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The Truth About Workaholism
| Posted on October 14, 2012 at 10:34 AM |
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"The Bergen Work Addiction Scale," means you spend much more time working than originally intended" Many of my patients say they feel so relaxed after acupuncture treatment, why? Largely because most people are stressed out and work far too hard and too long, Workaholism is a huge contributor to stress, and stress often leads to disease, depleting our energy reserves (qi). Attitudes towards workaholism have changed and it is no longer considered a "respectable" addiction. The Truth About Workaholics By Chris Wright October 13, 2012 You're sitting at your desk, scrolling through the Alcoholics
Anonymous website, when your boss walks up behind you. Not the best career move
you'll ever make, perhaps. But let's say you're looking at the
Workaholics Anonymous site instead, the section about how even when you're not
in the office you're still toiling away. What then? Does your boss give you a
talking to, or does he give you a raise? This rather glib question captures something important about how
society views work addiction. Recently, a business strategy website published
an article with the headline "Four Famous Workaholics (And The Secrets of
Their Success)." It's hard to imagine any other addiction eliciting this
kind of approach: "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Junkies,"
say, or "The Sipping Point." The fact is, people see workaholism in a different light from other
dependencies. It's known as the "respectable addiction," but this
doesn't quite capture the prevailing attitude toward the condition. Indeed,
many balk at the idea that it is a condition. The Diagnostic
and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders—which lists caffeine as a
dependency—doesn't even recognize work addiction. Workaholism is something Bill
Gates has, and surely no one's going to suggest that this guy needs to go to a
support group. Support groups, nonetheless, exist. Founded in 1983, Workaholics
Anonymous (or WA) currently has a little over a thousand members, and holds
meetings around the world—Paris, Sydney, London, Reykjavík, Bangkok.
Testimonials in its newsletter contain lines like "I was addicted to
activity. How to grapple with this baffling malady?" Well, there's the
requisite 12-step program, for one, and the equally familiar appeal to a higher
power. But, again, WA must contend with the fact that many people don't view
the malady as baffling so much as they do either virtuous or slightly
comical. "People don’t take this seriously—they either laugh at
workaholics or dismiss them," says psychotherapist and Chained to
the Desk author Bryan Robinson, who is widely recognized as being one
of the world’s leading experts on workaholism. “The work ethic is an ingrained
idea in our society. What’s wrong with working hard? Hard work got us to the
Moon!” He goes on to call this attitude “the glorification of an illness.” Things, however, may be about to change. This year, research
institutes from around the world have released a slew of studies clarifying
what work addiction is and how it affects the people who have it. In April,
Norwegian and British researchers developed what they call "The Bergen
Work Addiction Scale," a standardized list of criteria ("You spend
much more time working than originally intended") aimed at helping people
identify if they have an actual addiction rather than a tendency to work too
much. In March, meanwhile, Psychology Today cited recent research that
outlines four basic types of work addict, namely (to paraphrase): The manic
perfectionist, the stress junkie, the muddled multi-tasker, and the guy who
never seems able to let a project go. An article in the same publication last
year explored the narcissism and sundry neuroses that underlie the disease.
Such categorizations may, on the surface, seem largely academic, but there is
real-world aim here: namely to make people aware that they have an identifiable
condition, and therefore make it more likely that they will seek help. And it is becoming increasingly clear that workaholics do indeed
need help. Researchers in New Zealand have found that people who work at least
50 hours a week are up to three times more likely to face alcohol problems.
Earlier this month, the American Journal of Epidemiology reported on a global
study showing that over-workers are between 40 and 80 percent more likely to
suffer heart disease than others. The lead researcher of that study had
previously found that middle-aged people working more than 55 hours a week tend
to be disproportionately slow-witted, and to be more at risk for
dementia. "We’re beginning to look at work addiction from a cellular
level now," says Robinson. “The workaholic operates on the fight-or-flight
response, which leads to a drench of cortisol, norepinephrine, and adrenaline.
It can lead to heart disease and heart attacks, diabetes, compromised immune
systems, and gastro-intestinal problems. We know this, the studies are pouring
out.” To some extent, we don't need people in white coats to tell us
this—we've all seen how people "unwind" after a long day at the
office. We're aware, too, that over-workers tend to consume too much coffee, to
be susceptible to stress and depression, to have broken marriages, to exercise
infrequently, to get less sleep and eat more bad food, etc. More and more,
there's research to back up the conventional wisdom, but the end result is what
it's always been—ill health. The Japanese have a word for this: "Karoshi," or death by
work. Yet, according to figures from the International Labour Office, American
workers put in more hours per year than their Japanese counterparts (1,792
hours compared to 1,771). A recent Expedia poll found that fewer than 40
percent of Americans use up their annual vacation time. The Organization for
Economic Cooperation and Development reports that Americans are putting in 20
percent more hours than they were in 1970. Increasingly, 60-hour work weeks are
becoming the norm. What this spate of new studies is telling us, though, is that work
addiction is a global problem rather than an American one. This month,
researchers in Spain predicted that the percentage of work addicts in that
country’s work force would rise from the current 4.6 percent to 11.8 percent in
2015. And this fact—given Spain's especially precarious economic position—may
help us get to the root of the sudden interest in the issue. If workaholism is the rise—and evidence suggests that it is—then we
need to take a look at what role the global economic downturn has played in
this. For sure, people are working longer hours to make additional income, and
to make themselves indispensable enough that they skip the next round of
redundancies, but can we make the leap from necessity and anxiety—or even
obsession—to addiction? This is one area where the research is a little thin, possibly
because the question is philosophical rather than clinical. It could be argued
that an upturn in over-work leads to an increase in usage—inasmuch as
workaholism is said to have a chemical dependency side to it. As for the big
psychological factor—what WA describes as "deriving our identity and
self-esteem from what we do"—the ever-growing spectre of personal
financial ruin, and the humiliation this entails, would seem to play into this. Either way, to read the scientific papers making the rounds, and the
hand-wringing media reportage they inspire, we are in the midst of an epidemic,
surrounded on all sides by work junkies, harried, unhappy, smartphone-clutching
individuals whose major arteries are just one company report away from
exploding. As always, though, there are dissenters. A study out of France last
year proposed that workaholism "can be constructive, generating welcoming
outcomes for individuals, organizations and societies." A recent British
study found that clock-watchers are more susceptible to anxiety and apathy than
those who throw themselves into their work. A professor in the Netherlands,
meanwhile, has coined the term "engaged workaholic." If you love what
you do, the Dutch professor argues, where's the harm in doing too much of it? Which is something else you probably wouldn’t say about an
alcoholic, drug addict or compulsive gambler. |