Addiction to work causes more marital breakdown, more family breakdown and more personal breakdown than any other addiction. But because everyone thinks you're wonderful and successful, it's a very insidious addiction and very hard to combat.
Clinical psychologist Dr Tony Humphreys says addiction to work is where all your energies, creativity and time is focused on work to the exclusion of commitments to family, relationships, spirituality or recreation. "You're obsessed. Work addiction is where you prove your worth through work. That your identity is so tied up with work and you work so hard to maintain your identity through work."
Men are particularly prone to work addiction, investing their identity in their work, putting them at risk of "marital breakdown, family breakdown, personal breakdown, burnout", he says.
Fear underlies work addiction. "It's fear of rejection, fear of invisibility, fear of failure, fear of not being successful. Bill Gates says it very well. He says the greatest impediment to progress is success." Dr Humphreys says that because work addicts narrow their focus in life down to goals at work, they lose out on their "whole expansiveness as a person. And you lose out on the expansiveness of life".
What matters in life is neither success nor failure but progress, he says. Success or failure are merely the "mechanics of progress. They rotate the engine of progress. But what we need to focus on in life is progress - spiritual progress, social progress, occupational progress, relationship progress, community progress".
Like any other addiction, work addiction is on a continuum from mild to severe. He describes the following as some of the indicators of work addiction: Cannot say "no" to job demands; works 60 to 80 hours weekly; rarely takes a holiday; has difficulty in delegating work; takes work home; works weekends; is preoccupied with job matters; job dominates social conversations; misses meals due to work commitments and breaks off holidays because of job demands.
However, enjoying the challenge of work is different from being addicted. The person who is challenged by work keeps a balanced lifestyle, keeping an eye on their health, relationships and families. Moreover, the person who is challenged is driven by love of life, while the person who is addicted is driven by fear.
Should employers not be delighted to have work-addicted employees? "In the short term, yes. Because they won't refuse any challenge, they'll work late hours, they'll work weekends."
But if they appear an employer's dream, there's a downside. The person will eventually burn out, he says. "Also the person who is job addicted is terribly insecure and doesn't have the expansiveness of the person who is more balanced. Moreover, work-addicted people are very difficult to work with and they create difficult staff relationships. Staff relationships are one of the major issues that interfere with productivity."
Dr Humphreys spells dedicated "dead-icated" wherever dedication is to be found: "I think it's very dangerous to belong to anything outside yourself. And when you're dedicated you tend to belong to something outside yourself, whether it's the church, or your relationship . . . You need to belong to yourself. Things outside yourself come and go. Enjoy them, be challenged by them, but don't belong to them. It's dangerous stuff."
In contrast, commitment involves committing yourself to something in a balanced way, that is, not to the neglect of yourself or your marriage or your family, he says.
Dr Humphreys believes the way to free yourself from work addiction is to "break the connection between your worth and your work. Once you feel that your visibility in this world is tied up with work, as long as that dependence is there, you need your work addiction. What you need is help to break that tie. It's like an umbilical chord.
"Once you begin to break that tie, you begin to see the wider expanse of yourself and of the world and begin to move into a more balanced lifestyle. That's a long journey, by the way."
jmarms@irish-times.ie
