The Guilt of Not Overworking: Why Earning More Made My Anxiety Worse, Not Better

I cried when I saw my promotion letter on a screen share. It was a number I'd least expected to receive in this volatile market. And yet somehow it felt right. I felt appreciated and valued. Still, something pulled at my heart. Guilt, imposter syndrome, and some other unnamed feelings welled up as my manager kept talking about random things while the promotion letter sat on the screen share. It was hard to digest that it was I who received it. The promotion was not a surprise, but the salary increase definitely knocked me out.

In this post:

• The promotion I'd been chasing for two years
• Why the hike unmade me instead of settling me
• What my body finally taught me about the price I'd quietly set on myself.
• Four things I'm doing now to decenter work

Why did this promotion matter more than the previous ones?

I was trying for a promotion for quite some time. For years, I have been contributing to work which demanded a higher pay scale. I never complained because all my earlier promotions happened on time with an acceptable gap between each promotion. I acknowledge that I managed to be at the intersection of luck and hard work at the right time, both managing to shed light on me when it came to my promotions. My last promotion, however, was more of a designation upgrade rather than a salary hike, which resulted in extreme stress during my marriage as I was relying on that increase to finance my wedding (I know it sounds foolish. I was mismanaging my money at that time, which is another article on its own). It resulted in taking out personal loans on top of already existing loans. The need to move to a secure and nicer apartment also prompted our monthly essential expenses to double.

My husband barely got a 1-2% hike, resulting in almost negligible additional savings with no emergency funds. I knew I had to either get that next promotion or switch for at least a standard increase.

I started pushing myself harder than I'd ever pushed anyone on my team. I was desperate because I had inflated my lifestyle without getting a reality check, and now I had to make sure my salary matched it. All I needed was a standard hike, which (I thought) would resolve all our problems.

When the promotion did come through, it was more than I could have possibly imagined. It was a hike of the decade. I was lost for words. All I wanted to do was get off the call I was having with my manager and calculate my new in-hand salary.

When the cost of the promotion became more than its worth

At first, I talked myself out of it when I started noticing the patterns. Oh, it's nothing. I have to work harder than ever to make sure that my leaders feel that I deserve this promotion. This is what I would tell myself every time my brain gave me a signal to stop working. That thought itself became more poisonous than the habits. I worked my ass off for hours, ignoring my sleep apnea or the stress that was already present in my body. I became so engrossed in my work that I could no longer shut it down even after I logged off.

I started losing sleep over issues that felt larger in my mind than in reality. I couldn't separate emotions from the practicality of the work at hand. I consistently felt the need to justify every penny of the promotion hike. There were nights when I woke up in the middle of the night just to send an email because I was worried the work issues I was dealing with at the time would hurt me and create a negative impression in front of my leaders.

My superiors' feedback added more fuel to the patterns I was already developing. More tasks were added to my plate, which overwhelmed me further. My body started aching all the time. My feet hurt, my neck hurt. I lost my energy to do anything I loved. I even resented cooking, which was the one enjoyable activity for me. I couldn't concentrate on a single thing other than work. Even while brushing my teeth in the morning, all I could do was think about my next steps or imagine worst-case scenarios.

I started believing that if an outcome wasn't achieved for a project I was leading, it meant personal failure.

I could no longer decenter my work. Work consumed me to the point where it attached itself to my identity. If someone asked me to introduce myself, I would start with what I do at work and take pride in telling them that even when the reality was different.

To escape work-related thoughts, I went back to social media. I distanced myself from my colleagues. I kept on using all my working hours to finish one task after the next. When my salary came in at the end of every month, I justified to myself that my peace of mind was a small price to pay. Every leader has to go through this. Everyone is working beyond their regular working hours. This is how it's going to be.

Eventually, I started loathing my work. I watched and read blogs around portfolio careers and how to detach from a 9-to-5 job while allowing it to serve the primary purpose and nothing more than that. I started noticing a shift in how I perceived promotions. It was no longer a priority for me. I worried that if I continued to work hard, I might get the next promotion pretty soon, which didn't feel right, and it made me a lot more anxious.

The Why Behind The Mess

I don't have the perfect answer here. However, I can say for sure that the money felt like a lot more than I deserved. My mind had already fixed the worth of my hard work. And when I received way more than that, I felt like I was cheating and that now I have to overcompensate to let my mind feel deserving. I realised quite late that the promotion was based on my past performance, not my future performance.

But that benchmark didn't come from nowhere. I was raised to compete — to stay on top, to score well, to always be a little different from everyone else. And even when I managed it, it never felt like enough for my parents. There was always a next thing, a higher mark, another benchmark to achieve. The child Sumi connected the dots: nothing is given to you for free. Everything has to be earned, and then earned all over again. So when the promotion came in higher than the price I'd quietly set for myself, my mind didn't acknowledge or assure me that I was valued. It whispered you owe. And I've been trying to pay it back ever since.

How I am navigating decentering my work

A couple of weeks ago, I went through extreme stress and anxiety for a work-related task, which shouldn't have been my responsibility in the first place. Somehow, I was held accountable, which resulted in sleepless nights and acne breakouts on my face. I cried myself to sleep. All I wanted to do during those moments was to quit and be done with corporate. But I needed the money. I needed the financial stability. And I was not ready to go down the depression lane. My body knew quite well what it did to me last time.

You might also want to read - When My Body Stopped Negotiating: The Rock Bottoms I Couldn't Outrun

Post that week, I accidentally discovered a couple of content creators on Instagram who are either going through the same thing or helping professionals like me stay afloat in our corporate era. The common suggestion was to set boundaries between work and personal life. Sounds easy. But how do we actually establish that?

The weekly dump

For work to not leak into my personal space, I started listing every single task - even a small follow-up over chat task in my notebook and my OneNote template. I made sure to get everything out of my head and on the paper. On Fridays or whichever was the last working day of the week, I dedicated an hour (didn't matter if I was tired) to schedule the next week with all my tasks listed and separated by themes. That helped in getting a major load off my brain for tiny things that would keep bothering me during the night.

Also read - How I Started Unlearning My Parents' Patterns at Work (What Actually Helped)

Anxiety-turned-brainstorm/ Second-person POV

For difficult or new tasks, the anxiety always worsened. It predominantly arose from the fear of failure and the fear of judgment. To pause from getting anxious and go down the rabbit hole of imagining all the worst-case scenarios was the hardest. So at first, I forced myself to notice when this happened and for which tasks or projects. Slowly, I started asking myself - why am I feeling anxious about this? What part of this project am I nervous about? I turned this into a brainstorming session in my head and jotted the next steps, again, on a pen and paper. I started evaluating challenges, viability, root cause, logical next steps, and who exactly is accountable for the tough decision. Seeing the problem from a second-person POV and identifying potential solutions instead of ruminating not only helped me reduce my anxiety to an extent, but it also helped me stop thinking about work during my free time.

Golden Hours Time Block

I started blocking the golden hours to complete the toughest or most uncomfortable work, which I would usually ignore or try to keep pending for as long as possible. My concentration span is the highest during the 1.30-4 PM block, so I make sure to avoid meetings during these hours (for most days). Finishing the hardest part of the work when my concentration was the highest started softening the nagging feeling, the constant reminder I would get earlier during my relaxing hours.

Reconnecting with self

I started reconnecting with the hobbies or activities that I have always liked or wanted to do. I started going on solo dates. I protected my personal space fiercely. I even went on a solo trip instead of waiting around for my husband's schedule to become free. I read more. I started spending most of my free time writing these articles. I planned, refined and executed my strategy for a potential writing business. I haven't earned a single rupee from any of it yet. But focusing on something other than work grew my self-esteem and confidence in a way no promotion has — the realisation that I can build something with my own hands, and it doesn't have to be the day job.

The pattern, named

Three things this promotion made impossible to keep unseen:

• The voice setting my worth was older than my career.
• Working harder to feel deserving doesn't dissolve the anxiety. It funds it.
• Decentering work isn't a decision I made once. It's a daily practice of giving the rest of my life equal billing.

I'm still in the middle of decentering my work, but I am determined. If you want me to come back in six months and write what's actually held up, leave a comment.

If this helped you even in a teeny tiny way, you can support my writing with a coffee ☕, completely optional.

Thanks for reading. See you in the margins.