Work addiction: the one addiction people reward

“Sorry I’m late, the meeting overran.” Then he smiled and added the sentence I hear almost every time: “It’s a good problem to have.” Over the next fifty minutes he described a year without a single free weekend, twice forgetting his daughter’s performance, and getting up at night because he had remembered an unanswered email. When I asked how his body was coping, he said his chest sometimes tightened in the morning, but that the tests had come back fine.

This is the one form of addiction that the people around you do not merely tolerate but reward. Nobody will congratulate you for drinking more than the others. For working more than the others you will get praise, promotion and a place in the conversation at the table. That is precisely why it goes unseen the longest.

Why this pattern is the hardest to notice

Every addiction has something around it that keeps it standing. With work it is a system of values that is very firmly held here: diligent, reliable, hard-working. If a company pays you a bonus for behaviour that is wearing you out, the signal that something is wrong gets lost in the noise of approval.

The second reason is that work is good. It is not mysterious, not shameful, not something to hide in a cupboard. On the contrary — it is visible, measurable and produces tangible results. That makes it easier to use as an escape from something else, because the escape looks like responsibility.

And third: the consequences arrive with a delay. Relationships do not fall apart in a month, the body adapts for a long time, a child does not complain for a long time. By the time the consequences show, they seem detached from the cause — as though it were bad luck rather than something that had been accumulating for years.

Engagement and compulsion are not the same

This is the most important distinction in the whole piece. Someone who works a lot because the work delights them, who has good relationships alongside it and who knows how to stop, is not addicted. Researchers call this work engagement, and it is associated with better health, not worse.

Work addiction is something else: they work a lot because they cannot stop. The inner pressure is constant, rest brings unease instead of relief, and when the work is finally finished what appears is not satisfaction but restlessness and the search for the next task. The measure is therefore not the number of hours but the ratio between pleasure and compulsion.

So the question I start with in the room is this: what happens on a Sunday afternoon when nothing is urgent? The answer says far more than a timetable does. Some describe a pleasant empty space. Others describe an anxiety they cannot name, and almost immediately admit that in that space they opened the laptop, “just for half an hour”.

What drives the pressure

Underneath constant pressure there is almost always something that has little to do with work. Most often it is contingent self-worth: the belief that you are worth as much as you last produced. Such a person does not work in order to achieve something but in order not to be nothing — and because the effect expires each time, the proof has to be renewed.

The second source is the family. Many people grew up in a house where affection was tied to success, or in one where work went on from morning to night and rest was something to be earned. The pattern passes on without words. The child does not learn that work is important; the child learns that they are only settled while working.

The third source is the most pragmatic: work is an excellent place to avoid things. If home is tense, if the marriage is empty, if grief is unprocessed, then the office is where you are competent and where nobody asks you about hard matters. I have written separately about how men often come for help later; work is the most acceptable excuse of all.

And a fourth I must not leave out: the inner critic. In people who work without stopping this voice is usually very loud and very precise. It never says that enough is enough.

How it shows in the body

The body notices first that something is wrong and is the last to be given a say. Typically this is insomnia, starting as difficulty falling asleep and growing into waking at three, then tension in the shoulders and jaw, digestive trouble, headaches that arrive exactly on a Friday or on holiday.

The research on long working hours is fairly serious here. Large analyses link long working weeks with a higher risk of stroke and of heart disease; an estimate by the World Health Organization and the International Labour Organization put this into global figures for the first time. This is not an argument for fear, but it is an argument against treating the pattern as a harmless habit.

In many people the first thing to speak up is what we might call a physical sign with no finding — tightness in the chest, dizziness, a lump in the throat. The tests are fine and the symptom is real. I have written about what it means when the tests show nothing; in this group it happens very often.

Home is where it costs most

Partners of people who work without stopping describe the same thing in different words: physically he is here, in practice he is not. Conversations become logistical, closeness thins out, an argument is postponed because there is no time. In time the other partner gets used to it and stops inviting — and that silence at home is often mistaken for peace.

Children read it differently from how parents imagine. They do not think “my father is dedicated” but “there is no time for me”. If this repeats, the child often learns that attention is earned through achievement, and the pattern moves on to the next generation. For many people this is the strongest reason to change anything at all — stronger than their own health.

With couples something else usually surfaces: work is not only an escape from home but also a defence against reproach. As long as you are working, you have a good reason to be absent. That is why the demand “work less” almost always fails unless the two of you also talk about what will come in its place.

What happens when the work disappears

The most revealing moment in this subject is not the hardest week but the day when the work is suddenly gone. Retirement, redundancy, sick leave, a long holiday. People who had a healthy relationship with work usually get through that transition with a discomfort that passes. People who were holding themselves up through work collapse at that point, and faster than anyone would expect.

They arrive in my room with words that have nothing to do with work: that they do not know who they are, that they have nothing to talk about, that they are frightened of getting up in the morning. This is not an exaggeration. Work really was carrying a large part of their identity, and when it is removed, it becomes clear how much else went unbuilt in the meantime.

If you are in a period when there is a great deal of work, this may be the only useful question in the piece: what would remain if it were gone tomorrow? Not as a threat, but as an inventory. Every answer you can find now is something that will not have to be built in a hurry later.

Not the same as burnout

Work addiction and burnout are often confused, although they run in opposite directions. In addiction there is still too much fuel: the person works, hurries, plans, does not stop. In burnout the fuel has run out: what follows is exhaustion, a cynical stance and the feeling that nothing you do moves anything.

The connection between them is one of timing. An unstopped pattern usually leads to burnout, only not immediately — first comes a long period in which everything works and everyone is pleased. I have described the signs of burnout separately; if you recognise yourself in them, you have probably been in this for a while.

Where my argument breaks down

Now what has to be said. Many people work a great deal not because of inner pressure but because they cannot otherwise afford a life. A single mother with two jobs is not addicted to work. Someone on a precarious contract who cannot refuse an extra project because next month there may be none is not addicted to work. Any piece that fails to say this turns economic hardship into a personal failing, and that is unfair.

The border between the two is not always clear even to me. A question that helps: what would happen if money stopped being a problem? If the pace stayed the same, it is a pattern. If it eased, it is circumstance — and then therapy is not the first answer; pay, contract and rights are.

The second limit to my argument is that some people genuinely work a lot and are perfectly well. The distinction between engagement and addiction is well supported in the research; rushing to pathologise anyone who works more than average is neither accurate nor kind. If work gives you meaning, you sleep, you have relationships and you can stop, there is no reason to go looking for a diagnosis.

And one more limitation that matters here: “work addiction” is not an official diagnosis. Measurement scales exist, the descriptions resemble one another, but the borders are agreed rather than measured. This does not invalidate the distress; it only means nobody can tell you that you are over the line, because the line has not been drawn.

What actually helps

First, what does not work: deciding to work less. That decision falls at the first genuinely busy week and leaves behind proof that you are weak. More useful than a decision is the question of what you would have to feel if you were not working — and whether you are willing to meet it.

What works are limits that do not depend on willpower. An hour at which the laptop locks. A day of the week without email. An agreement with a partner that has a consequence. Setting boundaries is harder at work than anywhere else, because the costs are immediate and visible while the benefits are slow and unremarkable.

The second thing that works is recovery in small doses. The research on recovery suggests that long holidays are not what is decisive but daily gaps: switching off thoughts of work in the evening, being sleepy at the right time, something that genuinely absorbs you. A holiday after which you feel the same by the second day is not proof that rest does not work — it is proof that it did not happen.

And third: in therapy this rarely ends with the timetable. More often it comes down to what would be left of you if you stopped proving yourself. That conversation is uncomfortable and takes time, but it is the only one after which the change holds.

What to remember

Work is the one addiction you get praised for, and that is exactly why it goes unseen the longest. The measure is not the number of hours but the ratio between pleasure and compulsion — and what happens when the work is not there.

Engagement and addiction are not the same: the first is associated with better health, the second with rest bringing restlessness instead of relief. Underneath the pressure there is often a belief that you are worth as much as you last produced.

And an important exception: if you work a great deal because you cannot otherwise afford a life, that is not addiction but circumstance. Therapy does not solve that, and it should not pretend it can.