The discomfort of being enough
Digging deeper into the implications of having work addiction
There’s a very sneaky button I accidentally click whenever I search for some books for my kindle named buy with one click — which does exactly what it says. It takes the money and sends the book to your device in an instant. Other than being a useful feature, it made me buy by mistake some very expensive e-books on management and decision-making processes. One time I also bought a book written by a cultural historian on the topic of religious judgementalism. Somehow, I decided to keep this one, since it was very much opposed to what I usually read.
The author touches, at some point, the subject of shame, as Brené Brown does in many of her books. She points out how being flawed and limited in some areas — which stands at the base of our human nature, brings us anxiety of being rejected by others. And most of all, feelings of shame for not being enough as we are.
Nothing some of us haven’t heard before in many motivational or psychological writings. I appreciated the simplicity in which it was written.
“We fail to understand that despite our limitations, we are good people”, she says.
I‘ve been struggling with work addiction for most of my adult life and had no idea about it for many years. I got diagnosed, out of all places, during a work interview by a psychologist that paid very close attention to me. I got the job, but this opened my eyes too so I ended up doing therapy for a couple of years. This didn’t cure my workaholism but made me better at managing it.
By definition, a workaholic is a person who works excessively and compulsively. There are multiple types of workaholics, each having different “personalities” and I, for example, can identify myself to be more inclined towards enthusiastic workaholism.
When compared to the other options this turns out to be some kind of good news. I’m passionate about what I do, I take comfort in my work and I have a strong desire for success. Looking deeper into this issue, things aren’t as peachy. There was a moment in my life where my achievements started overlapping with my sense of worth. From that moment on, I lost the ability to play and to enjoy what I was doing, or even do any work with no extra added pressure. When we identify our professional values with our human qualities we embark on a mission of constantly earning our place in this world. What my mind told me after each failure was that I wasn’t fit to be part of anything else. Furthermore, any achievements I saw in others came with a considerable amount of shame at my inability to equal that.
We can look at this as a consequence of a society shaped by mental labor, that values professional sacrifice more than anything else, on one hand. No other addiction had been so beneficial for the work culture. You can make so much profit on other addictions, but you can never build a society on the foundation of one. On another hand, this can may well be a coping mechanism developed in childhood. One that we aren’t aware of right until a psychologist randomly diagnoses us during a work interview, right?
In my case, this spiraled into a pattern that ties failure, one of our primary signals of growth, to the danger of becoming disconnected from others. Once in this pattern, you don’t work & improve yourself daily so you can become better and happier. You do it to survive — which sounds like the difference between people that play to win and the ones that play to not lose. For a person that has their life revolving around their work, failure demotes their whole purpose. Combined with mental health problems this is a recipe for disaster.
Looking at this from an objective standpoint it may not look like something other than an overachiever type of personality, perfectionism, or even a mild imposter syndrome that always tells you that you aren’t enough as you are at your job. But why does this translate so easily to our human qualities? Why can’t some of us, despite our failures, feel like we are good people?
The most comprehensive explanation I found in one of Gabor Maté’s books:
“The way people grow up shapes their relationship with their own bodies and psyches. The emotional contexts of childhood interact with inborn temperament to give rise to personality traits. Much of what we call personality is not a fixed set of traits, only coping mechanisms a person acquired in childhood.” — When the body says no.
For example, when confronted with a violent environment, a child misplaces their corrections with imminent life-threatening danger, since their life is so much connected to their caregivers. The child may fear abandonment as a consequence, or more violence, having them living in a constant state of insecurity.
Achievement in this case becomes the primary currency for securing a place in this world. And achievement, much like failure, doesn’t have a fixed definition and a fixed meaning. Maybe, later in life, pleasing the demanding parent becomes a constant inner monologue of look at my achievements, now I am worthy of existing.
How we were abused becomes a way of abusing ourselves, since this is the only environment that is still familiar.
I’ll quote again Maté on this:
“For those habituated to high levels of internal stress since early childhood, it is the absence of stress that creates unease, evoking boredom and a sense of meaninglessness. People may become addicted to their own stress hormones, adrenaline, and cortisol, Hans Selye observed. To such persons, stress feels desirable, while the absence of it feels like something to be avoided.”
I believe that this pattern transfers into our daily life as well. When you are driven by your constant need for validation, you never take a break from working — seen in this sense as constant emotional labor. For example, I used to brag about the fact that I never did anything without seeking a learning experience. Everything I used to engage in had to have a win for me. Even a day off is a day off only if afterward, I’d be more efficient at my job. This is a productive behavior only as long as it’s not controlling your whole life, leaving any space for anything else, which was not my case.
The most eye-opening talk on this subject, to me, was one of Alan Watts’s lectures:
“You pick up a pebble on the beach — look at it — beautiful. Don’t try and get a sermon out of it — sermons and stones and god and everything be damned — just enjoy it, don’t feel that you got to salve your conscience by saying that this is for the advancement of your aesthetic understanding. Enjoy the pebble. If you do that you become healthy, you become able to be a loving, helpful human being. But if you can’t do that, if you can only do things because they are somehow or you are going to get something out of it, you’re a vulture.”
Awareness as a tool
One of the most underestimated actions that are shaping our behavior is the one of actually becoming aware of ourselves. Our body, our mind, and of course, our feelings and emotions.
This breaks down to the smallest things. You might do things because you have to, not because you want to and in time you can never tell the difference. You can pass by an uncomfortable pain that’s a significant signal, just because you don’t pay attention. Or tolerate relationships that make you uncomfortable.
Workaholics lack self-awareness. A lot.
Most workaholics are in denial of their problems and never understand the gravity until it's too late. A burnout might sound casual in this society, but the consequences of one in the long term aren’t.
The realization that my mental health was getting worse didn’t happen consciously, as I was busy keeping my mind spinning, but in the middle of my meditation sessions. Or as I was practicing body awareness in my yoga practice. Or simply in the middle of a week off from any type of work, when I finally allowed my mind to exist without any other restrictions. Sometimes it’s enough to identify the feeling, not as something particular, but just as a feeling and ask yourself why is it there. Maybe start listening to your intuition if you already have a personal practice and see where it takes you.
I find grounding practices and practicing self-awareness helpful for understanding the bigger issue. The insight you might get from meditation, yoga, or other forms of quieting the mind isn’t solving the root of the problem but might make you aware of it. The next step might be booking that psychotherapy session you thought you didn’t need. Because as superheroes as we think we are, some traumas go deeper than we can handle alone.
