Helping workaholics find balance

Laura Mayer was commuting on the New York City subway one busy Monday morning when her vision started narrowing. Her hand, gripping a metal pole overhead, began slipping with sweat. Her skin turned hot, then cold. When Mayer, then a new podcast executive, stumbled out of the train, she fainted.

But once she regained consciousness and called her husband, who took her to the emergency room, Mayer’s thoughts weren’t on her health. They were on the meeting she missed. “The nurse took some blood, some urine, my vitals, and I asked for the Wi-Fi password,” Mayer wrote in her new book, Tryhard, A Cautionary Tale of Clocking In and Spinning Out.

Even after clinicians diagnosed it as a panic attack, Mayer didn’t slow down. A colleague’s concern about her unsustainable work pace went unheeded. She proceeded to show up for work the day after her wedding, viewing it, she wrote, as “commitment that nobody could deny.” Though she’d quit drinking alcohol years earlier, working, she said, was “the addiction I found while dodging another.”

Psychologists vary in how they view—and name—cases like Mayer’s. While not an official diagnosis in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (Fifth Edition), some consider what’s colloquially referred to as “workaholism” a behavioral addiction like gambling. Others see it more like a manifestation of obsessive-compulsive disorder or anxiety, and may prefer the term “compulsive overwork.” It can alternatively be understood as a surface-level problem burying a deeper insecurity or offering an escape from a trauma the worker doesn’t want to face.

Regardless, mental health experts agree that some people are excessively consumed by their work—and remote access to work on all manner of devices normalizes it. The consequences don’t only pile up for workers’ mental, physical, and relational health; they can be counterintuitively detrimental to their careers, too. “Workaholism is really worth taking seriously,” said Malissa Clark, PhD, head of the University of Georgia’s Industrial-Organizational Psychology Program, who’s been studying the phenomenon for about 15 years. “It has real consequential negative outcomes for individuals, for their partners and families, and for organizations.”

[Related: The hidden cost of workplace rustout]

Psychologists are poised to help. “Getting caught up in the debates about whether it’s an addiction or not is missing the boat a lot of times, particularly when you’re on the front lines [doing clinical work],” added Joshua Grubbs, PhD, an associate professor in the University of New Mexico’s Department of Psychology who studies the social construction of behavioral addictions. “What you really need to be doing is understanding what’s going on in that person’s life, what function that behavior is serving, and figuring out: Are they living the life that they want to live, and what would it take to get them there?”

Workaholism doesn’t have a universal definition, but organizational psychologists point to two key components: working excessively and working compulsively. Without the second feature, someone could be clocking long hours for any number of reasons, including economic needs. “It’s not just about how much you work—it’s about whether you have a choice,” said Jourdan Travers, LCSW, a licensed clinical social worker at the virtual platform Awake Therapy, where she works closely with her husband and business partner, social psychologist Mark Travers, PhD.

Work addiction is also distinct from work engagement, which describes a positive pattern of thoughts and feelings about one’s job. While both workaholism and work engagement involve “heavy work investment,” research shows a more addictive approach to work negatively affects other areas of the workers’ lives (Di Stefano, G., & Gaudiino, M., Europe’s Journal of Psychology, Vol. 14, No. 4, 2018opens in new window). People who are merely highly engaged with their work, by contrast, aren’t prevented from immersing themselves in roles and interests outside of their 9-to-5—even if it’s more like an 8-to-6.

“The workaholic has this compulsive component like another person addicted to smoking or to junk food or to porn or to gambling; they are obsessed,” said Luca Menghini, PhD, an organizational psychologist and assistant professor in the Department of General Psychology at the University of Padova in Italy, where he studies worker well-being. Workaholics have trouble stopping or detaching from work, he added, and “usually experience negative emotions like guilt or rage or angriness when they are prevented from working.”

Estimates on how many people fit this mold vary widely since different researchers and cultures use different scales and study different professions. Plus, the hours and intensity with which any one person works varies, depending on their career stage, personal obligations, or even perceived work demands on any one day, Clark’s work has found. “Different events or circumstances in our day-to-day lives can activate those aspects of our personality and amplify them,” she said.

Still, there’s an argument to be made that workaholism—like many behavioral addictions—is more prevalent than in decades past because of access, Grubbs said. Where humans have long reported compulsive sexual behaviors, internet access to porn is a modern phenomenon. Gambling has been around for centuries, but the growing legality of sports gambling on cell phones has increased the risk of problematic use. There have always been workers who have burnt the candle at both ends, but only in recent history can they do so from bed, the car, or on vacation, thanks to remote work.

“Technology is breaking down the barriers to getting access to these things—regardless of what category of disorder we’re talking about. It’s a kind of conduit to pathological behavior patterns that didn’t exist before,” Grubbs said. “That’s not inherently bad. It just means that we have to think and adjust how we’re approaching these things, because things have changed.”

In some of Clark’s earlier, pivotal work, she and colleagues demonstrated how workaholism is linked to burnout, work-life conflict, work stress, and decreased physical and mental health (Journal of Management, Vol. 42, No. 7, 2016). But when interviewing members of Workaholics Anonymous for her book, Never Not Working: Why the Always-On Culture Is Bad for Business—and How to Fix It (Harvard Business Review Press, 2024), she was still struck by just how consistently self-described workaholics’ physical health suffered. “Everyone had health issues—high blood pressure, heart attacks, some even reporting multiple heart attacks—but many of the health issues were autoimmune as well,” she said.

Her reflection is borne out in the research, which links workaholism with risk factors for heart disease and other metabolic abnormalities and inflammation (Aziz, S., & Covington, C., Frontiers in Psychology, Vol. 15, No. 1345378, 2024opens in new window). One analysis out of the World Health Organization and the International Labour Organization even found that working 55 or more hours per week is associated with an estimated 35% higher risk of a stroke and a 17% higher risk of dying from ischemic heart disease, compared with working 35 to 40 hours a week. Though the authors didn’t look at the compulsive dimension of workaholism, they concluded that working long hours alone is “responsible for about one-third of the total estimated work-related burden of disease” (Pega, F., et al., Environment International, Vol. 154, No. 106595, 2021opens in new window).

Compulsive working has shorter-term consequences, too. One of Menghini’s studies that followed 114 people in various occupations over 10 workdays found that on days that participants reported higher workaholic levels, such as working after others have stopped and feeling obligated to work hard, they also were more likely to have higher blood pressure, more emotional exhaustion, and greater sleep disturbances (Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, Vol. 29, No. 4, 2024).

Clark’s research has found similar, immediate impacts of workaholic behavior. To test a theory that people have both general workaholic tendencies and day-to-day fluctuations in how that plays out, she and colleagues asked 121 employees to complete self-report surveys over the course of 10 working days. They assessed workaholism using measures inspired by various scales, including the Dutch Work Addiction Scale, which asks people to what extent they agree with statements like, “Today I felt compelled to work hard, even when it wasn’t enjoyable” and “Today I felt guilty when I wasn’t working.”

The study authors found that on the days people scored higher in work addiction, they also reported more fatigue and greater relationship tension (Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, Vol. 26, No. 5, 2021). Participants’ spouses, who were included in the study as well, concurred that home life was strained on their partners’ more workaholic days. In a subsequent study interviewing workaholics’ partners, “multiple spouses even said, ‘I’m thinking about divorce,’” Clark said.

Despite their perceived productivity and dedication, workaholics can negatively affect their workplaces, emerging research shows. In a study from the United Kingdom and Italy, psychologists found that workaholism detaches people from their moral values, making them less likely to speak up when they notice something ethically wrong (Knoll, M., et al., Journal of Organizational Behavior, Vol. 46, No. 5, 2025opens in new window).

More intuitively, it leads to burnout, which is a recipe for subpar work, Travers said. “People assume that [workaholism] leads to success automatically. And maybe, for a time, that is the case,” she said. “But it also often leads to burnout, and it also leads to diminished performance.”

Workaholism seems to be part nature and part nurture. On the nature side, research including more than 400 workers—some faculty and staff at a university, some employees at a manufacturing plant—found a domino effect: Lower self-esteem led to workaholism, which led to working more hours, which in turn led to increased overall stress (Aziz, S., et al., Personality and Individual Differences, Vol. 121, 2017opens in new window). Other studies have demonstrated a link between certain personality factors, like perfectionism, and work addiction (Kun, B., et al., Journal of Behavioral Addictions, Vol. 9, No. 4, 2020opens in new window). “When your set standard is very high and you struggle to reach that standard every day, that’s something that might boost workaholism,” Menghini said.

People prone toward compulsive overwork are also often driven, unconsciously or not, by an inability to regulate their moods in a healthier way, Menghini said. “In the cognitive behavioral framework, the idea is that all emotions are important, and if you are feeling a negative emotion, it’s better to stay in that emotion, to be aware of that, and to live it. Addicted people tend to avoid these negative emotions by using their object of addiction,” he said. “So the gambler goes to gambling, and the workaholic works a lot to avoid negative moods.”

Workaholics can be found in any career or workplace at any age, Clark has found. “I’ve interviewed individuals and partners of workaholics from almost every type of job you could think of, from llama farmer to K–12 teacher to race car driver to the typical ones like consultant or lawyer and doctor,” she said.

That said, work addiction is not simply a reflection of individual mental health but often the symptom of a dysfunctional, systemic workplace culture. Workplace expectations and social customs can also interact to heavily influence personal behavior, according to Menghini. In a collective culture like Japan, for instance, working overtime is such a cultural norm that its health consequences have given way to the term karoshi, meaning death by overwork. In the Netherlands, meanwhile, it’s common practice to leave work when your shift ends—not when the task is complete, as is standard in Italy, Menghini said some colleagues have shared.

The ethos of workplaces and leadership trickles down, too. “If everybody thinks that working more, working longer than the official working hours is fine, it’s normal, it’s requested, it’s rewarded, maybe it’s also needed to get the promotion, this will make people [exhibit more workaholic behaviors],” Menghini said.

“Workaholism is not only a matter of personality—perfectionism, Type A personality—but also of workplace factors such as high work-role overload, work-role conflict, or workplace ‘tele-pressure,’” added Sabine Sonnentag, PhD, chair of work and organizational psychology at the University of Mannheim in Germany, where she studies recovery from job stress. Indeed, some studies show that the more pressure people feel to respond to messages around the clock, the more likely they are to fit a workaholic profile (Gillet, N., et al., Group & Organization Management, Vol. 50, No. 3, 2023opens in new window).

If workplaces have the ability to foster workaholic behaviors, they also have the ability to foster healthier relationships to work. One of Sonnentag’s studies looked at diary data from 152 employees who recorded things like how well their bosses respected their boundaries and how easily the employees mentally transitioned from work once home. “When leaders support recovery,” Sonnentag said, “employees are more likely to detach from work in the evening and feel more refreshed the next morning” (Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, Vol. 97, No. 4, 2024opens in new window).

One rare clinical trial on workaholism by Mark Griffiths, PhD, a distinguished professor emeritus of behavioral addictions at Nottingham Trent University in the United Kingdom, recruited 73 workaholics as measured through the Bergen Work Addiction Scale, which asks questions like, “How often during the last year have you worked so much that it has negatively influenced your health?” Griffiths’s team assigned half to a waiting list, and half to a meditation awareness training, or MAT. Those in the latter group attended eight weekly 2-hour sessions that taught various meditation practices and facilitated group discussions. Participants also listened to guided meditations on the other days.

By the end of the program as well as at a 3-month follow-up, the participants had significantly reduced workaholic tendencies and psychological distress, and increased job satisfaction and work engagement. They also worked fewer hours—without hurting performance (Journal of Behavioral Addictions, Vol. 6, No. 2, 2017opens in new window).

The power of such an intervention, the researchers said, is that it can be implemented both at work and at home. “MAT may be a practical and cost-effective workaholism intervention compared with treatments that require a reduction of work responsibilities or segregation from the work environment,” they wrote.  

On a strictly individual level, there are very few, if any studies of clinical interventions for workaholics. It’s not a diagnosis, nor is research on behavioral addictions well funded in the United States, unlike in many European countries where they’re viewed as serious public health issues. Plus, people may be reluctant to identify or seek help for a socially rewarded behavior. “Organizations like Workaholics Anonymous exist because there’s really not a way to ‘get treatment,’” Clark said.

But psychologists say people who continue to overwork despite negative consequences can find a more sustainable rhythm with the help of a few strategies.

“The first and most important thing that I would do [as a clinical psychologist] is try to understand precisely what it is that work is doing for them in their life,” Grubbs said. Then, he might use acceptance and commitment therapy principles to help someone learn to ride out uncomfortable emotions that come up when they’re not working and take actions that align with their broader goals as well.

Travers takes a similar approach, often using psychodynamic therapy to help overworkers understand what past messages or experiences have led to their current behaviors. For Mayer, the podcast producer, for example, work offered control, stability, and validation—all feelings she said she craved growing up with an alcoholic mother.

While practical changes like taking breaks throughout the day and sticking to predetermined office hours help workaholics, “it’s not just needing better boundaries—it’s what’s your relationship with stillness?” Travers said. “It’s learning to tolerate what comes up when you stop. What are those emotions? Is that boredom? Is that anxiety? Is that self-doubt?”

Using devices like fitness trackers can also help someone who’s prone to workaholism get real-time feedback on how their working styles affect measures like their heart rate and sleep quality. For workaholics who like achievement and tangible results, these sorts of gamified interventions are a natural, albeit potentially flawed, fit, Menghini said. “The challenging side of it is that as you improve from one session to the other in how well you regulate your physiological processes, this might be something that workaholics get addicted to,” he said.

For her part, Clark—who first became interested in workaholism during graduate school when she personally identified with the issue—said immersing herself in active hobbies like exercise as opposed to passive strategies like meditation most help her manage workaholic tendencies. Sonnentag calls this a mastery experience and identifies it as one of the ways people can recover from work, as well as mentally detaching from work, relaxing during free time, and feeling a sense of control over when you do and don’t work. Not that Clark is a master of work-life balance just yet. Rather, she said, “I’m a work in progress.”