Workaholism is an anxiety disorder. It involves intense urges to complete tasks and stay busy to get relief from compelling, anxious, and often perfectionistic thoughts.
Workaholism evolves slowly, and frequently delivers enough relief initially to keep motivating a person to work longer and more often. Over time however, Workaholism stops functioning to provide relief. Eventually, people addicted to work feel no satisfaction at all and are burned out, causing irritability, insomnia, problems in relationships, problems with sex, and increased substance use.
At CriticalPath Counseling, our experience with professionals in Silicon Valley can help you discern if your high achieving lifestyle is causing you harm. What may seem like highly functional competence can actually be covering up extreme anxiety and worry about the work itself or what people think of you.
The problem with workaholic tendencies is that they are positively reinforced in our culture. It may also be “negatively reinforced” if working until you literally drop from exhaustion also provides relief from anxiety.
Either way, there are numerous factors that maintain Workaholism and any addictive behavior including OCD, PTSD, among others. At CriticalPath Counseling we use Behavior Analysis to identify what keeps a person driven to perform beyond reasonable limits. Workaholism has detrimental effects on a persons cognitive judgment, and their relationships.
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