Chanel Dubofsky, a 37-year-old writer who splits her time between New York and Massachusetts, believes she’s had overachieving tendencies from a young age. It started when her mother was diagnosed with cancer when Dubofsky was 7 years old, and worsened when her mother relapsed twice—when Dubofsky was 13 and 17. She recalls being in middle school and “waking up in the middle of the night with these super headaches that wouldn’t go away” until she finished her homework.

Dubofsky says her friends in high school enabled this working style. They used to have an informal competition around “who was getting less sleep.” Dubofsky adds: “[My workaholism] was particularly aggressive the college semester when my mom died.” Even after her mother’s death, Dubofsky enrolled in 20 credits’ worth of classes when most people took 12 or 15, staying up all night to do homework, and sleeping in until noon. She managed to get As in her classes, even the morning ones she often skipped because she was too tired, and only later did she tell professors about her recent loss. “I only know there were expectations for how someone in grief was supposed to behave and I wasn’t fulfilling any of them.”

Mental-health research indicates that grief may take many forms—like anger, guilt, depression, or a lack of productivity at work—and that there is no right way to mourn. However, there are unhealthy responses to grief, including making major life changes (like moving or quitting a job before the grief is managed) or trying to minimize or avoid your feelings.

It can be healthy to use work tasks to calm down when stressed, if someone does so in moderation, especially if they find purpose and meaning through their work. But people with traumatic stress or PTSD might be prone to channeling—or avoiding—their unresolved feelings through overwork, and they tend to get so lost in work that they don’t notice physical pain or other discomforts, explains Bryan Robinson, a psychotherapist in private practice and author of Chained To The Desk.

A 29-year-old nonprofit worker in New York, who asked that her name not be included to protect her privacy, identifies as a trauma survivor and workaholic. “For me, working all the time and being in constant motion is one way to avoid thinking about how I’m feeling,” she says. Rebekah Reysen, a researcher on staff at The University of Mississippi who coauthored an article on workaholism in teachers, adds that overworking can be a way to escape: “People can run toward something as they run away from something else.”

Nancy, a New York City-based journalist and documentary filmmaker, saw her overwork tendencies most at play when she collaborated with an abusive partner on a project: “I put all the anger and frustration into the project itself to compensate for how I wasn’t taking care of myself emotionally.”