Am I a workaholic or am I distracting myself from depression?

How do you know if you’re a workaholic? As a result of the kind of work I do, I’ve had people call me a workaholic several times. I always laugh when they say it though because I’m always dying to have a moment to breathe. However, I’ve noticed some symptoms that are making me wonder if I truly am a workaholic.

What are my symptoms? I’ll tell you.

I work all the time. When I’m not working, I’m thinking about work. Work also takes up 70% of my conversations. An hour before I go to bed, I’m most likely working and within the hour that I wake, I’m also working. When people tell me that they said ‘no’ to a work request, it’s always mind-boggling.

I whine about how much I need free time, but the moment I have a free plate, I start to itch for more work. This is a particularly weird symptom. When I’m too free, I become anxious. I worry about having a truckload of work fall into my laps any moment so I itch to have something to do. When the work does come, I heave a sigh of relief like an alcoholic who had been away from alcohol for too long. When I’m not anxious, I feel guilty because I think that I’m not working enough. I’m also afraid of being called incompetent. It happened once and it completely broke me and I don’t want a repeat of that.

I don’t see any problem with putting in extra hours to get my job done. Don’t get me wrong, I join the host of people that complain about having to put in extra hours but it’s mostly for the culture because it doesn’t bother me as much. I really think that if there’s work that needs to be done, then it should just be done.

I’ve never requested for time out to ‘just rest’. I rest on the weekends. My friends will disagree with me, but I truly rest on the weekends. Well, sometimes. If I can help it, I don’t open my laptop at all on Saturdays. I completely shut down the moment I close my laptop on Friday and stay off my laptop until Sunday evening when I start working again. If I’m not going on a vacation, chances are that I’ll never request for time off work.

That’s about it. It’s taken me a lot to put these thoughts into words because I feel like people could read it and misinterpret me. Recently, I worked through my unhealthy relationship with work and I suspected that I work so much because I’m afraid of leaving my mind quiet. When I have a lot of work to do, all I think about is work and that’s comfortable. When I don’t have to worry about work, it means I’ll have other things to worry about.

I worry about how my life isn’t going as I planned, how I constantly make unhealthy choices and how much money or rather how little money I have saved up. I worry about losing the people I love, and the fear consumes me. I think about the pointlessness of life and the pain being alive brings. I think about the inhumanity of humanity, the wickedness of man and my mood instantly drops. Apparently, I don’t work through things. I keep them stored up, so when my mind isn’t fixated on something, they spring back up. As exhausting as working overtime might be, it’s a whole lot better than constantly having unsettling intrusive thoughts.

I’m not sure if I am a workaholic or if I am trying to avoid getting depressed. I’ve been depressed once and it almost cost me my life so I’m particularly afraid of slipping into a dark hole and working somehow keeps me grounded.

Am I afraid of being depressed? Am I a workaholic or are the emotions I feel completely normal? I’m dying to know what you think!