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

Introduction: Glorification of an Illness

1 Introduction Glorification of an Illness This is a man for whom work always came first. Now he can’t even remember it. —Chris Wallace, Fox News Sunday anchor, on the final days of his hard-driving 60 Minutes father, Mike Wallace, who died in 2012 Recording artists have always known something about the work world that the American workforce still doesn’t get. Cyndi Lauper sang it:“When the working day is done, girls just wanna have fun.” Michael Jackson crooned it in Off the Wall:“So tonight gotta leave that nine-to-five upon the shelf and just enjoy yourself.” And Dolly Parton warned us about working nine to five: “It’ll drive you crazy if you let it.” And Dolly’s right. It will, if you let it. But you don’t have to worry about nine to five workdays anymore. In the twenty-first century, we have 24/7 workdays and soaring job pressures in our technologically driven work culture.“It’s enough to drive you crazy if you let it.” The key is not to let it, but that’s easier said than done. • Do you feel like you’re tethered to your smart phone? • Are you working far more than forty or fifty hours a week? • Are you eating fast food or vending machine snacks at your desk or skipping lunch altogether? • Do you stay in constant contact with work even on weekends, holidays, and vacations, or forfeit your vacations to keep on working? • Do you get nervous or jittery when you’re away from work? 2 Introduction If you answered“yes” to some of these questions, you could be a workaholic, a problem that has continued to swell since the first and second editions of this book. Increasingly, American workers find themselves on a tightrope, trying to hold that line between calm and frantic activity, looking for a way to balance crammed schedules and keep clever work gadgets from infiltrating their personal time. I Only Work on Days That End with “Y” Chained to the Desk is a metaphor for the agonizing work obsessions that haunt you even when you’re away from your desk. If you’re a workaholic, chances are you openly admit your obsession with work while concealing the darker side of the addiction. Perhaps you testify to your passion for work, your nonstop schedule—all of which present you in a favorable light. But you fail to mention your episodes of depression, anxiety, chronic fatigue, and stress-related illnesses—consequences of working obsessively for days on end. To say that the general public and media do not take workaholism seriously is an understatement. When it’s not praised, workaholism is dismissed as a joke. One light-hearted portrayal in a newspaper cartoon shows a huge, empty meeting room with a sign posted at the front that reads,“Workaholics Anonymous .” The cartoon’s caption says, “Everybody had to work overtime.” Advertisers bathe workaholism in the same glamorous light that they poured over cigarettes and liquor in the ads of the 1930s. A Lexus ad in the Wall Street Journal boasted,“Workaholic? Oh, you flatter us: The relentless pursuit of perfection .”A radio commercial for a truck praised the versatility of the“Workaholic 4 by 4.” If you tell people you’re a workaholic, they usually chuckle. The label is tossed around with abandon in social gatherings, not as a problem but a badge of honor. Corporate climbers wear the workaholic name with pride, proclaiming their loyalty on behalf of the company, announcing that they binged for eighteen hours or three days on a project as something of which to be proud. But rarely do you hear adults boast about a three-day drunk or proclaim that they binged on an entire apple pie. The Buzz on Workaholism Workaholism is the best-dressed of all the addictions. It is enabled by our society’s dangerous immersion in overwork, which explains why we can’t see the water we swim in, and why many therapists look blank when the spouses of workaholics complain of loneliness and marital dissatisfaction. There are Introduction 3 hundreds of studies on alcoholism, substance abuse, compulsive gambling, and eating disorders, but only a handful on workaholism, a profound omission. The term workaholic was coined by Wayne Oates in the first book on the subject, Confessions of a Workaholic, in which Oates described workaholics as behaving compulsively...