Why Cant I Stop Working?

It is Saturday. You promised this one was yours. And here you are at the desk, because there was just one thing, and the one thing had another thing behind it. You are not doing this because you love it. It is more like a hand at your back that never quite lets you sit down.

In this episode, Dr. Alon Aviram sits with the person who cannot stop. Through the story of a man named Sam, he separates working hard, which is a choice, from not being able to stop, which is a position you get backed into, usually by a very old belief that you are only worth something while you are producing. The body keeps an honest ledger, and it always, eventually, collects.

Not advice. Not a diagnosis. A look at a magnificent engine that forgot it has a second half, and what it takes to let the drive last.

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Where We Are is a podcast about where you are, not what's wrong with you.

Hosted by Dr. Alon Aviram, psychotherapist. The show is built on the framework he uses in his practice: a way of finding where you're standing across the different parts of a life — the body, the self, relationships, groups, and meaning — and finding your way back to movement.

If something in this episode landed, you can go deeper at dralonaviram.com, where a free tool helps you find where you actually stand. The newsletter, The Shift, lives on Substack. And you can follow along on Instagram.

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It is Saturday. You promised yourself this one was yours. And here you are at the desk, because there was just one thing, and the one thing had another thing behind it. And now the morning is gone, and you are not even surprised. You are not doing this because you love it. That is the part nobody sees. Somewhere back there, maybe, it was love. Now it is more like a hand at your back that never quite lets you sit down. The moment you stop, a low dread rises. A sense that stopping is the same as falling behind. And falling behind is the same as something bad you cannot name. So you do not stop. You call it drive. You call it work ethic. And you wonder, quietly, on the Saturdays, why the finish line keeps moving every time you get close. My name is Dr. Alon Aviram. I'm a psychotherapist. This is where we are, a podcast about what's actually happening in you. I want to tell you about a man, I'll call Sam. Sam did not come to see me about work. He came because his body had started falling apart in ways his doctors kept patching without fixing. The stomach, the sleep, the chest that tightened for no reason his cardiologist could find. He was, by every external measure, extraordinarily successful. He was also, by his own quiet admission in our third session, more tired than he had words for. I asked Sam a simple question, When do you rest? And he answered it the way a lot of people answer it. He told me about his vacations, which he spent answering messages by the pool. He told me about his weekends, which had that one thing and the thing behind it. He was describing rest the way someone describes a country they have read about, but never actually visited. So I asked him a different question. What are you afraid would happen if you stopped? And Sam, who had answers for everything, did not have one. He sat with it. And then he said something I have heard in different words from a hundred people. He said, If I stop, I am not sure I am worth anything. There it was. Sam was not driven by ambition. Sam was driven by a deal he had made a long time ago, probably as a boy, that his worth was something he had to earn again every single day, and that the earning could never be finished. Because the moment it was finished, he would find out what he was worth when he was not producing, and he was terrified of the answer. The engine was never about the work. The work was just where the engine happened to be pointed. Let me say the thing, we do not say enough. The capacity to push is magnificent. To drive forward, to carry weight, to keep going when it would be easier to quit. This is one of the best things a human body can do. Sam's drive built a real life. I was not there to take his engine away. Nobody should. But an engine is only half of a working machine. The other half is recovery. Push and recover, effort and repair, drive forward, then let the body rebuild before you drive again. That rhythm is not a compromise between working and slacking. It is the actual mechanism by which sustainable strength exists. Every muscle that has ever grown grew in the rest between the efforts, not during them. Sam had deleted the recovery half. He had gotten so good at the push and so frightened of the stop that he lived at one end of the thing. All drive, no repair. And here is what happens when you live there. The debt does not show up on the day you skip the rest. It accumulates quietly, in the stomach, in the sleep, in the chest. The body keeps a very honest ledger and it always eventually collects. The foreign the rest is not laziness waiting to swallow him. That is the fear talking. Rest is a capacity he had that went quiet under the noise of the deal he made. It is still in there, the ability to stop and let the stopping be enough. It did not die. It got shouted down, and the goal is not to turn Sam into someone who does nothing. There is no version of this, where the answer is to stop caring. The goal is to give him back the second half of the rhythm, to let him push fully, and then recover fully, so that the pushing has somewhere to land other than his own body. You might know this engine from the inside. You are praised for it, which is part of the trap. People call you dedicated, reliable. A machine, they say, and they mean it as a compliment, and some small part of you flinches because a machine is exactly what it has started to feel like. You cannot sit through a meal without the pull. You cannot take the evening off without the dread. Rest, when you attempt it, feels less like rest and more like waiting to be caught. Here is what I want you to consider. The problem is probably not that you work too hard. The problem is that you cannot stop. And those are not the same thing. Working hard is a choice. Not being able to stop is a position you got backed into, usually by a very old belief that you are only safe, only worthy, only allowed to exist while you are producing. That belief was not stupid. Somewhere it was true once, in a room where love came with conditions. You learned to earn, it kept you safe. But you're standing at the far end of drive now, with the recovery end so far behind you that you have half forgotten it is there. It is there. It is a part of you that knows how to stop. It went quiet, it can come back. Not as a verdict about how much you work, as a position, and positions are not permanent. So here is the small experiment for this week. Not a sabbatical. One stop on purpose that you survive. Pick one small window, 30 minutes, and take it fully off. Not off with your phone face up on the table. Off. And here is the important part: the part that makes it work. Before you start, decide in advance that during this window, you are worth exactly the same as you are at your most productive. Nothing you do or fail to do in these 30 minutes changes your worth by a single unit. You are not earning anything here. You are just existing, and existing is the whole permission. Then notice what comes up. Very likely the dread, the pull, the voice that says, This is a waste, that says, get up, that says, you are falling behind. Do not obey it and do not fight it. Just watch it and stay stopped anyway, and let your body collect the evidence it has never once been given. That you stopped and nothing bad happened. And you were still you on the other side. You are not becoming lazy. You are teaching a body that only knows how to drive, that it is allowed sometimes to pull in and repair. Saturday, the desk, the one thing with another thing behind it. That engine of yours is not the problem, and I would never ask you to kill it. It built things that matter. It carried you here. But an engine that never cools is not strong. It is just on its way to the ledger, the body always eventually collects. You are allowed the second half of the rhythm. You are allowed to push and then to stop and to be worth the same in the stopping as in the drive. That is not slacking. That is the thing that lets the drive last. You have not been failing to rest. You have been standing at one end of yourself where stopping felt like falling. It is only a place, and you can walk back toward the middle of it anytime you decide the far end will hold you. I'm Alon. I'll see you next time.