Workaholism seeds are planted HERE

Most overworked and stressed out people who come to me cite “corporate pressure” as an excuse to stay chained to their job 24/7.

However, after spending years working to heal my own dysfunctional relationship to work, and now as a coach who has put in thousands of hours helping my high performing clients to do the same, there is one thing that I can share with certainty.

The seeds of workaholism aren’t planted in Corporate America.
They’re planted in childhood.

And when a compulsion to work 24/7 goes untreated, it can and will destroy individuals and families.

Here’s the story of how workaholism affected my family and shaped my life.

My father was a great man who worked hard to reach the top of his corporate career. He was a great provider, never missed a school event, and always had WWE wrestling tickets when he came back from the road.

But like many performance-driven workaholics, he was good at being physically present at home, but not emotionally involved. It was an ongoing source of tension in my parents' marriage.

My mother, struggling with her own mental health issues, would angrily demand my Dad be more present. My dad, feeling unappreciated for his hard work and overwhelmed by my mom’s anger, shut down further and became more determined to seek validation and success “out there.”

It’s a typical pattern I see and hear from so many of my clients in a workaholic relationship today.

Can you relate?

Unable to get her needs met, my mother looked to her children to make HER feel safe (the exact opposite of what a healthy parent-child relationship should be).

For me, this created a sense of over responsibility at a young age, one of the hallmarks of future workaholics. With so much focus on keeping my mom stable, my needs were neglected.

By age 13, I began struggling with depression and anxiety.

Does any of this resonate with you?

Seeking an escape from the responsibility, while also wanting to be closer to my dad, I began spending Summer vacations waking up at 5:45am to go to work with him at the radio station he managed.

By age 16, I was juggling two jobs. Leaving school on Friday to bag groceries from 3-9PM, before driving to my first radio job, where I was on the air from midnight-6am.

I received attention, acceptance, and accolades for my goal-oriented activities, but not for my sensitivity and emotions during times of teenage emotional turmoil.

This was how I created a task-based identity… and it set the stage for me to become the next workaholic in the family.

For me, achievement equaled love and acceptance. Impression management became an art form, as I graduated college and began running radio stations in major cities. By age 23, I was making 6-figures, bought a condo, and was obsessed with being the best at what I did.

Life became an endless cycle of ambition, accomplishment, and “atta boy’s,” and yet I never felt fulfilled by the success.

My excessive work habits left little energy for my health, where my weight ballooned. Work also became an excuse to isolate from the world and avoid close relationships. But my depression festered in isolation.

The only way I knew to feel better in the short term was to chase a new career goal and climb another rung up the ladder.

Rinse and repeat.

I share my story today because I meet so many people who are also working themselves to death while rationalizing it as being “a hard worker.”

A great work ethic is admirable. But when the hours affect your physical health, emotional wellbeing, and wreck your relationships, it’s time to get radically honest with yourself.

Because what many people call “work ethic” is just an attempt to meet unmet childhood needs for love and a sense of control.

And if you’re burned out in a soul-sucking job, you could quit tomorrow and find yourself recreating the same situation in the next office (or even your next career).

You deserve better.

Your family deserves better.

And I’m here to remind you there is a better way to live.

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