While many factors contribute to individuals’ experiences of well-being, public discourses capitalize on individuals’ achievements when celebrating the value of their lives. Particularly in western culture, individuals are surrounded by pressures to “make something” of themselves through aspiring to accomplished lifestyles (Giddens, 1991). Some individuals go to extremes with their efforts to succeed, particularly through their work habits. Consequently, lifestyles consumed by aims for productivity and excellence may foster an underlying addiction known as workaholism (Oates, 1971). Though often difficult to recognize, workaholism has become a widespread issue continually glossed over by social encouragements for hard work (Robinson, 2007). Therefore, there is much need for a better understanding of how individuals experience and seek help in dealing with this phenomenon (McMillan & O’Driscoll, 2008).
In this dissertation, I explore how individuals experience workaholism and construct meanings for well-being through recovery. Working from a phenomenological perspective, I employ a hermeneutic approach to interpret the dynamics between embodied and discursive understandings of experience. Moreover, I examine how narrative shapes and reflects the processes through which individuals render their personal experiences when communicating with others. As a member of the support fellowship, Workaholics Anonymous (WA), I engage in a reflexive methodology for exploring and making sense of my perceptions of my own and others’ lived experiences of workaholism and recovery. In doing so, I pursue ethnographic practices by participating in WA’s support activities and conducting a textual analysis of the fellowship’s primary text, The Book of Recovery. Writing from an autoethnographic perspective, I narrate my field observations and my interpretative analyses of such observations to develop my findings for this study.
In my closing arguments, I contend that recovery in the context of workaholism is an inconclusive experience that involves continuous acts of retrospective-prospective sense-making over time. Moreover, I underscore the value in recognizing the co-authoring roles individuals partake in experiencing and constructing meanings for well-being. I then address unresolved complications people experience throughout recovery. Lastly, I reflect on the contingency of my findings by discussing the inherent challenges to embodying a phenomenological disposition in research.