Chained to the Desk (Third Edition): A Guidebook for Workaholics, Their Partners and Children, and the Clinicians Who Treat Them

9: Your Workaholic Brain

163 9 Your Workaholic Brain The longest journey one must take is the eighteen inches from the head to the heart. —Ramprasad Padhi George Like many workaholics, my battle began in childhood. I was born in the rural South, the youngest of four children. My father, who was twenty years older than my mother, became severely handicapped from a stroke when I was five years old. My strong-willed mother had to take care of my father, her three teenage children, and me, insisting that we rise above our rural environment and become successful in a more sophisticated world. My siblings were victims of my mother’s tenacity, insistence on perfectionism , and relentless criticism when the highest results were not achieved. But I was more defiant and strong-willed like my mother. As I grew into adolescence , Mother and I constantly fought, but she instilled in me a strong sense of survival, achievement, perfectionism, and ego. Her psychological demands of perfection and accomplishment, along with my need to demonstrate to the world that I was worthy, ultimately spawned my workaholism. My drive for achievement, success, and hard work became evident in high school. I became president of the student body, was voted most popular, was inducted into the national honor society, was selected “king teen,” and accomplished records in track. In college, the pattern continued when I was elected president of my class each year, achieved the dean’s list, made captain of the track team, and managed several money-making endeavors. After college, I attended officer candidate school, where I graduated as Distinguished Military Graduate. In my three-year tour of duty in Germany, I 164 Your Workaholic Brain met and married a wonderful German woman who was graduating from the university. After my tour of duty, we moved back to the United States. Perhaps I had an instinctive sense of what I needed to maintain my work addiction because my wife was kind, bright, nurturing, and supportive—traits that fed my workaholic control and drive for perfection. After returning stateside, I enrolled in a prestigious MBA program, where I was informed that the student with the highest grade point average in the first year would be granted a full scholarship in the second year. This challenge was just the spark to ignite my workaholism, my need to demonstrate that I was worthy. My incessant studying—ten-to-twelve-hour days, seven days a week—landed me the scholarship while simultaneously enabling my workaholic behaviors. Despite the fact that we were newlyweds and my wife was adjusting to a new country, I increased my workload. I became an officer in the National Guard and a student consultant with a local real estate firm. After completing my MBA, I saw that with a “little extra effort” (three weeks of studying nonstop for sixteen to eighteen hours a day), I could get my CPA as a“tag on” to my MBA, before starting my employment with a national accounting firm shortly after graduation. As the world applauded, little did I see the toll it was taking on my marriage and my own mental well-being. Once I started my career, my workaholism flourished. I was promoted to manager in three years, which normally took five; in three additional years to senior manager, which usually took five; and then to partner in three more years, which took five for most people. I had to prove to the world and to the insecurity inside me that I was worthy and measured up. It was essential to be the best. I didn’t understand that“even in the fast lane there is a speed limit.” Early in my career we had two children, a daughter, then a son two years later. My wife didn’t work outside the house and basically raised the children. One could argue that parenthood is a partnership with each partner assuming an appropriate role. In our case, the scales tipped too far in the direction of me doing too much of the wage earning and too little parenting. I rationalized that I was providing my family with material riches that would make them happy. What they wanted, however, was more of a father and husband. My wife complained that every Friday the fathers in the neighborhood were home in the early afternoons, while I worked until seven and eight o’clock at night and returned to work on Saturday. My children wondered why Dad would take work with him...