one-time visit to a psychologist won't help cope with workaholism forever.

Let's look at several self-help techniques that will allow you to look at life from a different angle, cope with stress, and reduce the amount of overwork.

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Analyze Your Current Level of Life Satisfaction

The "Balance Wheel" technique will help you understand your level of satisfaction with life, what is missing in it, and what circumstances of reality make you go to work.

1. Make a list of the most important areas of your life. Each person has a different set, but there should be at least six. These can be:
2. Health.
3. Finances.
4. Life comfort.
5. Career.
6. Development.
7. Relationships.
8. Environment.
9. Recreation and entertainment.

2. Draw a circle and divide it by the number of areas of life.
3. Take time to quietly rate your satisfaction with each area on a scale from 0 to 10.
4. Answer the questions:
5. What conclusions can be drawn from judging the balance wheel? Which spheres are filled, and which are sagging?
6. How might the spheres influence each other? Is there a special one that can provide fulfillment in other areas?
7. What already exists and fills each sphere that brings joy and support?
8. Draw an ideal version of the balance wheel. Think about which areas' satisfaction you want to change. Answer the questions:
9. What is the difference between the current and ideal wheel of balance, how big are the discrepancies?
10. What prevents you from living according to the ideal wheel of balance? What barriers are there in the way?
11. What is the most difficult barrier to overcome?
12. What would life be like if the priorities reflected in the ideal aligned with the lifestyle?
13. When making decisions, it's worth reflecting on how much choosing a particular action will bring you closer to the ideal version of the balance wheel.
14. What needs to change in habits to arrive at the ideal balance wheel?
15. What actions can be taken to get closer to the perfect balance wheel?

Plan Work and Rest

Scheduling activities can help you get closer to the perfect balance wheel.

To avoid the temptation to work around the clock, it's important to schedule and add to your calendar not only mandatory tasks but also enjoyable activities for weekends and weekday evenings.

Disengage From Stimuli That Cause You to Overwork

Unsubscribe from accounts about achievement and people who cause a feeling of insufficiency and the need to do even more and better. First, you should limit content that causes strong negative emotions: irritation, anger, frustration, and apathy.

On vacation, in the evenings, and on weekends, if possible, turn on silent mode in work chats, so as not to be distracted by messages about business.

To get rid of information noise on weekdays, categorization of chats will help. You can distinguish between those that are really important to keep an eye on all the time and those that can be checked only once a day without any consequences for your tasks.

The second chats can be left without sound notifications during working hours.

Take a walk, go to the gym, or ride a bike or scooter.

Physical activity improves the production of dopamine and serotonin, neurotransmitters of pleasure and happiness, which reduce stress levels.

It also helps you shift your attention from external stimuli to the sensations in your body.

If possible, limit communication with those who push to work more, provoke feelings of guilt for rest and time with loved ones.

If these people are coworkers or management, coping with workaholism will be difficult, as the person is constantly in an environment that supports recycling.

To begin with, it's important to try to change one's behavior.

At first, others may not be accustomed to changes in the behavior of an employee who used to burn out at work and take to help everyone.

But gradually, colleagues can see the advantages of the new style of work, for example, the increased ability to resolve disputes and negotiate with the customers.

At the same time, it's impossible to change circumstances only at your expense. A job that encourages only workaholism is better to change.

And it's important that the new employer encourages work-life balance.

Find an interesting hobby for yourself. It could be reading books, watching movies, playing board games, or playing sports.

You can remember what you've wanted to do for a long time but lacked time to do it.

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