Workaholism - Psychological or emotional?
Times Ascent | 20 September 2010 | Purnima
It is not the presence of certain disturbing emotions that causes one to become a workaholic but the inability to confront, handle and deal with these emotions that is causing the problem.
Workaholism is supposed be a major problem in many developed countries of the world. In a country like Japan, many early deaths have occurred as a result of workaholism. Though in many contexts people use the term to describe their dedication and total involvement with their chosen field, in general a workaholic is considered to exhibit an abnormal behavior which could be stress related or an obsessive compulsive personality disorder.
It is evident that the root of workaholism is psychological and emotional. The attitude that a workaholic carries into his work is not a great love or passion to do, rather it is an escapist tendency. He/she is trying to avoid a more severe problem in life by hiding behind busy schedules. Many researches have also proven the lack of efficiency and smartness in the work culture of workaholics. Owing to tremendous mental preoccupation, they do not bring sufficient attention to what they are doing. Hence, whatever could be achieved in 50 hours needs 80 hours for a workaholic.
It is not the presence of certain disturbing emotions that causes one to become a workaholic but the inability to confront, handle and deal with these emotions that is causing the problem.
As long as the person continues to resist emotions he/she needs some form of addiction or the other. Work and activity provides a formidable shield against feeling unpleasant emotions. If we do not handle this inability to confront emotions and merely divert the person from over working, slowly the person might need a different addiction, may be to food, television, movies, books, fun and clubs, because we have not cured the obsessive behavior but merely changed the content. A fundamental understanding into the nature of emotions would help workaholics muster themselves and meet themselves on the emotional plane and heal it completely.
Once a lady was driving a car in the middle of the night on a lonely highway. The shadows of the night and the gentle breeze slowly lull her and for a brief moment her attention wavers off the road. Before she could regain her consciousness, the car had strayed away from the lane on to the sidewalk and rammed on a huge tree. The doors flung open, bonnet crushed and the dashboard closed in on her. She was miserably stuck under the belts and heavy metals. The last flicker of the headlights went out when she noticed shining lights of gleaming eyes from outside fast approaching her. It was a pack of wolves, snarling and growling hungrily. Before she realized one of them pounced on her and bit out a huge chunk of her thigh, she heard, “Mama wake up. Its getting late” a small gentle hand shook her. She opened her eyes to a bright stream of light, smiled, “Thank god! None of it is true!”
The fear of death that she experienced a few minutes ago was so real, though it was only a dream. As soon as she knew it was not a reality she could smile about it. How different are our emotions? Are they too not waking dreams? The fear you have in dream and the fear you have while you are awaking can be very different? Every emotion is born of a particular story that our mind is telling ourselves just as in a dream. Emotions are our responses to these stories because like a child listening to bedtime stories, we tend to believe the story our mind tells us and rarely question its views, opinions and assumptions. Let us take an every day incident of hurt and friction at work. When your work is under rated in your opinion, someone else receives a place of significance; you get hurt with people responsible for creating this situation in your life. Your natural response would be to blame them and hold them responsible for the regress in your carrier. As you listen to your thoughts, you would then listen to a story the mind is weaving around this situation. The situation is a fact, but your mind associates it to several other experiences of failures, where you had felt in a similar way, that people always grab what rightfully belongs to you, the whole world is against you, your hard work is never recognized, its hopeless, a conspiracy that you can never win over, so on and so forth. This is the story your mind spins to keep alive the emotional state. As long as you are engrossed in this story and indulge in its woeful narrations, you are in a dream. When you wake up to this story, it’s a moment of freedom.
So the first step towards de-addicting a workaholic is to enquire into what emotion he/she is resisting. It could be a real situation that happened in the past or it could be a mental construct of one’s own judgments and conclusions drawn from the past. As one recognizes the story that is built around the issue/situation/fact, that very awareness brings about a sense of ease and comfort. With resistance gone, the addiction can no more take control.
Author :
Purnima
Faculty, One World Academy
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