Fair’s Fair “For Book Lovers”

Killinger, Barbara. Workaholics: The Respectable Addicts—A Family Survival Guide , 1991

Barbara Killinger PhD, foremost Canadian researcher in the area of workaholism, explains that this illness is not just about working hard. It comes with far more baggage than that and most of it not productive or positive.

Some of the factors that Killinger sees as indicative of workaholism include the following:

The extreme importance of work

Perfectionism taken to the zenith

Seeing things a either / or

Competitiveness and winning at any cost

Being right

Being 100% critical of oneself for making any mistake no matter how small

Terror of failing

Bored, restless, driven

Extreme fatigue occurring more and more often

Working late nights and weekends

A sense of guilt if not working

Feeling of being “special or different from other people”

Reading for work purposes while eating alone

Making lists and then making lists of lists

Refusing to take vacations for any time or any extended length of time

Speeding through life

Being in constant touch with the office

Work even when playing

Refuses to plan retirement

Avoid conflict rather than facing it

Acting for oneself without consideration for family or others

Terrified of rejection or criticism

Dislike interruptions while working

Create almost impossible deadlines

Forgets or ignores family occasions (1-2)

Killinger describes the profound personality changes that occur when a workaholic begins to break down. Killinger traces some of the problems that emerge as part of the workaholic “picture” back to childhood. She continues on to describe the shadow side of workaholism with its obsessions, lies, compulsions, fears, and anxieties. She describes how the workaholic can flip-flop from being a nice-person to being a nasty one without warning. She explains that workaholics may spend long long hours at work, but end of being considerably unproductive. She notes that workaholics tend to live a long time and often work long into their eighties if self-employed or in an area where there is no set retirement age. They are difficult to deal with in any setting and psychologists do not have an easy time of breaking their patterns of narcissistic and controlling behavior– that is if the workaholic actually takes time to seek help for his or her illness.

In the final section of the book, Killinger does provide some possibilities for recovery, but the measurement of how much a “true” workaholic actually recovers is questionable. Workaholics can wreak considerable damage and still command the respect of others, because work after all is seen as being “what people are supposed to do.”

Workaholics: The Respectable Addicts—A Family Survival Guide published some years ago is well worth a read for anyone suffering under the clutches of a workaholic family member, colleague, or boss.