You’ve just been promoted and you’re going to earn more. Instead of celebrating, you impose on yourself to work twice as hard to justify that raise. Sound familiar? You’re not the only one who suffers. A recent study, I Can’t Stop: The Effects of Psychological Climate for Overwork on Recovery Experiences, published in 2026 in the scientific journal Occupational Health Science, talks about compensatory overworking or compensatory overwork.
The study is full of warnings about excessive perfectionism, cognitive workaholism, and the guilt of recovering instead of working.
I can’t live, I have to work
A pay raise or a job change with good economic conditions can be the triggers of disaster. We feel guilty for earning more money and we need to compensate by working more.
“Many people quickly adapt their lifestyle to their new income. What at first seems like an economic improvement ends up becoming the new normal,” explains Marta Freire, educational psychologist, executive coach, and expert in Human Behavior DISC and Relational Intelligence.
Let no one think I don’t deserve it
An increase in income is usually accompanied by more responsibility. In profiles especially perfectionist, self-demanding, or with a strong need to prove their worth, this change can trigger the sense that they must strive even more to justify what they receive.
“For some people, earning more doesn’t confirm their value, but increases the internal suspicion that they are not up to it. The person believes that at any moment they will be unmasked and will be discovered to not be worth what others think, and the need to justify every euro with more effort appears,” she notes.
That is what some authors call compensatory overworking: working more not because it is objectively necessary, but to justify the discomfort that comes from feeling that you must continually prove something. “People with self-esteem closely tied to their achievements tend to use work as a main source of validation. In these cases, a higher salary can reinforce the idea that their value depends on continuing to produce, achieving goals, or being always available,” the expert emphasizes.
You are as valuable as the hours you put in
Part of this guilt has to do with an idea we have inherited for generations: to directly link the time worked with the value generated. “For a long time, work was linked to a very clear exchange: the more hours you worked, the more money you earned. It was a fairly direct relationship between effort, time and reward,” she notes.
Today we live in a very different context. In many jobs time is no longer the sole measure of remuneration, but the ability to reach objectives, solve problems, make decisions or add value. Yet many people still operate with the old mental model: if I’m not doing, I’m not producing; and if I’m not producing, I’m losing something.
“From there grows much of the guilt about resting. The problem is that we continue evaluating our performance with criteria from another era. We struggle to accept that, in many current jobs, rest is not the opposite of productivity, but a necessary condition to maintain it,” she adds.
The culture of work was learned at home
Education and family play a fundamental role because they are the first spaces where we learn what it means to work, strive, and succeed. Many people have grown up hearing messages that linked personal value to sacrifice, to the hours dedicated, or to the ability to endure.
Freire points out that we are now “living a transition that is not only technological, but also mental. For decades we have measured work by the amount of time we devoted; now more and more professions are evaluated by results, the solutions provided, or the impact generated.”
Generation Z rebels
All this is joined by the culture of suffering. “For generations we have associated suffering with merit. We have grown up hearing messages like ‘no one lends you anything’, ‘you have to sacrifice yourself’, or ‘if it doesn’t cost, it isn’t worth it’. And we have ended up confusing effort with suffering, as if they were the same. And they are not. Effort is necessary to learn, grow, or achieve goals. Suffering, on the other hand, does not always add value,” she assures.
Although it is not a phenomenon exclusive to a specific age range, the new generations have entered a different labor market. Generation Z, formed roughly by those born from the late 1990s to the early 2010s, has grown up in an environment where knowledge, creativity, innovation, or the ability to solve problems carry more weight. This leads, as the psychologist notes, “many young people to question the idea that working more hours necessarily translates into delivering more value.”
Fear of not measuring up
Behind compensatory overworking there are usually several psychological mechanisms that feed off one another. Among the most common are high self-demand, high perfectionism, a self-esteem level conditioned by performance, and the tendency to measure one’s own worth by the results obtained. These people tend to feel that they deserve recognition, calm, or even rest only after having achieved certain objectives.
On top of that, overexertion can become an emotional regulation strategy. If it is something ponctual, it’s normal, since we all want to get ahead of certain unforeseen events. “If overexertion stops responding to a real need and becomes a habitual way of functioning, it can hide the fear of not measuring up, losing control, making mistakes, or not achieving the expected results.”
Another possible reason? Feeling good about yourself. Many people have learned to relate their well-being to being busy, making progress, or achieving goals. “When this happens, activity stops being a choice and becomes an emotional necessity. We often discover that the hard part is not working, but allowing oneself to rest without feeling uncomfortable, restless, or guilty,” she notes.
Affects women more
Both men and women can fall into overexertion dynamics when they feel the need to constantly prove their professional value. “That said, some studies conclude that impostor syndrome is more common among women than among men,” the expert says.
The vicious circle of promotion
The relationship is very tight because people with impostor syndrome often have difficulty recognizing their own achievements. Rather than attributing them to their ability, effort, or experience, they tend to explain them by external factors such as luck, circumstances, or even the benevolence of others. This is what we call an ‘external locus of control’. In many cases they live with the feeling that they have arrived where they are by chance and with the fear that, at any moment, others will discover that they are not as competent as they seem.
That’s why, when they receive a promotion, recognition, or a salary increase, they do not always interpret it as a logical consequence of their work, but as something provisional or undeserved. The paradox is that what should reinforce their confidence often increases their insecurity. If they earn more money, they may think they have even more to prove. If they receive more recognition, they feel the expectations on them are higher. And if they reach a higher position, the fear of not being up to it appears.
Unlearning to work excessively
“When a person reaches situations of anxiety, exhaustion or chronic overexertion, it is logical to intervene first on the symptoms. We need to recover energy, reduce the level of activation and return to a state of stability. But once that initial phase is overcome, it is advisable to raise our gaze and ask ourselves more important questions,” she adds.
These are some of those questions:
- What am I dedicating my time, energy and effort to?
- On what pillars have I built my life?
- What weight do work, health, personal relationships or enjoyment carry?
- Am I living according to my values or simply responding to expectations I have accumulated over the years?
Rather than seeking quick solutions, it may be necessary to rethink some fundamental decisions and redefine what success, well-being, or a satisfying life means to us: “In addition to alleviating the symptoms, we need to review the life model that is generating them”.
And relearning to rest without guilt
One of the keys is differentiating between guilt and responsibility.
“Responsibility has to do with what depends on us: our decisions, our actions and the impact they can have on a situation. Guilt, on the other hand, is an emotion. It is an internal signal that appears when we feel we might be doing something wrong or failing to meet an expectation, ours or others’,” she says.
Your worth is far more than what you do for work
All that remains is to unlearn the connection between personal worth and productivity.“One of the most fascinating traits of human beings is precisely their capacity to review beliefs, question patterns and build new ways of interpreting reality,” the psychologist explains.
Indeed, the longer we have tied our personal worth to our productivity, the deeper the work needed to modify that belief. It isn’t the same to change a notion acquired a few months ago as one that has accompanied us for decades and has been reinforced by family, education, the work environment, and even the culture in which we live.
One of the most powerful tools to unlearn this association is self-knowledge. When a person identifies their strengths, talents and natural abilities, as the expert asserts, “they begin to understand that not everything depends on the amount of effort invested; in fact, those who best leverage their strengths manage to contribute more value with less wear and tear.”
In the professional realm, this can translate into better solutions, better relationships or better results without the need to continually increase effort.
