Ergophobia or fear of work: illness or just laziness, we analyze the cause-and-effect relationships

“Labor made a man out of a monkey,” “labor feeds a man, but laziness spoils him”—many sayings have been invented about labor. From time immemorial people have been working. Parents teach their children to work from an early age. In all children's institutions, children are taught to work.

Work teaches, educates, and strengthens a person. Having woken up, a person immediately begins to work in the morning. Cook breakfast, make the bed, work, study. Perhaps someone is lazy and working. But there are people who are very afraid of this activity. These are ergophobes.

Ergophobia is the fear of doing work. This condition greatly spoils a person’s social life. This fear conceals the fear of change.

People who are used to doing everything perfectly suffer from this fear. Since their reputation is high, they are afraid to take on new tasks so as not to embarrass themselves.

Reasons for fear of work:

• Social phobia. A person is afraid to work in a team, he is oppressed by office styles, he cannot communicate with people at all and this makes him afraid of any work, because any work involves communication in a team.
• Mental disorders. While at work, such people may begin to panic, experience anxiety, and cannot concentrate on work.
• Negative work experience (usually the first). It appears in people who have already had a job before. Perhaps there was a serious conflict in the workplace (injury, workplace robbery, quarrel with colleagues), after which a strong fear of work took hold in the head.
• Dismissal is a thing of the past. After losing a previous job, a person is afraid that he will be fired again, so he does not look for a new job.
• Having a certain type of job. For people whose work involves frequent checks.
• Taking medications. Fatigue and irritability are side effects after taking some strong medications. Work and everything connected with it becomes an irritant. At a subconscious level, a person attaches negativity to work and any thought about professional activity causes a strong reaction.
• Constant stress. Stressful situations affect work activities.
• Diseases. People with mental disorders have the hardest time finding a new job. They are afraid of rejection, afraid of new acquaintances and unknown conditions.

Others and work colleagues may not notice their colleague’s fear. A person hides his emotions very well, and sometimes even controls them to some extent. But in the future the situation worsens and leads a person to withdrawal from society and deep depression.

Ergophobia - what is this phobia?

Ergophobia is complex in nature, since it often accompanies many other phobias and mental disorders.
For example, a patient may be afraid to perform manual labor for fear of injury. Many ergophobes are afraid of any work. In most cases, there is also a fear of communicating with people.

Ergophobia can be incredibly debilitating because people with ergophobia are always dependent on others to feed them, to give them money. These unfortunate people often have tense relationships with loved ones. Sometimes they do not even have the opportunity to turn to anyone for help due to limited finances.

Symptoms of fear of work:

• the expectation that something terrible and irreparable will happen at work;
• self-humiliation (I am not capable of anything, I will fail everything);
• low self-esteem;
• searching for all possible ways to avoid failure to fulfill one’s official duties.
• Fear of colleagues and especially superiors.
• Reluctance to get ready for work in the morning.
• Frequent sick leave.
• Refusal to participate in activities outside of work.
• Fear of changing jobs.
• Fear of new assignments.
• Being in a state of constant quality control of work.
• Panic feelings of speaking in front of a group.

Method of Meditation

Another effective way for those who want to forever forget the phrase: “I want to work, but I’m afraid” is visualization. When choosing this method, the doctor asks the patient to try to relax and imagine the worst case scenario. An example of this could be the following: he was late for work, carried out the boss’s instructions incorrectly, made a mistake when filling out reports, etc. The psychotherapist thus helps the patient understand what will happen in the worst case scenario of these events.

By speaking and visualizing the expected consequences, a person begins to realize that even in the worst case scenario, everything is not so bad. By imagining the expected situations over and over again, the patient begins to consider these events as completely normal phenomena and gradually frees himself from fear.

In addition, the doctor suggests that the patient with a phobia take up meditation. Relaxing music, proper breathing and complete shutdown of the endless stream of thoughts sometimes work no worse than other types of treatment.

Often meditation and relaxation are combined, for example, with medication. Together they give a wonderful effect. Patients with ergophobia are completely cured and learn to control their emotions.

Self-help:

• Recognize your problem. Acceptance means giving up accusations and forming a normal attitude towards one’s personality.
• Change your attitude towards work.
• Work on your mistakes.
• Switch your attention to something new for you.
• Be positive. Create a list of values ​​for yourself. These will be your priorities, on which it is important to spend your energy resources. Everything else is nonsense.
• Try to start working not at the full rate (0.25 or 0.5). This is a good chance to take a closer look at the team and management.
• Find a job that you like, that will inspire you, and that will give you self-confidence.
• Take care of your health. Eat right, get enough sleep, and don’t forget about physical activity!

Therapy

Well, the last type of treatment for patients with phobia of fear of work is therapy. This method is an integrated approach. One of the therapy techniques teaches the patient to become more active and overcome fear by visually demonstrating examples from life.

During treatment, the patient observes the same situations with real people (or actors), who, just like him, get to work. By observing others and seeing how they calmly carry out work, it becomes easier for a person to realize that there is nothing wrong with it. Later, when symptoms of fear set in, the patient remembers images of those people whom he observed at the doctor’s appointment. It may seem that this method is ineffective, but it is not. As medical practice shows, this therapy is one of the most effective in the treatment of ergophobia.

Treatment of fear:

• Belief. The specialist convinces the patient during a personal conversation that it is possible to engage in productive work activities without fear.
• Graphic arts. The specialist asks you to write your fear on paper and burn it, or cut it with scissors. Method of burning fear.
• Meditation. A person suffering from a fear of work convinces himself that his fears are in vain, and it is absurd to associate unhappiness in life with work.
• Relaxation. Allows you to relax and restore peace of mind.
• Cognitive behavioral therapy. The most effective treatment. Has high recovery rates.
• Hypnotherapy. The specialist puts the patient into a trance state. With it, the work of consciousness is turned off and the psychologist can work with the unconscious part of the personality. This approach allows you to effectively identify the cause of fear and eliminate it.

If something resonated with you while reading the text and it seems to you that the situation and symptoms described in the article are similar to your case, and you would like to solve this problem, you can call me first at + 7 (926) 169-36 -63 to talk about your problem that you want to solve.

The duration of the telephone consultation is 20 minutes (free of charge) , during which time I must decide whether I can help you within the framework of psychoanalytic counseling. If it’s easier for you to write a letter, you can do this by clicking on the link and sign up for a consultation. I ask you to describe your situation in as much detail as possible - the size of the letter is unlimited, I will definitely read your letter and respond.

I am always near.

Psychoanalytic method

The next method of treating ergophobia is psychoanalysis, which takes the form of open communication with the attending physician. The doctor and the patient analyze and analyze in detail life circumstances, allowing them to understand where this fear came from, what contributed to it and how it can be overcome. When talking with a doctor, the patient talks through his experiences and anxiety, then receives so-called homework. Usually it includes some kind of exercise to overcome oneself and develop control over excessive emotions.

Thanks to these conversations with a psychotherapist, a person feels better after just a few sessions. With the first victories over his phobia, the patient begins to look at the situation more positively and every step becomes easier for him.

How to prepare yourself for your first visit to a new place

If you are scared to go to work for the first time, you can simulate the first day and imagine how it will go. It is also better to prepare for the questions that will be asked at the interview in advance. This will help you cope with excess anxiety. You need to be able to tell about yourself in such a way that the employer would want to hire such an employee. It’s easier to calm the fear of starting a new job if you read humorous stories from the lives of specialists in your chosen profile. When applying for a job in a store, you can read the forum of cash register workers who share funny situations at work. Many of them will make you cry from laughter, not from fear. It will be easier to get used to the role of a store employee if you look at the entire work process from the inside, thanks to such forums.

The fear of going to any job will disappear if the applicant is not too lazy to read certain documentation about his future profession. If you plan to work in the food industry or trade, you will have to remember the rules for storing different categories of products and the deadlines for their disposal. If the interview is for a future manager, it would be a good idea to study the basics of management, with an emphasis on the specifications of the target organization. Before an interview at a government agency, you need to repeat the rules of business etiquette, the established restrictions on wardrobe items and the brightness of makeup (for women).

Confidence in an interview

During the interview itself, you need to behave calmly, but with a slight positive attitude. To get the job you want, it is important to conduct your first meeting with the employer with a prevailing sense of confidence. Many personnel training specialists tell why they rejected a particular applicant: overly gloomy, nervous and bad-looking candidates were not accepted. The right way out is to find a middle ground, not to give the impression of a frivolous, gloomy or nervous person.

Do not forget that the employer is more interested in a new active and erudite workforce than the applicant. He, in turn, must interest the specialist, make him believe that the work under his supervision will be well paid and provided with everything necessary.

Don't try to impress

The advice may seem illogical, but I’ll explain everything now. Every time I want to impress someone, it doesn't end well. I begin to closely monitor my every movement, word, position in space and because of this I become even more constrained. Therefore, no casual jokes or fresh ideas for you - just a robotic “Ha. Ha. Ha." and unnaturally long pauses.

In the first days, I am overcome by the desire to show how hard and how well I work. “Now I’ll write a business plan in a day” or “I’ll organize a conference in a week.” By the age of 25, I learned to answer myself just as cheerfully: “You can’t organize. Or you organize it, but it turns out to be complete nonsense.” There is no need to take on a bunch of tasks and heroically sit on them until midnight. Nobody expects this from you. In addition, raising the bar at the entrance is short-sighted. Everyone will think that you can work for five people, and will expect exactly this from you. It will end with overwork, persistent fatigue, or something else equally unpleasant.

In the very first days, do not try to be in front of your superiors and impress others with your wit and efficiency. Better set yourself another goal - not to aggravate your stress.

Phobias and their formation as a result of a traumatic event

It is also important to note that the level of anxiety can increase, either as a result of long-term adaptation to traumatic circumstances, as in the case of a child and his unbalanced father, as described above, or sharply. A person may become anxious as a result of a high-intensity traumatic event. And then a phobia may immediately arise if the event had a bright semantic connotation.

Let's look at another example. Let's say there was a holiday - a teenager's birthday. And for even more fun, the parents invited a clown to perform. Everything went well, everyone had fun. But suddenly one of the relatives became ill and as a result he died right during the holiday.

As a result of such circumstances, a teenager will develop an increased level of anxiety after understanding the situation. And also, as an addition to this, a phobia associated with clowns or, even worse, holidays will appear.

Of course, much will depend on what the adults who are significant to the child, in this case the parents, say and what they do. With a competent approach, if you have a certain calming conversation with the child, which will teach him to have a more philosophical attitude towards life and failures, phobias can be avoided. But working with anxiety will take much longer.