Why being a Workaholic can Make you Depressed
It isn’t surprising that being a workaholic can leave you in a depressed state of mind, since you feel powerless to resist the compulsion to work. People may think that it is up to you whether you decide to spend a few extra hours in the office and bring your work home with you, but it doesn’t feel like much of a choice for you. It is not as if you can give up the very thing you’re addicted to – work – since bills still need to be paid, while cutting back on the hours you work is challenging enough.
Being a workaholic not only affects you, since your friends and family are usually at the receiving end of your mood swings, while work colleagues are also affected by your workaholism. However, you’re very much focused on yourself, since it is your motivation and pursuit of perfectionism that probably caused you to become a workaholic in the first place.
Once you have managed to reach a high-up position in a company you can find yourself becoming paranoid that others are trying to derail your good work and show you up so that they can take your job. This kind of distrust is hardly likely to help your working relationships, since you feel that everyone is out to get you and so if anyone shows any sign of being concerned for your well-being you can end up taking it the wrong way. You therefore alienate your colleagues who may also start to resent the fact that you’re always the first person to enter the office in the morning and the last one to leave at night.
As far as your family and friends go, you generally have very little time for them, as even when you’re physically present at home, your mind tends to be elsewhere. You are never able to switch off, as you’re always thinking about your next project or presentation and planning the next step in your career. You push the people closest to you away and you could end up finding yourself with no one at all to confide in. If you’re hardly ever at home and you’re miserable whenever you have to take a break from work, this is bound to impact upon the relationship you have with your partner and make it difficult to communicate with your children.
Consequently, your workaholism makes you unhappy, as you never feel fulfilled when you’re always striving for something better, while you have no one to talk to and so you feel isolated, which leaves you feeling depressed about your situation and convinced that nothing will ever change.
