Ergophobia: causes and characteristics of the fear of work

April 2, 2024

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

But being bad at work seriously affects our psychological health and can mark us. In fact, some subjects may get to 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.

Related article: "Types of phobias: exploring the disorders of fear"

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 that it is labeled as negative in the sense that its symptoms can produce discomfort. Actually, this emotion can become adaptive , to warn 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 in mind unreal or imaginary ideas 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 its forms: aerophobia or fear of flying, philophobia or fear of falling in love, arachnophobia or fear of spiders ... Some phobias can be even strange (you can check this article: " 15 more rare phobias that exist ").

The human being can come to feel an irrational fear of practically everything that is perceived or imagined: clowns, spiders, colors, and so on. One of the characteristics of this disorder is that the person suffering from a phobia does everything possible to avoid that stimulus that causes discomfort, and this avoidance behavior can interfere with the normal functioning of their daily lives. Phobias are included within the group of psychopathologies called "anxiety disorders" .

Recommended article: "Types of Anxiety Disorders and their characteristics"

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 like work stress or burnout if we do not like our work or if we demand too much 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 tasks correctly, but the fact of coming to the workplace may cause an exaggerated discomfort. This fear is called ergophobia.

Ergophobes feel a persistent fear of work, which can bring serious problems for their lives. Of course, work is a necessity to procure minimum assets, and avoiding it can bring, among other consequences, economic problems . While the person with ergophobia will try to avoid feared situations such as going to work, in some cases, may have difficulties in meeting deadlines or make presentations.

Maybe you're interested: "Burnout (burning syndrome): how to detect it and take action"

Causes of the disorder

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

The experience of a stressful situation provokes a tremendous malaise and anxiety, and the person tries to avoid feared stimulus to not feel bad. Although this is a very frequent way of suffering from specific phobias, other phobias, those more complex, can be caused by other reasons. For example, researchers believe that there are other causes that influence when developing social phobia or agoraphobia.

The phobia to work can also be considered a complex phobia that, sometimes, can be a consequence of other fears, for example, for having to make presentations in public , which would rather be typical of social phobia.

Other causes of this phobia

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

In summary, the causes of ergophobia are:

Traumatic experiences at work. For example, make fun of colleagues.
Anxious personality
Mood disorders.
Other fears For example, to be rejected, to make presentations, etc.
Genetic factors.

symptom

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

Accelerated heartbeat and increased heart rate.
Rapid breathing and choking sensation.
Excessive sweating
Dry mouth.
Panic attacks.
Stomach upset and headache
Muscle tension.
Feeling of unreality
Anguish.
Loss of concentration.
Avoidant behaviors

Treatment

Individuals suffering 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 he can make a correct diagnosis . Generally, psychotherapy will be enough to overcome this condition; however, in extreme cases it is possible that some drugs are used to help reduce anxious symptoms. Now, pharmacological treatment should always be combined with psychological therapy.

As for psychotherapy, Behavioral Cognitive Therapy has shown to be very effective for the treatment of phobias, since it includes a series of techniques that help to overcome the pathology. Expository techniques and systematic desensitization they are undoubtedly the most used, because they expose the patient to the feared situation and allow the patient to experience the irrationality of their beliefs. However, Behavioral Cognitive Therapy also uses other very effective techniques, such as relationship or cognitive restructuring. Other therapeutic methods such as Mindfulness can also be of great help to the patient.