Are you an Attention Deficit Workaholic? Here's the help you need.
“For those of us who haven't written a book and gained recognition, high achievers can seem removed from our reality. I'm fact, you were on double secret probation, and in danger of having your ADHD card revoked.” Comment on a recent LinkedIn post
My name’s Leanne, and I’m a recovering Attention Deficit Workaholic.
I'm a best-selling author of 3 books & have a law degree. During the pandemic, I wrote a book, trained companies like Microsoft, co-ordinated groups of models to respond to parliamentary inquiries, presented to No10 & DCMS, did a coaching course, qualified as a yoga teacher... all alongside working as a mental health and immigration legal policy adviser, managing 40 volunteer solicitors. I prided myself on replying to emails within minutes, and always over-delivering.
When I became self-employed, I quickly learned that I was a boss from hell. My working hours were my waking hours, even if this meant opening my laptop at 4:30am. I only worked on days ending with 'Y'. Lunch breaks consisted of eating snacks from the fridge on the stairs in-between back to back meetings, and my laptop came with me everywhere. I checked off achievements like they were items on a daily 'to do' list, ignoring my real-life ones as piles of clothes washing grew next to me. I started to have anxiety attacks when I saw friends or did anything that wasn't 'productive'. I stopped enjoying life and felt numb.
However, the more unwell I became, the more I was praised externally. Just like I was told I was fine because I had a law degree, markers of success in our society aren't happiness, but achievements. The cause of my addiction was the thing imprisoning me in it, but people don't associate ADHD with being overly-productive to the point of seriously burning out.
I went to a Workaholics Anonymous meeting, and over half of the other attendees had ADHD. This is not a coincidence. Researchers have found that 32.7% of workaholics met ADHD criteria (compared with 12.7% of non-workaholics), suggesting a significant link between work addiction and ADHD.
So if this resonates, you're not alone, despite maybe feeling like an imposter imprisoned in the golden cage you've built for yourself. You are a human being, not a human doing, and you deserve to be able to enjoy your life.
What is an Attention Deficit Workaholic?
Workaholism is an ‘obsessive-compulsive disorder that manifests itself through self-imposed demands, an inability to regulate work habits, and over-indulgence in work to the exclusion of most other life activities’.
It’s upheld by a constantly activated stress response, with work acting as an adrenaline-fuelled distraction from deeper emotional issues. As ADHD brains are constantly seeking adrenaline and stimulation, over-working ourselves can be a way of self-medicating the chaos inside our brains, allowing us to focus. Behaviour highly motivated by risk or motivation functions in a similar way to stimulant medication, releasing epinephrine (adrenaline) into the brain and impacting our neurotransmitters.
This might look like setting ourselves impossible deadlines, doing many jobs at once, taking on huge challenges, or being chronically unable to relax without intense stimulation. Normality is uncomfortable - we can never feel safe, and must always be doing something.
This means spinning lots of plates at the same time, jumping from one task to another to get another hit of novelty, until it inevitably wears off, leaving us with lots of unfinished projects, paralysed by the details and follow through.
We’re brilliant innovators, but if our brains are running at 250 miles per hour with faulty brakes, we can’t think through our work properly before doing it. We may be constantly backtracking to clean up our own messes, which impacts our self-esteem and relationships. We're on constant red alert, unable to relax, and feel like nothing is ever enough.
We can’t slow down enough to enjoy our successes - we just need the next hit. Our self-care goes out of the window, and the more we’re celebrated for our excellent work, the harder it becomes to ask for help. Our worst nightmare is work being taken away from us, as it's become our identity, but we're trapped by a deep insecurity of just how unsustainable living like this is.
What are the signs of being a workaholic?
Rushing and hyper-business: having lots of things happening at once, which gives us the sense that we’re accomplishing more. ADHD-ers often have a time sense of ‘now’ or ‘not now’, so we feel like we need to do everything before we lose our motivation.
Need to control: problems with delegating authority or asking for help, as other people simply can’t keep up. This is something ADHD-ers commonly experience, as our executive functioning skills struggle to break projects down into smaller tasks.
Perfectionism: having superhuman standards and feeling frustrated at others for not being able to meet these. ‘If you want it done right, do it yourself’ might resonate - especially with ADHD-ers who have always had to put 150% into their work to be what they see as 'normal'.
Difficulty with intimacy and crumbling relationships: forgetting, ignoring or minimising the importance of spending time with family and friends, and having difficulty doing this without thinking about work. As ADHD can have a huge impact on our relationships, especially in relation to rejection, we might prefer work over people!
Work binges: self-imposing unrealistic deadlines on ourselves and working non-stop to meet them, driven by fear and adrenaline. This is how I managed to learn my entire law degree in a month!
Work trances: checking out because we’re working so intensely, where we might forget chunks of our days. Our sense of self-awareness is already impacted by having ADHD, so we might not even realise that we've been working for 12 hours straight.
Restlessness and an inability to relax: feeling like we need to do something ‘productive’ all the time, and a tendency to turn the things we enjoy into work, such as productivity or money making ventures.
Impatience and irritability: constantly finding ourselves working, such as whilst waiting for the doctor or in taxis, and feeling irritable with everything that isn't work. Boredom equates to pain for ADHD-ers, and especially when our brains are hooked on such intense bouts of sti Acting before gathering all of the facts can lead to easily avoidable mistakes being made in the long run - which ADHD-ers will know well!
Self-inadequacy: feeling as though our work is promising purpose, meaning and self-esteem, but as soon as the project is done, feeling empty, restless, and depressed. The temporary highs and feelings of value from producing things with concrete results lock us into seeking our self-worth through performance.
Self-neglect: ignoring our physical needs, such as self-care, nutrition, rest, exercise, and health issues, such as not going to the doctor or dentist because we don’t have time. ADHD-ers already experience sensory issues such as forgetting to eat or sitting in uncomfortable positions, as in chapter ‘Y is for Your Body’ of ADHD: an A to Z.
What can help?
The first step is recognising that we’ve got a problem, and living like this is unfulfilling. It might feel very hard to ask for help, but it's necessary - if you're addicted to work, you may be powerless to control it, no matter how hard you try.
For people with ADHD, medication can help significantly with giving our brains the stimulation they need to focus, instead of us self-sabotaging as an attempt to self-medicate. If you're undiagnosed, you might find reading ADHD: an A to Z helpful - especially chapter 'B is for Burnout'!
You can also get a coach to help you set and uphold boundaries and frameworks, such as working hours. I coach lots of people on these issues, and found a life-changing coach for myself, Jacqueline McCullough. By identifying what I really wanted and taking the time to reflect on all the things I was ‘doing’, I could think things through properly and see what I needed to say no to.
Having accountability and someone to mirror back to us the ways we’re subconsciously acting (e.g I said I wanted to finish writing a new book that I found traumatizing ‘for fun’ in our last session!), is incredibly powerful. This is particularly so when it’s someone who’s been through what you’re experiencing, who can keep up with your fast-moving ADHD brain, and support you in navigating a life that makes you feel, instead of appear, happy.
Coaching can also help with making changes to our working environments. Attention Deficit Workaholics perform best in positions where we can initiate ideas and delegate implementation of them to others. Instead of multi-tasking, we can make weekly or daily goals, sticking to one at a time until starting another one.
We can learn the tools of delegation and break this down into chunks, instead of taking an ‘all or nothing’ approach. We can make a work moderation plan, scheduling time for relaxing (especially between meetings!) and learn thought-stopping techniques to manage symptoms of adrenaline withdrawal.
For this, we can look at how much time we’re currently dedicating to our self (personal needs), relationships, play, and work, and how much time we want to be dedicating to each area.
Ultimately, being a workaholic with ADHD can feel lonely, horrible, and unfulfilling. We can be surrounded by the most incredible achievements, but feel nothing. We're holding ourselves to our own never-ending yardsticks of success, with constantly changing goal posts.
It can feel terrifying to explain this to somebody else, especially when our polished exterior hides a wardrobe stuffed full of mess. However, this will explode at some point, and you deserve to have a life that you can enjoy, where you can feel happiness, fulfilment, and balance.
If this resonates with you, head to ADHD Works for more (or go outside! 😅)