How to overcome work addiction
6 May 2008
Read by 1997 persons
Warning: Half of all executives are workaholics! Risks of over-investment in your professional life? Constant stress, sometimes depression.
The new job started at a breakneck pace, recalls Bruno, a young business manager in the IT sector: "Hyper-ambitious objectives, total autonomy, increased pressure due to largely variable pay, all of this galvanized me." Caught up in the game, he becomes more royalist than the king: "During the day I ran from one client to another, spending my evenings on files that I systematically took home for the weekend. The day a client unfairly called me an amateur, I broke down in tears."
Alarmed, his employer sends Bruno to Jean-Marc Santi, a specialist in executive support at Homme et Entreprise. Official reason: to restore client relations. "I quickly understood that Bruno had a deeper problem of work addiction," says Jean-Marc Santi. A form of addiction that affects one in two executives, according to the CFE-CGC stress observatory. Here are the warning signs and ways to help those who have fallen into it.
1 Realizing that you are not well
Professional over-investment, hypersensitivity to the judgment of peers, disinterest in loved ones... No need to dwell on the psychological symptoms of work addiction: "The employees most threatened by addiction think they are normally committed," assures Jean-Marc Santi. More tangible are the physical symptoms, "those colds, flu episodes, repeated lumbago or waves of depression that regularly lead the employee to feign illness, the body crying out for help between two phases of intense work," details doctor Patrick Fouilland, president of the Federation of Actors in Alcohology and Addictology (F3A). If these signals are coupled with regular use of alcohol, tobacco, medication or drugs, there is reason to be alarmed, adds Patrick Fouilland, very worried about the growing use of cocaine among young executives.
2 Measuring your addiction
If these so-called "compensatory" addictive behaviors are accompanied by an ambivalent attitude of minimization ("I'll stop when I want!") and a desire to stop this endless race during periods of depression, which are also moments of lucidity, it is necessary to react immediately.
"First, do a self-diagnosis to measure your level of work addiction," recommends psychotherapist and coach Pascal Raymond, associated with the human resources firm Holsen. How? By answering the twenty-five questions of the translated Work Addiction Risk Test by American psychologist Bryan Robinson, recommends Pascal Raymond. This test is available free of charge at www.doctissimo.fr/test-psychologie-TRAVAIL_ADDICTION.htm. "If the results reveal a tendency to use work as a drug, talk to your close entourage," continues Pascal Raymond. If he gives the same diagnosis, it is time to break this addiction.
3 Reorganizing your way of working
Often, the main problem of the workaholic lies in a calamitous personal organization: "The work addict is the first victim of a permanent alert system that he has created for himself and which transforms him into a machine responding to demand," confirms Nicolas Dufourcq, financial director of Capgemini. Having to control his "workaholic" tendencies, he himself regularly redefines with his team the files that require immediate action and the partners to whom he must or must not respond immediately.
Regarding emails, SMS and other BlackBerry systems, he sets times for consultation: 9:30 am, 11:30 am, 3 pm or 5 pm. "As for the famous last email of the day or week, the one that makes you come home "late" and take work home, I don't open it," he says. Work addiction is a mixture of suffering and pleasure: "An attitude of moderation implies that one renounces the pleasure, which is close to the intoxication of power, that one experiences in jumping from one decision to another," warns Nicolas Dufourcq.
4 Don't hesitate to seek help
"If one feels unable to free oneself alone from this ambivalent relationship with work, one must turn to a specialist," warns Yves Blanchard, manager of CAA, a management consulting firm. With his fifteen hours of work per day, his morbid need to be connected to work including weekends, he himself admits to being a potential workaholic. "To understand this irrepressible need for hyperactivity that I have always had and not to fall into one of those pathological attitudes (harasser or harassed) that I often notice in the seriously ill at work, I have been accompanied for years by a psychotherapist," he confides. To tame his tendency to hyperactivity at key moments in his professional life (change of sector, position, etc.), Yves Blanchard occasionally calls on a coach specialized in change management: "His outside perspective and his ability to moderate help me avoid the over-investment that would lead to burnout."
5 Knowing when to stop
"When the situation seems blocked, it is sometimes necessary to uncouple the wagons in time," recommends Marc Fakhouri, from his own experience. Bombarded for long months at the head of a business unit in Saudi Arabia by his company operating in the very competitive IT consulting sector, this young forty-something decided to throw in the towel to find his wife and son, who remained in France: "Overwhelmed with work, I constantly postponed the moment to stop, with the idea that by withdrawing from the game, I was going to lose everything," he recalls. Today, Marc Fakhouri congratulates himself on his decision: "What I lost in vain excitement, I gained in serenity. My personal life and my professional life have regained their balance." The guarantee of a well-understood career management...
Posted online May 6, 2008
nouvelobs.com
The new job started at a breakneck pace, recalls Bruno, a young business manager in the IT sector: "Hyper-ambitious objectives, total autonomy, increased pressure due to largely variable pay, all of this galvanized me." Caught up in the game, he becomes more royalist than the king: "During the day I ran from one client to another, spending my evenings on files that I systematically took home for the weekend. The day a client unfairly called me an amateur, I broke down in tears."
Alarmed, his employer sends Bruno to Jean-Marc Santi, a specialist in executive support at Homme et Entreprise. Official reason: to restore client relations. "I quickly understood that Bruno had a deeper problem of work addiction," says Jean-Marc Santi. A form of addiction that affects one in two executives, according to the CFE-CGC stress observatory. Here are the warning signs and ways to help those who have fallen into it.
1 Realizing that you are not well
Professional over-investment, hypersensitivity to the judgment of peers, disinterest in loved ones... No need to dwell on the psychological symptoms of work addiction: "The employees most threatened by addiction think they are normally committed," assures Jean-Marc Santi. More tangible are the physical symptoms, "those colds, flu episodes, repeated lumbago or waves of depression that regularly lead the employee to feign illness, the body crying out for help between two phases of intense work," details doctor Patrick Fouilland, president of the Federation of Actors in Alcohology and Addictology (F3A). If these signals are coupled with regular use of alcohol, tobacco, medication or drugs, there is reason to be alarmed, adds Patrick Fouilland, very worried about the growing use of cocaine among young executives.
2 Measuring your addiction
If these so-called "compensatory" addictive behaviors are accompanied by an ambivalent attitude of minimization ("I'll stop when I want!") and a desire to stop this endless race during periods of depression, which are also moments of lucidity, it is necessary to react immediately.
"First, do a self-diagnosis to measure your level of work addiction," recommends psychotherapist and coach Pascal Raymond, associated with the human resources firm Holsen. How? By answering the twenty-five questions of the translated Work Addiction Risk Test by American psychologist Bryan Robinson, recommends Pascal Raymond. This test is available free of charge at www.doctissimo.fr/test-psychologie-TRAVAIL_ADDICTION.htm. "If the results reveal a tendency to use work as a drug, talk to your close entourage," continues Pascal Raymond. If he gives the same diagnosis, it is time to break this addiction.
3 Reorganizing your way of working
Often, the main problem of the workaholic lies in a calamitous personal organization: "The work addict is the first victim of a permanent alert system that he has created for himself and which transforms him into a machine responding to demand," confirms Nicolas Dufourcq, financial director of Capgemini. Having to control his "workaholic" tendencies, he himself regularly redefines with his team the files that require immediate action and the partners to whom he must or must not respond immediately.
Regarding emails, SMS and other BlackBerry systems, he sets times for consultation: 9:30 am, 11:30 am, 3 pm or 5 pm. "As for the famous last email of the day or week, the one that makes you come home "late" and take work home, I don't open it," he says. Work addiction is a mixture of suffering and pleasure: "An attitude of moderation implies that one renounces the pleasure, which is close to the intoxication of power, that one experiences in jumping from one decision to another," warns Nicolas Dufourcq.
4 Don't hesitate to seek help
"If one feels unable to free oneself alone from this ambivalent relationship with work, one must turn to a specialist," warns Yves Blanchard, manager of CAA, a management consulting firm. With his fifteen hours of work per day, his morbid need to be connected to work including weekends, he himself admits to being a potential workaholic. "To understand this irrepressible need for hyperactivity that I have always had and not to fall into one of those pathological attitudes (harasser or harassed) that I often notice in the seriously ill at work, I have been accompanied for years by a psychotherapist," he confides. To tame his tendency to hyperactivity at key moments in his professional life (change of sector, position, etc.), Yves Blanchard occasionally calls on a coach specialized in change management: "His outside perspective and his ability to moderate help me avoid the over-investment that would lead to burnout."
5 Knowing when to stop
"When the situation seems blocked, it is sometimes necessary to uncouple the wagons in time," recommends Marc Fakhouri, from his own experience. Bombarded for long months at the head of a business unit in Saudi Arabia by his company operating in the very competitive IT consulting sector, this young forty-something decided to throw in the towel to find his wife and son, who remained in France: "Overwhelmed with work, I constantly postponed the moment to stop, with the idea that by withdrawing from the game, I was going to lose everything," he recalls. Today, Marc Fakhouri congratulates himself on his decision: "What I lost in vain excitement, I gained in serenity. My personal life and my professional life have regained their balance." The guarantee of a well-understood career management...
Posted online May 6, 2008
nouvelobs.com
