Work Addiction Treatment & Rehab

Work addiction meaning

Here in the UK, we have a firm work culture. By this, you may feel under pressure to strive for greater workplace achievements or may even feel impacted by the overworked culture that exists and transpires as successful. However, through such pressures, are you still able to manage a work-life balance?

Those who struggle through a work addiction cannot maintain such balance, down to the driving force of such pressures, influencing their behaviours, decisions, and feelings.

Defined as compulsive behaviour, which cannot be rationalised at the moment, the meaning of a work addiction reflects someone who cannot switch off from work, whether that’s answering calls and emails outside of working hours, to working long ineffective hours, or to adding workload onto an already unrealistic level.

It’s vital to differentiate determination from work addiction, as some argue that hard, consistent work is required to succeed.

Yet those addicted to work will not be able to see beyond such feelings, feel like they have to work to fulfil cravings or internal pressures and allow external consequences to be the result of excessive work.

Like any addiction, if allowed for the long-term, can become engulfing; support must be considered to understand and work through compulsive behaviours.

Here’s where work addiction treatment & rehab will benefit you if you’re struggling, understanding how your current commitments may be pushing you way beyond the normalised workaholic.

Signs of work addiction

As we’ve highlighted above, it’s vital to differentiate work addiction from drivers of success. While both sometimes reflect excessive working hours, both will not impact health as addiction will.

Signs of a work addiction include:

• Working extremely long hours consistently
• Failing to experience any form of balance between work and life
• Working even with consequences of health issues, increased stress or missing out on family responsibilities/events/engagements
• Working through the evenings, through lunch breaks, through the weekends and holidays
• Seeing work as a coping strategy, which in fact results in a rebound effect
• Negative results from feeling overworked
• Feeling fixated on workplace commitments and achievements
• Physical and psychological health problems as the result of self-negligence
• Working beyond already unrealistic workloads

Others will fixate on needing to improve and be better continuously. Others will experience a degree of financial fixations, which can develop into an addiction in itself. Others will feel pressured by their working environment, which can easily turn into a work addiction.

Internal and external factors can motivate such fixations to work, where the above signs will be presentable throughout physical and psychological symptoms.

If you’re struggling, it’s important to be aware of how necessary work addiction treatment & rehab will be, at some point, to gain work-life balance.

The necessity of sourcing work addiction treatment & rehab services

An addiction of any form will not go away by itself. Changing jobs, reducing your working hours, accepting a demotion, or opting for flexible working arrangements will not deter your work addiction without addressing your underlying causation.

Treatment and rehab will be the tools to address such problems while also encouraging positive change to make your work life rewarding, fulfilling and balanced.

Treatment for work addiction

As work addiction can be less invasive in comparison to further behavioural addictions, most treatment can be completed on an outpatient basis. Work addiction treatment usually focuses on psychological restoration by understanding the motive behind chronic workloads.

Stress management, cognitive behavioural therapy, dual diagnosis treatment, group therapy, family therapy and exposure therapy are commonly recommended treatments for work addiction to help motivate balance, support and understanding.

By developing positive coping strategies, realistic views of the workplace and the investment you must make, and developing a stronger family network, gaining and maintaining balance are likely.

However, lifestyle changes alone will not inspire work-life balance, so rehab addiction treatment services and relapse prevention must fall as a part of the work addiction recovery process.

Rehabilitation steps of work addiction

By embracing work addiction treatment & rehab, you’ll have the rehabilitation steps to hand to diminish your fixation on working, with the potential to taper back your routine, responsibilities, and mindset.

Working through a work addiction is necessary to preserve physical and psychological health, to, in fact, maintain workplace performance, and to also benefit your life outside of work. All are important, so a comprehensive approach should be sourced, which we can help with here at Addiction Advocates.

Work addiction treatment & rehab services are available to you to break through the noise of our UK working culture. Avoid burning yourself out to prioritise work. Yet, at the same time, manage a balance to benefit your life on a 360 basis, including your work role.