Do you feel disconnected from your job? Are you frequently absent from work and use your sick days or paid-time-off (PTO) as mental health days? Is your job performance suffering because of your mental health? Do you only really feel depressed when you are at work? If you answered yes, read on ⎯ your job could be making you depressed.
We spend 60% of our time awake at work. And unless you are one of the 54% of polled workers who reported high levels of job satisfaction, chances are you appreciate the stability your job offers, but you are not bound to your job. For the record, it is normal to have days where you feel neutral about or even dislike some aspects of your job. Your work environment and even workload can contribute to work-related stress. Chronic exposure to work-related stress does more than make your day hectic ⎯ it puts you at risk of developing work depression. In some cases, your work environment can also trigger or worsen existing depression.
What Are the Signs of Work Depression?
Many of the signs of work depression overlap with generalized depression, anxiety, and burnout. You may have work depression if you:
- Feel emotionally depleted or exhausted at work
- Feel cynical about your job and your work performance
- Have trouble concentrating on tasks and details
- Feel worthless
- Experience strong emotional feelings, such as detachment from your work and coworkers, suicidal ideation
- Feel like you have to hide your feelings or play a part
What Causes Work Depression?
Several interrelated factors increase your risk of developing work depression. The increased demands of a high workload can result in your experiencing more chronic stress, working long hours and on off days, and neglecting yourself or your responsibilities. As a result of prioritizing work needs over your own, you have a poor work-life balance 1 2.
Work stress is inevitable. However, it seems that some people are better equipped than others to handle it. The difference is with our personality. Essentially, your personality either protects you from stress or makes you more sensitive to it 3.
Sensitive people tend to feel like they have to hide their distress or act to fit into the workplace dynamic or appear like a model employee. All the while, these people feel detached from their job and their coworkers. They also struggle with expressing their needs and, as a result, may not feel supported 2.
Are Work Depression and Burnout the Same?
There’s so much overlap between work depression and work burnout that experts have trouble discerning the two. People who experience burnout look a lot like a person experiencing depression. Both conditions make it hard to be fully present during work and, as a result, cause your work performance to suffer 3.
Is There a Solution?
The harsh reality for many of us is that we have to work. And we don’t all have the luxury to leave or take extended time away from a position. However, I am a firm believer that we spend too much of our time awake at work to stay in an environment that’s toxic or unhealthy because we have to work. We all deserve peace and good mental health; it’s our birthright.
With that said, blurred or poor boundaries seem like one of the underlying causes of work depression. For instance, assuming more, working on your time, neglecting yourself for work, etc. Therefore, it seems that better boundaries are the solution. Want to learn more about boundaries and why we need them? Read more here.