If you’ve been telling yourself and everyone else, you’re just ambitious, taking pride in being the one who always delivers, the one who stays late and the one who never drops the ball, you might want to read on a bit further. Somewhere along the way, work stopped being about success and started becoming an escape. Is an endless to-do list keeping your mind occupied and your feelings buried, while you’ve convinced yourself you’re in control? Secretly, you’re probably running on fumes which is why you’ve been snapping at the people who care about you and losing yourself in the process.
It’s a common thread with high-functioning professionals where at first, it felt like they were just pushing themselves harder at work, because “you can’t just expect that promotion to land in your lap for nothing”. They might take on extra projects, answer emails late at night, and say yes to pretty much everything and work is all they seem to care about. Waking up exhausted is normal for them but they’re high-functioning status keeps them going. This type of person is unlikely to take time for themselves to rest and recuperate, because even on a rare day off, the anxiety of everything going on, is there.
Have you started believing your worth is directly tied to your output at work? If you stop, even for a second, do you feel like you’re not achieving anything? Is your main worry that if you slow down, everything will come to a grinding halt…your career, your reputation, your sense of identity?
When work becomes a distraction
People tend to bury themselves in work for a reason. Maybe something in their personal life feels too messy to deal with. Maybe they’ve been hurt, disappointed, or let down one too many times, and work feels like the one thing they can control. Maybe slowing down means facing emotions they’ve spent years avoiding.
So, instead of dealing with frustration, loneliness, or grief, they would rather answer another email. Instead of working through relationship struggles, volunteering for another project just makes better sense and instead of admitting feeling lost, committing themselves into making sure every detail at work is perfect is easier.
The more you work, the more you can justify ignoring everything else. And for a while, it works. Until it doesn’t.
Is work taking a toll on your life?
With approximately one third of our lives being spent at work, it’s no wonder a percentage of the population is struggling. Your mind and body aren’t built to run at full speed all the time and stress can start to show up in ways that shouldn’t be ignored. For example, snapping at your partner over small things can be a sign, forgetting to eat or overeating just to feel something. Sleep can be one of the first things to be disrupted, but when you do sleep, you might wake up feeling like you’ve only had a couple of hours.
Are you feeling frustrated more easily? If the smallest inconvenience is setting you off and the people in the office are noticing, it might be time to take stock of that as a sign. Brushing off your colleague’s concerns with “I’m just busy”, won’t last long because people are perceptive.
With this kind of behavior, it’s not just you who suffers, your relationships might start to show cracks. Kids, partner and friends don’t get the best version of you, they get the leftovers, if anything at all. Feeling guilty about this is understandable and completely normal, but if you’re not dealing with it and throwing yourself deeper into work, it’s a vicious cycle that’s hard to break.
How can you prevent burnout?
If any of this sounds familiar, it’s not something you should just “power through”. Pushing yourself harder isn’t going to fix what’s really going on. A targeted therapy such as dialectical behavior, can help you understand why you’re running yourself into the ground in the first place. It can help you figure out what you’re actually afraid of when you slow down, and it can teach you how to separate your worth from your productivity.
Imagine what it would feel like to wake up and not have the weight of all that pressure on you. Imagine being able to actually enjoy your life instead of just grinding through it.
You don’t have to prove yourself every second of the day, so if you’re feeling like you don’t know how to be your true self again, it’s okay to ask for help.
We have therapists who specialize in work-related burnout and stress who are waiting to hear from you.
PVD Psychological Associates specialize in college mental health, anxiety, depression, eating disorders, trauma, LGBTQIA+ issues, and relationship difficulties.
We also see clients for a range of other issues.
If you would like to discuss your needs with a therapist, complete the enquiry form on our Contact page and we’ll call or email you for a confidential chat.
