Confessions from a Workaholic

I vividly remember the moment when I realized that I was having a panic attack in the middle of the hallway at school. At this point in my career, I was serving as an instructional coach, teaching three sections of a senior level course–having taken over for my colleague who had suddenly died–, sitting on two different district level improvement committees, working on a county wide literacy initiative, and also serving has an emergency interim leader of our project term. 

I was high capacity, and yet, there I was leaning against the white cinderblock wall in the hallway, feeling like the world was spinning and my breath was caught in a lock box in my chest. Somehow, I made it back to my office that was just around the corner, and I sunk down into my desk chair, trying to force air through my lungs, tears streaming down my face. I remember feeling simultaneously embarrassed and afraid–the complex mixture of fear and shame. 

I can be a stubborn learner, so if you think that moment was the turning point for me, my rock bottom, you’re wrong. It took a lot of therapy and hard realizations about patterns and stories that I had convinced myself were right and true before I really stepped off the spinning wheel of achievement I had created for myself, and I have to be honest that my temptation is to step right back up on the wheel all too often. 

I grew up in the soil of workaholism. My identity was built around what I achieved, how many awards I could win, the amount of recognition I could build around myself, so it really should not have surprised me to realize that I was a workaholic. 

Melissa Clark, an associate professor of industrial and organizational psychology at the University of Georgia, defines workaholism as the “deleterious inability to disconnect from work.” She says that “when work dominates your thoughts and activities, to the detriment of other aspects of your life, your relationships, and health, you are displaying workaholic tendencies” (2024).  

What I failed to mention above is that I was also a mother to a four and two year old and a wife to a man who had his own busy career. Thankfully, these three stuck by me through those years, but I definitely did not give them the best version of myself. Even when I was with them, I wasn’t really with them. 

As I continue to work to heal myself of workaholism, here is what I have found helps:

1. Move into your body. 

I would get annoyed with my therapist when she would ask after I shared a story of frustration or sadness, “And, where do you feel that in your body?” In the beginning, I would think to myself, “What do you mean where do I feel that in my body? It’s sitting in my head just screaming at me!” Then, as I gave in to her insistence to just try, I began to feel it–my body. 

When I finally started to move from my head–where all the “shoulds" and “what ifs” lived–to my entire body, I started to realize that I carried so much emotion. It was weighing me down like bricks on my chest and mud up to my ankles, cutting off the oxygen to my organs, and no amount of doing, of achieving, of logical thinking was going to rid me of the weight. I simply had to allow myself to fully feel it.

I have since realized that my body carries with it so much wisdom–the wisdom to slow me down, to practice full presence with others, to embrace the full range of emotions in the world. When I try to live and function from the chin up, I end up full of anxiety, rumination, and stress. When I allow myself to experience the fullness of what it means to be a whole human being–brain, body, and soul–, I experience peace, pleasure, and connection.

So, if you are sitting and reading this article and wondering how do I “move into my body,” it’s simple and yet challenging. The simplicity of it is all you have to do is pause and check in with your body. Notice how your toes, ankles, thighs, lower back, chest, hands, shoulders, neck, jaw, cheeks, eyes, and on up to the top of your head feel in this moment.

The challenging part is that when you feel discomfort or heaviness or deep sadness in your body, you cannot rationalize it away or shove it back into the cavern of your being. You have to allow yourself to sit with it and feel it until it no longer needs to be felt. 

This can be challenging, yet on the other side is the road to healing. 

2. Lean into your controllables. 

When I am in the space of constantly thinking about work or working on work, I am inevitably also in the space of trying to control a lot of tasks, people, decisions that are outside of my control. I have to remind myself of the Sphere of Control and only my own words, deeds, and actions are within my control. I cannot control the future, other’s decisions, or even the emotional experience of being human in an often chaotic world.

When I feel myself starting to over-function, I stop and take inventory of what I am trying to juggle. Then, I drop the balls of the items that are not actually mine to hold. This is harder said than done, but it is freeing too.

Try this practice. Write down every worry or anxiety that is taking up space in your body and brain concerning work. These can be the things that you are trying to solve, that you are convinced you must fix, or that you are simply ruminating about how you are going to get it done. Then, look at the list, and ask the simple question: “Is this really in my control?” Cross off all of the items that you cannot say, “Yes, this is something that only I control.”

Releasing your grasp on the things beyond your control is a process but one that will liberate you from so much futile stress.

3. Practice conscious interdependence. 

Growing up in a “pull yourself up by your own bootstraps” world has made asking for help very difficult for me. Needing other people felt too vulnerable, like weakness. I never wanted to be seen as weak. 

The funny thing, though, is when I ask educators what makes them feel seen, heard, and appreciated by their colleagues, inevitably at the top of the list is a response like, “I feel seen, heard, and appreciated by my colleagues when they ask me for help or advice.” In other words, our insistence on independence and self-sufficiency is disconnecting us from our colleagues.

I am learning (and this is a constant process for me) how to both say, “yes” to offers of support and how to ask for help in clear ways. When I do and experience a nonjudgmental dose of compassionate support, I am blown away by just how connective that moment is for both of us. I feel seen, they feel seen, and, together, a relational web forms.

Try asking for help just once today. Find a moment when you are tempted to believe that, “Only I can do it.” Then, ask someone else for their support or expertise to accomplish the task. Notice how it feels to both ask and receive the support. 

Breaking out of our own mindsets of independence is essential to curbing the patterns of workaholism because oftentimes the urge to overwork is based in a conflated sense of self–that only you can do the task at hand. Laying down your crown and letting others support you will free you from the burden of impossible self-expectations.

I am still on the journey of healing from workaholism. Sometimes it feels like a “one step forward, two steps back” endeavor. However, while I know this to be true, constant reminders are needed: Who I am and how I am is far more important than what I do. I want to be the kind of leader, mother, wife who is healthy, present, emotionally aware, and deeply compassionate. I want to be a whole person, and that requires me to be far more than a workaholic.