Do I Have a Work Addiction?

Have you ever been told you work too hard? For people with demanding jobs, this might seem like a shocking statement. After all, certain career paths necessitate working long hours. Certainly, it’s possible for you to be someone who enjoys working more than the average 40-45 hours per week. However, there is a huge difference between a workaholic and someone who is just in a fast-paced profession.

The key to understanding if you have the symptoms of being a workaholic is to understand the warning signs and how they affect both you and those in your life. Workaholics aren’t just driven to work and work. Rather, they are driven to work to the exception of anything else. This means work is the center of their lives instead of only being a contributing part, and therein lies the core of the work addiction. So how do you know if you have a work addiction?

Why Work Addiction Can Be Tough to Spot

Ironically, work addiction can be very challenging to identify. After all, our society suggests working as much as you can is a sign of someone who is dedicated to their job. Many supervisors are happy to have a workaholic on the team. They know the work addict can be counted on to pick up the pieces and get tasks done.

When the workaholic is in the position of manager or leader, they may simply do all the work rather than delegating to subordinates. If the subordinates are fine with this arrangement, upper management and executive leadership personnel may never know what’s occurring.

This could be why work addiction signs and symptoms are ignored in the employment sector. Who wants to get rid of the employee who’s willing to work well into the night, as well as come into the office every weekend without any extra pay?

Eventually, though, a work addict’s ability to keep up this furious pace will backfire, leaving their employer in a bad position. Knowing this, it’s critical human resources personnel encourage employees who are showing symptoms of work addiction to get assistance and treatment.

What Are the Signs of Work Addiction?

The symptoms of a work addiction run the gamut from subtle to obvious. If you’ve ever asked yourself, “Do I have a work addiction?” the following symptoms of being a workaholic may be able to help you determine the answer:

• You believe you have to be smarter than everyone else. Your confidence is wrapped up in your being at the top of the charts in every way. In school, if you got anything less than a perfect grade, you felt dumb and incompetent. You may even have been embarrassed and tried to hide your grades from family members.
• You feel like you are defined by the work you do. Thus, you have to keep doing more work to have any kind of worth. Growing up, this might have been instilled in you by parents or guardians who told you (or showed you by their own workaholic actions) that without work, you were nothing important.

• You are someone who needs attention all the time. You like being recognized for what you do at work, and you seek out kudos from your supervisors and colleagues. Each time you get a “nice job,” you feel a sort of high. Unfortunately, it only lasts a short period of time before you’re driven to get more accolades. There’s really never enough for you.
• You are terrified of going bankrupt or into debt. As a result, you drive yourself to work nonstop. You may have come from a family where money was always tight or nonexistent. This has led you to have a poor relationship with finances. Your spouse complains you won’t spend any money, even though you have enough.
• You are afraid of losing your job. Perhaps you saw a parent constantly losing jobs, and you vowed at a young age this wouldn’t happen to you, too. You feel without a job, your life wouldn’t be worth living. The only way you know how to hold onto jobs is to work yourself harder than anyone else.
• You worry you’ll become a source of embarrassment to yourself or your family members because of perceived laziness. You never want to be known as the person who didn’t do enough, so you always go overboard. Even if you risk everything, you believe it’s worth the choice.
• You never say no to a work assignment, even if it comes at a hefty price, such as missing your kids’ games or forgoing dinner out with your partner. You feel if you tell your boss “no,” you’ll immediately be seen as insubordinate, and you could risk losing your job or being written up.
• You hate to deal with what’s happening on the home front. Therefore, you avoid poor communication with your family members by spending excessive amounts of time at work. Even if your spouse threatens divorce, you would rather remain a workaholic than have to go through therapy with them.
• Even though you know a lot about your work, you know very little about other subjects. You have focused so intently on your niche you’ve excluded other interests. What used to interest you no longer grabs your attention.
• You fear being alone, so you work to fill the void. Work becomes a sort of relationship for you, and you feel like your work is your companion in life. It’s always there for you, and it never argues. It’s your “true love” in many ways.
• You have been identified as someone who has an addictive personality. Many work addicts have been addicted to other substances, such as smoking or the Internet.
• You have been identified as someone who is suffering from depression. This is considered a dual-diagnosis. Essentially, you are addicted to work, but the underlying factors of your addiction are combined with your clinical depression.
• You cannot ever relax — work is always “in your head.” Not only do you think about work all the time, you may even have dreams (and nightmares) about it. Work is honestly your life.
• You enjoy having the reputation of being a workaholic. When you tell people how many hours a week you work, you feel a sense of pride you don’t get from any other accomplishment. Even when someone accuses you of being addicted to work, you simply smile because you feel self-satisfaction from their accusation.
• You believe everything should be done to excess. For instance, if you diet, you diet extremely and eliminate whole food groups. Similarly, if you exercise, you exercise until you are completely fatigued. There is no middle ground with you — it’s only all or nothing.
• You can only talk about work. Whenever the conversation swings to something else, you bring it back to work. You like to boast about the work you’ve done, what you’re currently working on and what you plan to do. People have told you you’re a bore because of your lack of varied conversation topics.
• You grew up admiring workaholics. These could have been family members, or they might have been teachers, coaches, religious figures or neighbors. You told yourself if you could be like those workaholics, your life would be better.
• You enjoy challenges, especially ones that involve self-deprivation. This is why you’re willing to go without sleep in order to finish a work assignment well in advance of deadlines. You feel like this is a sign of being a strong person.
• You have no home life. There is only your work life, and this work life is more important to you than any home life could ever be. If you’re single, your home may be sparsely decorated. It also may look like it’s hardly lived-in because you are never home to do such things as watch TV, have friends over or read a book for fun.
• You feel like anyone who doesn’t work as much as you do isn’t worth his or her paycheck. You look down on other people who work normal hours, and you are disgusted by the thought they can live like they do.
• You hate to take vacations. When you’re actually on a trip, all you can think about is plugging into your work. This not only discourages your vacation-mates, it has earned you the reputation of being a “wet blanket.” You will never take a vacation where you cannot have access to work.
• You like being the first into the office in the morning and the last to leave, whether or not you are the boss. This gives you a sensation of extreme power. You may even go back to the office late at night or send out late-night emails to colleagues and clients. This way, you can illustrate you work all the time.
• You are willing to go into the office in the middle of the night, even if the office isn’t in the best part of town. You’d rather risk your life than not be at work.
• You have sacrificed a healthy relationship with your children. When you see them not doing homework or engaging in fun activities, you tell them they are lazy. You are disgusted by what you see as a lack of work ethic.
• You have already lost relationships because of your workaholism. Although you didn’t enjoy losing people, you felt helpless because you were unable to stop working. You couldn’t understand why your working hard would make them feel unhappy.
• You have considered getting another job because your current job isn’t giving you enough hours. This isn’t for financial reasons, though. You have enough money. You simply don’t feel like you’re working as much as you could or should be.
• You have lost jobs because you worked too much and your supervisors felt you were too obsessed with your job. You may also not have followed the chain of command. Rather than delegating work, you chose to do it yourself, even when your employer insisted you do otherwise.

• You never take any kind of breaks during work, including lunch or snack breaks. You even limit the time you use the bathroom so you can stay on a project as long as possible. People have stopped asking if you want to chat. They know you’ll never engage in any “water cooler” discussions.
• You have been told you have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or attention deficit disorder (ADD). These conditions can go hand-in-hand with workaholism. They make you feel as if your mind is constantly going 100 miles per hour.
• You have gotten to the point where you don’t even feel guilty about missing important milestones in others’ lives, such as those related to your spouse or children.
• You refuse to go to medical appointments, and you may be struggling with health issues. However, you believe your health isn’t more important than your job.
• You do not take care of your personal appearance. You may be too thin or too heavy, or you may suffer from hypertension or other physical ailments. The only thing that matters to you is work.
• You have insomnia and cannot seem to get a good night’s sleep. Therefore, you sometimes forgo sleep altogether to work instead.
• You don’t have any kind of support in your life. You’ve pushed everyone away with your work addiction. This could have been from circumstances or from a deliberate attempt to clear the way for you to work all the time. In fact, you wouldn’t know what to do if you had friends to turn to.
• You suffer from anxiety attacks. These can be related to working, or they can come at any time. The only way you can deal with your anxiousness is to keep on working.

These are all common workaholism signs and symptoms, and if you see yourself in them, it’s time to get treatment for your work addiction.

Taking the First Steps Towards Work Addiction Recovery

Recovering from work addiction takes time, as well as the help of people who understand what you’re experiencing. Because you probably can’t simply stop working, you’ll have to learn better ways to manage your work schedule and incorporate a home-life routine.

Many workaholics find it can be helpful to begin planning each day from beginning to end before going to bed. This allows them to have a clear picture of how they will go through the next 24 hours. Because work addicts are likely to be methodical by nature, an outlined calendar can be a huge asset. Not only is it a guide to follow, it gives them a sense of being in charge of their lives.

Though it’s possible to do a lot yourself in terms of treatment, it’s important you don’t try to overcome your work addiction on your own. Even if you want to change, it can still be an enormous challenge to change without help.

There are inpatient and outpatient centers available throughout the nation, as well as psychologists, counselors and psychiatrists who are accepting new work addict clients. Find one you feel a connection with and a facility that has a track record of treating work addicts.