Why working from home is making you paranoid

Side-texting, lack of social cues and pyjama bottoms: workers have been thrust into a new world, and it’s starting to catch up with us, writes

‘Iknow I’m being paranoid, but I can’t help thinking people are having meetings I’m not invited to, or side-texting each other while I’m speaking at the weekly online catch-up.” So said a friend recently, who works in the kind of corporate sector that used to mean a 9-5 job in an open-plan office with scores of other employees. “I feel uneasy all the time about what’s going on behind my back.” Judging by the conversations I have been hearing recently, she is not the only one. Work used to mean being physically in front of those who hold decision-making power over your career; wearing your best work clothes, looking presentable and capable.

Now, we sit, squashed into a box room or attic space, highly conscious of the stain on the wall behind us, dressed from the waist up, with our children squabbling downstairs as we try and come up with a contribution that won’t feel as if it’s falling 40,000 feet into dead air when we un-mute the microphone.

No wonder we feel self-conscious, even a little paranoid (not to be confused with genuine paranoia, which can be as a result of more serious mental illness).

We all know the side-texting is happening — some of us have even done it; a quick eye-roll emoji at a particularly pompous colleague. But there is an emerging feeling of insecurity around remote working in general. Because the limitations of online interaction are not confined to bad image quality or freezing audio. There is an entire psychological component to the new world order, and it’s starting to catch up with us.

The uneasiness isn’t imagined, and it isn’t unreasonable. “From birth, as social animals, even those of us who are more introverted by nature, we use our senses to check how we are interacting with the world; in particular, how other people respond our communication and behaviour,” explains Adrienne Davitt, corporate psychologist and managing director of Davitt Corporate Partners (davittcorporatepartners.com). “This helps us to define who we are, and develop good social and interpersonal skills. Being able to work from home is something many of us wanted more flexibility with, but it has meant four months of not having any real, tangible engagement with our colleagues, friends and even bosses. This leaves us in uncharted territory. We need to physically be in the same space as others in order to clarify our sense of ourselves.

“The prolonged lack of this type of interaction is going to cause anxiety, stress, even depression. After four months, our sense of our professional relationships can begin to feel less firm, steady and grounded.”

This is actually very reassuring: the sense of dislocation isn’t personal, and it isn’t unreasonable. It’s a by-product of the new world in which we are learning to operate. “While Zoom and other ‘face-to-face’ tools do allow us to see and hear others, there is still a significant amount of information not available to us and this can leave us with a sense of unease,” says Adrienne, “or of things not being said or clearly understood.”