Ergophobia: Causes and Characteristics of Fear of Work

Working is one of the vital needs of human beings and is key to emotional balance, because it allows us to have good economic health, improve self-esteem, meet new people, etc. Those individuals who really enjoy their work are lucky, since we spend many hours of the day at it.

But being unwell at work seriously affects our psychological health and can mark us. In fact, some subjects may experience what is known as ergophobia or fear of work. In this article we will talk about this type of phobia and explain in detail what its characteristics are.

What are phobias

Fear is one of the negative emotions that every human being experiences. But it is not that fear is negative in itself, but rather that it is labeled as negative in the sense that its symptoms can cause discomfort. Actually, this emotion can become adaptive by warning us of a real danger that can put our lives in danger.

However, beings can also feel fear when we have a series of irrational beliefs or have unreal or imaginary ideas in mind about a thing or situation. This irrational fear It can become a psychological disorder called “phobia.”.

And there are many people who experience phobias in any of their forms: aerophobia or fear of flying, philophobia or fear of falling in love, arachnophobia or fear of spiders… Some phobias can even be strange (you can check it out in this article: “The 15 strangest phobias that exist.

Human beings can feel an irrational fear of practically everything that is perceived or imagined: clowns, spiders, colors, etc. One of the characteristics of this disorder is that the person who suffers from a phobia does everything possible to avoid that stimulus that causes discomfort, and this avoidant behavior can interfere with the normal functioning of their daily life. Phobias are included within the group of psychopathologies called “anxiety disorders”.

Characteristics of ergophobia or fear of work

Working 8 hours a day from Monday to Friday is what is considered normal, but work can cause us a series of problems. such as work stress or burnout if we don’t like our job or if they demand too much from us in it. In extreme cases, some individuals may experience very high feelings of anxiety when they go to work, as well as an intense fear that prevents them from not only performing their jobs correctly, but the fact of appearing at the workplace can cause exaggerated anxiety. discomfort. This fear is called ergophobia.

Ergophobics feel a persistent fear of work, which can bring serious problems to their lives. Of course, work is a necessity to provide minimum goods, and Avoiding it can bring, among other consequences, economic problems. Although the person with ergophobia will try to avoid feared situations such as going to work, in some cases, they may have difficulties when meeting deadlines or making presentations.

Causes of the disorder

The causes of this disorder can be varied. Generally, a phobia It is the result of a traumatic experience that the person associates with an initially neutral stimulus due to a classical conditioning process.

Experiencing a stressful situation causes tremendous discomfort and anxiety, and the person tries to avoid a feared stimulus so as not to feel bad. Although this is a very common way to suffer from specific phobias, other phobias, those that are more complex, can be caused by other reasons. For example, researchers believe that there are other causes that influence the development of social phobia or agoraphobia.

Work phobia can also be considered a complex phobia that can sometimes be a consequence of other fears, e.g. for having to make public presentations which would rather be typical of social phobia.

Other causes of this phobia

It may also happen that the person who suffers from fear of work have a self-esteem problem. For example, an individual may be so concerned because he thinks he will not be able to complete his tasks efficiently, and he believes that his colleagues will hate him for not meeting his work group’s deadlines. This fear feeds the phobia even more, and can make the person feel intense fear when it comes to going to work.

In summary, the causes of ergophobia are:

Symptoms

The symptoms of ergophobia do not differ from other phobic disorders. ergophobia usually presents physical, cognitive and behavioral symptoms.

Treatment

Individuals who suffer from this disorder They are usually aware that they have a problem, but they do not always seek help.

To overcome this disorder It is necessary to go to the psychologist so that a correct diagnosis can be made. Generally, psychotherapy will be sufficient to overcome this condition; However, in extreme cases, some drugs may be used to help reduce anxious symptoms. Now, pharmacological treatment should always be combined with psychological therapy.

As for psychotherapy, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy has been shown to be very effective for the treatment of phobias, since it includes a series of techniques that help overcome the pathology. Expository techniques and systematic desensitization They are, without a doubt, the most used, because they expose the patient to the feared situation and allow him to experience the irrationality of his beliefs. However, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy also uses other very effective techniques, such as relationship techniques or cognitive restructuring. Other therapeutic methods such as Mindfulness can also be of great help to the patient.

• Related article: “6 effective treatments for anxiety”