Most mental healthcare professionals define emotional labor as the invisible, unpaid work that people feel pressured to do in order to keep others happy. That’s the basic definition, but others include mental labor under this umbrella as well.
Essentially, it involves all the thinking, feeling, anticipating, planning, management, and regulation that’s required to keep relationships functioning well, regardless of whether they’re platonic or romantic. The tasks mentioned below are some of the most common ones, as well as those most taken for granted.
1. Being a perpetual teacher (or parent).
Many people find themselves in positions where they are an eternal teacher or parent, including towards their partner if need be. This kind of emotional labor can happen in a workplace, where a superior is constantly teaching and managing subordinates, or at home, for example, perpetually answering children’s questions, teaching adolescents new tasks, or dealing with a spouse’s lack of capability.
Some people seem to expect their spouses to parent them, and ask them unnecessary questions about things they should be perfectly capable of sorting out for themselves. I was once in an extremely stressful relationship in which my partner would ask me how to serve himself from cooking pots, or how to run a bath, even though he had lived alone for years before getting together with me. The expectation of emotional labor like this takes an immense toll on people over time.
2. Shouldering the responsibility for doling out consequences.
Whether in a workplace or domestic situation, there’s inevitably a “good guy” and “bad guy” in positions of leadership. One gets to be the cool, friendly one who has great camaraderie with subordinates (or children), while the other has to be the disciplinarian.
It requires a great deal of emotional labor to explain to people why the thing they did was wrong, work with them so they understand the consequences of their behavior, and then dole out some of those consequences when needed. Most people don’t like to cause others grief or shame, nor do we want to cause potentially irreparable harm to our relationships by enforcing punishment for wrongdoing. As such, this puts a lot of strain on the one who always has to be the “bad guy”.
3. Remembering preferences, health concerns, etc.
I recently read a post on social media in which a young woman asked her grandfather how he took his tea, and his response was: “I have no idea! Ask your grandmother.” This kind of attitude isn’t uncommon at all. In fact, it’s common in work scenarios as well. Just think about all the times your employers have asked you how to use devices or processes that their businesses depend upon!
One major aspect of emotional and mental labor is having to remember details about other people’s personal preferences, health concerns, and so on, so that they’re taken into account in various situations.
For example, an operations manager at work will have to remember different staff members’ health or personal issues when planning events, or even in daily communication. Similarly, a parent may have to keep track of every family member’s dietary restrictions or preferences, as well as their medication schedules, and personal support needs, and remind all other members of these details on a regular basis.
4. Helping others regulate their own thoughts and feelings.
Those who have difficulty regulating their own emotions invariably turn to friends, family members, and even colleagues to help them do so. These feelings could revolve around anxiety, depression, insecurity, or anger, and they often either “just need to vent” to someone to alleviate them or require constant advice and reassurance.
Having to constantly output for others’ benefit saps people’s energy quite severely, but most are still expected to smile and continue doing so for the sake of keeping things harmonious. So they go over their colleagues’ emails to reassure them that they aren’t aggressive or rude, they listen to their friends rehash the same traumas they’ve been talking about for decades, help their partner and kids learn how to express anger or disappointment in a healthy manner, and so on. Ad infinitum.
5. Having to constantly modulate personal tone and behavior.
In most relationships, one person does a lot more emotional labor than the other when it comes to communication. Rather than being able to speak their mind, they have to modulate their tone, choose their words carefully, and essentially walk on eggshells so they don’t risk being misunderstood by their partner or other family member.
This other family member likely has free rein to express themselves however they see fit because that’s “just the way they are”, but the one carrying the emotional management load doesn’t have that freedom. They may have their tone constantly policed, so they have to bite down on anger, disappointment, frustration, and so on. They keep their voice light and pleasant, their demeanor open and loving, and their own feelings tamped down, unexpressed, and unresolved.
6. Keeping the peace by being the perpetual mediator.
A key aspect of emotional labor is finding the magical middle road that will keep as many people happy as possible. It’s the expectation to be a perpetual diplomat: the arbiter in disagreements, mollifier of hurt feelings, and negotiator for the sake of forward momentum in any given situation.
People who are upset with one another have no problem slinging barbs back and forth: it doesn’t cost them any emotional energy to do so. The mediator, however, is the one who has to put forth immense labor to calm them down and interpret their feelings in such a way that both feel respected and understood. They’re not allowed to express their own emotional turmoil because all their energy is directed towards managing those around them.
7. Maintaining communication with extended family members.
In any family, there’s usually one person who’s responsible for keeping the familial ties woven strongly. This is often an older female relative who keeps a huge calendar or planner in which they keep track of everyone’s birthdays, important dates, healthcare issues, holiday plans, and so on.
They’ll reach out to everyone regularly to keep lines of communication open, as well as to keep tabs on holiday plans, anniversary gatherings, births, deaths, and so on. Then it’s up to them to inform everyone else so that nobody feels snubbed or left out if they aren’t invited to cousin Marvin’s bassoon recital.
8. Having to play four-dimensional chess with every person involved so nobody gets upset or hurt feelings.
Having to constantly anticipate how every person involved in a discussion may interpret X information, then having to put on different masks to frame that info for each individual, is a Herculean task that would drive just about anyone mad over time. It can transform even the simplest interactions into gauntlets, especially when dealing with people who have very different personalities that require completely different approaches.
For example, a very anxious person who’s easily triggered into crying has to be approached differently than a no-nonsense, action-oriented individual, so they can’t be dealt with at the same time. The one who has to deal with them both has to take on the persona that best suits each individual’s preferences, which is utterly exhausting. Even then, if anyone misinterprets something, gets hurt feelings, or needs further explanation, those costumes have to be put back on and the masquerade continued.
Final thoughts…
Emotional labor is one of the key reasons why so many people feel exhausted and burned out all the time. Most don’t even realize just how much emotional work they’re doing on a constant basis: they’ve been taking care of so many things for so long that this exhaustion is a baseline of normalcy for them.
It’s only if they have the opportunity to step away for a while that they realize the enormous load they’ve been carrying, and how much of themselves they have set aside for the sake of pleasing others.
