Compulsive Work Addiction
With the national unemployment rate hovering at 10 percent – and higher in some hard-hit areas of the country – anyone who is still employed is understandably worried about the future. Will they still have a job tomorrow, next week or next month? What do they have to do to keep their job? And, with so many companies downsizing within the last year, the remaining workers simply have to do more work to pick up the slack. But even without the current economic downturn, the simple truth is that more and more Americans are slaves to their jobs. In short, they suffer from a condition known as compulsive work addiction.
According to a recent University of California Santa Barbara study, more than 31 percent of college-age male workers worked more than 50 hours per week on a regular basis. That’s just one study. Corporations know that compulsive work addiction and burnout are a serious problem and many have engaged consultants or initiated programs to try to deal with the issue. This isn’t compassion on their part. Lost productivity due to burnout, workplace stress and compulsive work addiction can seriously impact the bottom line.
But here we’re concerned with the effects of compulsive work addiction on the individual and his or her family and friends.
Burnout versus Compulsive Work Addiction
Classic burnout is a very serious condition that involves physical, mental and emotional symptoms that intensify over time. Without treatment, burnout leads to clinical depression. Work addiction is a very different condition whose roots often lie in the individual’s childhood. But, similar to burnout, without treatment, the worst-case scenarios end in the same type of clinical depression. Both burnouts and work addicts seem to be driven, committed, dedicated and completely identified with their jobs. It’s the internal mechanism that is different. Work addiction is internally like an addiction to alcohol, drugs or gambling in that the addict has to have the fix – in this case, the fix that work provides. He or she simply can’t do without it.
It is important here to further differentiate between a hard worker (or Type A personality) and a workaholic. The hard worker appears, in many respects, to have the same traits as the workaholic. Yet they are always able to set healthy boundaries, clearly delineating work from play or non-work. Driven by underlying emotional issues, the compulsive work addict is characterized by compulsive behaviors. Workaholics never take vacations, or they bring their work with them on the vacation. Research, however, shows that too much work without balance and rest will eventually result in breakdown. Compulsive work addiction is extremely dangerous to your health.
