For many people, work no longer ends when they leave the office. Emails are checked late at night, conversations are replayed internally, and the body remains tense long after the workday is over. What was once considered “just a busy period” slowly becomes a constant state of alert. Home, instead of functioning as a place of rest, becomes another extension of work.
In my clinical work as a therapist in Melbourne, I often hear patients say, “I’m home, but I can’t switch off.” This experience is not simply about workload or poor time management. From a psychoanalytic perspective, it speaks to how work has come to occupy a central place in identity, desire, and anxiety. Understanding why work stress follows us home requires looking beyond practical stressors to the unconscious meanings attached to work itself.
Recognising When Work Stress Follows You Home
Work stress becomes problematic not when work is demanding, but when it infiltrates psychic space that should allow for rest, play, and separation. The key question is not how much you work, but whether work has become impossible to leave behind.
This often shows up subtly at first: difficulty relaxing in the evening, irritability with loved ones, or a persistent sense of urgency even during downtime. Over time, the boundary between work and personal life erodes. Home becomes another site of performance, self-monitoring, and internal pressure.
From a Lacanian perspective, this reflects a difficulty with separation. The subject remains tethered to the demands of the Other — here, the workplace, supervisors, clients, or institutional expectations — even in the absence of any direct demand. What persists is not the task itself, but the anxiety attached to it (Lacan, 1962–1963).
Signs of Spillover and Emotional Exhaustion
Work-life spillover often manifests emotionally before it becomes visible behaviourally. Common signs include chronic fatigue that sleep does not relieve, emotional numbness, heightened reactivity, and a sense of emptiness or detachment at home. Many people describe feeling “on edge” without knowing why.
Burnout is frequently misunderstood as simple overwork. Clinically, it often involves a collapse of meaning. The subject continues to function, but without a sense of vitality or desire. Pleasure is postponed indefinitely, and rest feels undeserved or unproductive.
Lacan’s formulation of anxiety is helpful here. Anxiety, he argues, is not without an object; it arises when something of the subject’s relation to desire is threatened or exposed (Lacan, 1962–1963). In the context of work, anxiety often signals that work has become the primary organiser of worth, recognition, and existence. When this structure begins to falter, exhaustion follows.
People searching for a psychologist in Hawthorn or a therapist in Melbourne often do so at this point — when functioning remains intact, but something essential feels lost.
Why Detachment Is So Difficult
Many people assume they should simply “care less” about work. Yet detachment is not a decision that can be made through willpower alone. Work frequently carries unconscious meanings that make separation feel risky.
For some, work functions as a stabilising signifier: If I am productive, I exist. For others, it is tied to fantasies of being indispensable, admired, or secure. These fantasies are not irrational; they are attempts to manage anxiety in relation to the Other.
Lacan reminds us that anxiety emerges when the subject comes too close to the question of desire — their own or the Other’s (Lacan, 1962–1963). When work is the primary site where desire is organised, stepping away from it can provoke anxiety rather than relief. Silence, rest, or unstructured time may feel unsettling, even threatening.
This helps explain why weekends can feel oddly uncomfortable, or why holidays are filled with restlessness. Without work’s demands, the subject is left alone with questions that have been deferred: What do I want when no one is asking anything of me?
Therapy Techniques and Practical Strategies
Psychodynamic psychotherapy does not begin by telling patients to reduce hours or practise better self-care, though these may eventually become part of the work. Instead, therapy creates a space to listen to how work stress is spoken about, repeated, and justified.
In the therapeutic setting, patients often discover how deeply their sense of self is bound to productivity, responsibility, or recognition. The aim is not to dismantle commitment to work, but to loosen the unconscious necessity that work must occupy every psychic space.
From a Lacanian orientation, therapy allows anxiety to be approached rather than avoided. Anxiety is treated as a signal, not an enemy — an indication that something in the subject’s relation to work and desire requires attention (Lacan, 1962–1963). This shift alone can reduce the compulsion to remain constantly “on.”
Practically, therapy can also support the gradual reintroduction of limits: learning to tolerate unanswered emails, incomplete tasks, or moments of non-productivity. These are not merely behavioural changes, but symbolic ones.
Those seeking psychotherapy in Melbourne often find that once work is no longer the sole anchor of identity, space opens for other forms of satisfaction — relational, creative, or simply restful.
Building Routines and Boundaries for Recovery
Boundaries are often discussed as external rules, but psychoanalytically they are also internal structures. A boundary is effective only when it is symbolically supported — when the subject can bear the anxiety that separation produces.
Simple routines can help mark transitions: changing clothes after work, taking a short walk, or creating a consistent end-of-day ritual. These acts function as symbolic cuts, signalling that one position is being left and another entered.
Equally important is reclaiming time that is not organised around achievement. This may initially feel empty or uncomfortable. From a psychoanalytic perspective, this discomfort is meaningful. It signals a loosening of the grip work has had on desire.
Working with a psychologist in Kew or Hawthorn can help make sense of the resistance that often arises when boundaries are introduced. The goal is not perfect balance, but a liveable rhythm — one that allows for work without letting it consume the subject entirely.
Conclusion: When to Seek Professional Help
When work stress follows you home, it is not a sign of personal weakness or poor resilience. It often indicates that work has come to occupy too central a place in the psychic economy. Anxiety and exhaustion are signals that something needs to be reconfigured.
If you find that rest no longer restores you, that relationships are strained, or that work occupies your thoughts relentlessly, it may be time to seek support. A therapist in Melbourne or a psychologist in Hawthorn trained in psychodynamic psychotherapy can offer a space to think, speak, and slowly separate from what overwhelms.
The aim is not to abandon work, but to return it to its proper place — as one part of life, rather than its entirety. When work no longer follows you home, home can once again become a place of recovery, presence, and desire.
References
Lacan, J. (1962–1963). The seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book X: Anxiety (C. Gallagher, Trans.). Unpublished seminar.
Lacan, J. (1962–1963). Anxiety. In The seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book X. Paris: Éditions du Seuil.
Disclaimer
These writings are not therapy; they are general information about therapy. They are not a substitute for therapy or professional psychological advice. While care has been taken to ensure accuracy and reference to published research, therapy and psychoanalytic work are domains of ongoing study. A written text cannot replace the conversation that takes place in therapy sessions, which are dynamic, evolving, and centred on individual experience. Each person’s situation is unique, and meanings can only be spoken and explored within one’s own sessions. If something in these writings resonates with you and you are considering therapy, you are welcome to book a session.