How to beat work addiction and avoid burnout

Katherine Baldwin is a trauma-informed mental health and wellbeing speaker

What comes to mind when you hear the word ‘addiction’?

Drugs, alcohol or nicotine, perhaps. Secrecy and shame, maybe.

But there’s one addiction that is socially acceptable, endorsed by bosses and clients and often rewarded with accolades.

That addiction is work.

Simply put, addiction is a compulsive behaviour that we continue to do despite negative and damaging consequences to our wellbeing or those around us.

Alcohol and drug abuse fit neatly into this definition, but what about working to excess?

What about staying at our desks well past home time, pushing and perfecting, over-giving and over-delivering, neglecting our health, friendships, relationships or family life?What about crossing continents and time zones for work assignments, but not taking time to rest?

What about continuing to perform beyond what’s expected, while avoiding going to the doctor to check out a mole, skipping workouts, or failing to drink water or stop for lunch, fuelling ourselves instead with caffeine, chocolate and crisps, followed by a few glasses of wine to relax.

If it sounds like I know what I’m talking about, I do.

For years, as a journalist for Bloomberg and Reuters, I prioritised my career above everything else, abandoning my health, my fun, my friendships and my romantic life.

To fuel my workaholism and keep myself awake, I turned to other crutches: binge drinking after a day reporting from parliament; binge eating on a round-the-world trip with then Prime Minister Tony Blair; engaging in punishing exercise routines; and losing myself in drama-fuelled relationships that always crashed and burned.

These behaviours had a common denominator – they took me away from my feelings.

That’s what addiction does – it transports us to another plane, a place where we find momentary relief from our emotional pain, only to need more of the substance or behaviour to maintain the relief, finally plummeting back down to earth when the effect wears off.

What Drives Workaholism?

For many of us, passion and purpose fuel our overworking. We are ambitious and aspirational. We want to change the world, make a difference.

But for those of us who push ourselves to the edge and over it, darker drivers are often at play: low self-worth; fear of getting it wrong or being found out (imposter syndrome); deep-seated financial insecurity, no matter how much money we make; the urge to people-please and appease, no matter the cost to ourselves; a fragile ego that no amount of praise can validate.

These conditions and compulsions often take root in early life.

We didn’t feel safe, seen, loved or good enough and we felt we had to earn love and attention through achievement.

Again, I write from experience.

Growing up around alcoholism, I felt unsafe and that I could only rely on myself. I saw work and achievement as a means of escape. I felt that if I could just get enough people to love and approve of me, it might fill the gaping hole inside.

But I discovered the hard way that no amount of food, alcohol, accolades or external validation could heal those early life wounds. That was an inside job – I had to learn to love, value and validate myself and find support in healthy places.

Spotting and Confronting Workaholism

 How do I know if I’m a workaholic? Ask yourself:

• Do you continue to work to the detriment of your health, wellbeing and relationships?

• Do you abandon yourself, your friends, your fun or your family for the sake of work?

• Do you hide how much you’re working, sneaking into your home office when you’re supposed to be doing something else?

• Is your work impacting your enjoyment of life?

• Do you skip lunch, exercise or fresh air so that you can keep toiling?

  
  

If you answer Yes to some of these questions, it might be time to begin the difficult journey of change, for your own sake and for the sake of your loved ones.

I’ll break this journey down into two essential steps. Ideally, you take them simultaneously as it’s hard to do one without the other.

The Practical Stuff

 These are the steps you already know and have likely tried a thousand times. The promises you make to yourself but so often break. The tiny, achievable actions that build healthy habits.

Ten minutes of morning meditation

• A proper lunchbreak away from your desk

• Lifting hand weights or balancing on one leg as the kettle boils

• Ringfencing time to rest, walk or see other human beings

• Setting boundaries with yourself or with others – saying No to evening meetings, ignoring emails at the weekend, pressing send on a piece of work rather perfecting it into the night

You know these steps like the back of your hand. The problem is incorporating them and sticking with them. That brings me to my next point:

The Analytical Stuff 

This is the deep work we must do to understand why we abandon ourselves, why we put others’ needs before our own, why we neglect our health and why we push and strive and work ourselves into the ground.

We must ask the hard questions:

• What emotional hole are we trying to fill?

• What lack are we trying to address?

• What fears are we trying to keep at bay?

• What wounds are we running from?

  
  

When we do this introspection, ideally with a therapist, counsellor or coach (I do this work with people too), we gather vital information about what drives our compulsions.

We explore our feelings, understand our pain and process emotions that have been trapped inside for years.

In other words, we feel it to heal it.

And this deep healing makes it easier to keep the practical promises. As we understand the roots of our compulsions and learn to value ourselves, we drink more water, leave work at six, arrange a date, do our exercise and make time for family and friends.

These micro-changes then stack up until we are living a balanced life, no longer teetering on the brink of burnout, no longer putting our work before our health or our personal lives.

If this sounds difficult, like just another task on a crammed To Do list, please know that this is your most important work and it comes before everything else.

The cost of self-neglect is steep. If we push our brains or our bodies too hard for too long, they will eventually pack up. We will be unable to function, let alone work or earn.

Thank goodness, then, that we have a choice, to take the path that leads to burnout or the one that leads to health.

Which path will you choose?

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About Katherine Baldwin & the Speakers Collective

Katherine Baldwin is a trauma-informed mental health and wellbeing speaker and relationship coach, specialising in addiction, eating disorders, workaholism, burnout and healthy relationships with ourselves and others.

If you are interested in Katherine Baldwin speaking at an event or hearing more about her work, please contact info@speakerscollective.org  

Speakers Collective is a Social Enterprise. We work together with a shared commitment to challenge stigma, facilitate important conversations and promote learning on a variety of social issues. Please do contact us via info@speakerscollective.org or via our contact form here.