Workaholism refers to a condition in which a person finds it almost impossible to stop working even though it is destructive to their well-being and relationships. While professionals have yet to find an official definition of a workaholic, they have found many possible causes of the condition, including neurochemical rewards and culture around work.1 Improvement can occur with the help of psychotherapy and support groups.
What Is Workaholism?
Workaholism is an addiction to work, and while it may not be in a diagnostic book or have a certain list of official criteria, there is a lot of evidence to suggest that a hyper fixation on work functions like other types of behavioral addictions. Like other addictions, being a workaholic can impact and change people’s personalities and alter their value system.
Those struggling with workaholism prioritize work above family, friends and any other meaningful relationship or commitment. The number of hours worked is often an indicator, however it’s important to consider all the other significant symptoms of workaholism beyond just working a lot of overtime. Workaholics often struggle to cope with a separate difficulty in their life that they may be avoiding, thus spending all their time obsessed with work.
10 Signs of a Workaholic
Workaholics may appear restless, impatient, and distracted from their lives yet intensely focused on their work. They find it difficult to engage in or even think about other activities. They neglect relationships, family and their own well-being. Others may not cut back on work even if it is damaging their lives.
The omnipresence of technology, working from home, and twenty-four hour business cycles with increased demands to respond immediately have all made it easier to become addicted to work.2
Here are ten indications that you may be addicted to work:3
- Salience: Is work the most important thing in your life?
- Mood modification: Does working make you feel better at first?
- Tolerance: Do you need to spend more time working or get more done to feel better?
- Withdrawal symptoms: Do you feel uncomfortable when you’re not working?
- Conflict: Do you debate with yourself or people close to you about whether you are working too much?
- Relapse: Have you tried to cut back on how much you work but failed?
- Compulsion: Do you have internal pressures to continue working?
- Intrusive thoughts: Do you have random thoughts about work when you are not working?
- Disregarding consequences: Do you work to the point where other parts of your life are struggling? Do you ignore the negative consequences of spending a lot of time working?
- Filling a void: Is there something that work is compensating for in your life that you think is missing?
Engaged With Work vs. Work Addiction
Many people are deeply engaged with their careers and find work very satisfying. The amount of time they spend working is not an indication of workaholism. Workaholism is determined by the overall negative impact on the quality of their lives rather than their devotion to their work. Simply put, workaholics have an unhealthy need to work obsessively, rather than a healthy desire to work obsessively.
Scientists, artists, leaders, athletes, and teachers, for example, may all be highly committed to their work and spend a great deal of time engaged in it. For some, work is so fulfilling that they consciously choose to invest in it more than relationships. However, if the individual uses work to avoid potential relationships, and if they neglect existing relationships or self-care, he or she may be addicted to work.
Symptoms of Workaholism
Some with work addiction wish to stop working but find it impossible to do so, with resulting burnout, anxiety (not just about work), depression, and irritability. Perfectionism is a common trait among workaholics, as is difficulty in delegating work to others. They often have a great fear of failing at work, and of being seen as imposters.
Workaholics may lose sleep either because they are working long hours, or because they are unable to stop thinking about work. They also may use work to avoid issues and feelings such as guilt or depression that they find too disturbing to face directly.
What Causes Someone to Become a Workaholic?
The causes of work addiction have not been identified with certainty. However, many probable causes have been indicated by both theory and research. Most cases of workaholism likely involve multiple causes.
Potential causes of workaholism include:
Genetically Acquired Traits
Traits such as conscientiousness, perfectionism, and achievement orientation may all be genetically transmitted and contribute to workaholism when they are later enlisted to prove the individual’s value.
Environmentally Acquired Traits
Other traits such as controlling behavior, negative affect, and difficulty in delegating may be acquired in childhood and promote workaholism.4,5 Children often find it comforting to imagine that they are responsible for the troubles in their home in order to feel that they have some control. This attempt to control may become their strategy for handling all difficult situations and anxiety, leading to extreme efforts to control work outcomes.
Compensation for low Self-Esteem
Individuals who feel badly about themselves may try to increase self-esteem through earning more money or more status by working long hours.
Social Modeling & Culture
Children may learn vicariously from their parents that hard work is a virtue, and feel a need to emulate them to get love and attention.6 They may also feel a need to keep up with, or surpass, their managers and peers by working longer hours.
Further, culture on a larger scale, such as North American culture, may lead individuals to feel they need to work to fit into or succeed in the world around them. What begins as external motivation may lead to an addiction with neurobiological incentives.
Overly Demanding or Overly Protective Parents
When parents place high expectations on their children to perform, the child may internalize those expectations to cope with the parents’ demands. Parents who are overly protective may communicate that the world is a dangerous place in which the child needs to hyper-achieve to survive.
Insecure Attachment
Individuals who did not bond with their parents may feel insecure about relationships and compensate by achieving financial security or status through work.
Environmental Stressors in Childhood
Children raised in impoverished or unstable households may be more likely to feel the need to overwork to achieve financial security.
Discomfort With Relationships & Fear of Intimacy
Those who are afraid to develop close relationships may feel more comfortable having work relationships that are less-threatening, and may feel more comfortable having excuses not to spend more time with others.
Behavioral Reinforcements
Financial rewards and increased status through promotions often fuel work addiction.
Addiction & the Neurobiological Reward System
Other behavioral addictions, such as gambling, video gaming, and sex, are known to be caused partly by genetic and neurochemical factors.7 While we don’t yet have clear evidence for a neurological basis of work addiction, we do know that some individuals seem to have a more active neurobiological reward system for the experience of mastery, of overcoming a challenge. These individuals may be more vulnerable to the reward system overriding healthier behaviors, and succumbing to work addiction.8
Theoretically, these individuals may become addicted to the endorphins experienced when completing tasks, and need more and more of the reward to feel satisfied. However, as with substance addictions, the “high” or “rush” that comes from completing tasks is short lived, and some individuals may be more likely to develop an addiction because of this dopaminergic neural system.
Triggers & Stress
Situational anxiety, not related to finances, may also contribute. A father who is anxious about his child’s medical condition may not know how to deal with his fears, and instead turn to work where he feels that he has more control.
Health Complications & Impacts of Workaholism
Being a workaholic can have severe consequences on a person’s mental and physical health. Someone addicted to work may experience mental health consequences like burnout and depression, and possibly even physical problems like high blood pressure.
Mental Health
When workaholics can’t work they become very agitated and irritable. When they are able to work, their need to get work done can make them feel urgency and become rigid. Workaholics either want to think that they can continue to will themselves into working more, or that they should be able to work harder.
But the resulting burnout, depression, and mental exhaustion can lead to a crisis in which they feel badly either while working or not working.9,10,11,12,13 Some professionals have identified lack of enjoyment of work as a defining characteristic of workaholism.14 Productivity may actually decrease with overworking.
Physical Health
Overall, workaholics maintain poor physical health, and develop medical problems including high blood pressure and physical pain. Many workaholics neglect exercise, which can lead to problems such as cardiovascular disease.15,16,17
They also tend to neglect medical appointments and so are at danger of major illnesses going undetected. Workaholics are so busy that they often rely on cigarettes, sugar, and caffeine to keep working rather than eat a healthy diet. They may also inappropriately use cocaine, prescription stimulants such as Adderall, and other drugs to achieve work goals.
Impact on Those Around the Workaholic
Work addiction often has a negative impact on the people around the workaholic as well. Spouses of workaholics report greater marital estrangement and less positive affect towards their partners. Their partners also feel like they have less control of their lives than do spouses of non-workaholics.18
Workaholism appears to be handed down to children by example.19 Students who perceived their parents as workaholics reported lower self-acceptance, diminished psychological well-being, and more physical complaints.20
Workaholism & Mental Health Disorders
Workaholism is often just one symptom of the more encompassing condition obsessive-compulsive personality disorder (OCPD).21 Significant research has drawn a statistical connection between the two.22 One of eight criteria for the diagnosis of OCPD is excessive devotion to work and productivity at the expense of leisure and friendships.23
Dysthymia and generalized anxiety disorder may lead to workaholism if the person tries to use work to self-medicate the feelings associated with those diagnoses. Overworking may lead to major depression because of the unrealistic standards set, and the loss of work-life balance.
Type A personality is also highly correlated with work addiction. Attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) has been hypothesized to be a source of workaholism for some as a strategy of compensation.24
Treatment for Workaholics
In-patient treatment may be needed to break the addition to work in a safe place with limited internet access. Workaholics may experience a psychological withdrawal that is hard to withstand in their regular home and work environments.
In addition, inpatient treatment of major depressive disorder or severe anxiety may help to prevent work addiction relapse. Family therapy may help the individual to understand the impact of their work on family members, understand the source and dynamics of the addiction, and ask for help in forming new habits.
Research regarding the effective treatment of work addiction is very scarce, but treatment for related issues strongly implies that different forms of therapy may be of help in treating workaholism. There are many modalities of therapy that can help a workaholic.
Psychodynamic Psychotherapy
Psychodynamic therapy aims to uncover the roots of emotional suffering. When treating work addiction, therapists and clients explore how the client’s history has led to their present use of work to try to reduce their anxiety and insecurity. Psychodynamic treatment may take longer than other forms of treatment, (roughly 6 months to 3 years), but research indicates that changes are longer lasting, and that improvement continues after the therapy concludes. However, little research has been undertaken specifically in regard to work addiction.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) challenges assumptions such as “I have to finish the project by myself, since no one else does it right,” Or, “I need to prove that I am better than others,” and replaces those. It also sets concrete behavioral limits and suggests more manageable ways of acting in regard to work. One form of CBT that has been used to treat workaholism is rational emotive behavior therapy (REBT).27 Cognitive behavioral therapy often aims to achieve symptom reduction in a matter of months, though it may take longer.
Workaholics Anonymous
While not technically a form of treatment, this Twelve-Step program can be helpful in providing support and guidance from other workaholics who are also trying to recover from work addiction.
Medications
No medications have been approved for the treatment of workaholism. However, medications may be helpful in reducing the anxiety that could lead to work addiction, and they may be helpful in lessening the depression that results from over-working. However, it should be noted that medications are most helpful when used in conjunction with talk therapy.
7 Tips for How to Stop Being a Workaholic
While working with clinical professionals may be the most effective way to gain control over a work addiction, there are significant steps that you can take on your own to become healthier, steps that you would need to take even if working with a professional.
Here are seven ways to overcome your work addiction:
1. Assess Yourself
Take one of the self-diagnostic tests listed below to determine whether you are a workaholic. Ask family, peers and friends to see whether they feel that you work too much. Let them know that you are making changes and ask for their support.
2. Uncover & Understand
Identify what purposes work may serve in your life other than providing income (e.g. perfectionism, higher self-esteem, status, avoidance, satisfaction).
3. Set Priorities for Meaning & Purpose
Consider carefully what is most important to you (e.g. income, status, relationships, well-being, purpose). Write these down and use that list as a screensaver, and your life in a way that actually respects those priorities. Letting go of any habit is easier when you identify something more valuable to hold on to.
4. Set Limits
Set limits for how many hours per week or per day that you will work, how much you will work on weekends, and your use of devices.
5. Substitute Active Healthy Behaviors
Monitor physical stress as a sign of overworking (e.g. in your shoulders or jaw). Use exercise, meditation, deep breathing, and mindfulness to lower anxiety and slow down. Remember that rest and leisure can actually increase your productivity.28
6. Make Plans for After Work
By setting plans up for after work, you have commitments that you can look forward to to help you set healthy boundaries for being done for the day. Having a routine will help you manage your time better.
7. Speak to a Therapist
It’s important to get professional help if you feel that your coping mechanisms aren’t working. Speaking with a therapist is a good way to set boundaries with work and develop a balance of all the commitments in your life as well as understanding where an imbalance came from and addressing those underlying issues.
How to Get Help for a Loved One
People who are addicted frequently use denial and rationalization as defenses. This is true of workaholics as well. So how you approach the subject when trying to get help for a loved one is important in determining whether they will respond defensively or they will be open to change and getting help.
When getting help for a workaholic loved one, take the following steps:
- Frame their behavior positively: acknowledge their work ethic, their commitment to support their family, their commitment to quality.
- Communicate the impact that their addiction has on them, yourself, and others around the addict.
- Assure them that no-one intends to take work away completely, and that it is possible for them to get help and live a more balanced life.
- Adopt self-care measures if you feel they are neglecting you.
For Further Reading
- Workaholics Anonymous is a twelve-step fellowship program committed to helping individuals recover from an addiction to work. It is not a form of therapy, but a self-help community.
- Work-Anon is a program of recovery for friends and family of workaholics which has phone meetings every other week.
- The Healthy Compulsive Project is a blog committed to helping individuals who are compulsively perfectionistic, workaholic, and obsessive.
- Facebook OCPD Support Group offers mutual support for those with obsessive-compulsive personality disorder, a frequent precursor of workaholism.
Workaholism Infographics
