Are you Suffering from Emotional Labour Burnout?

Lately, we’ve been talking a lot about emotional labour on the home front – the daily, unpaid, usually unrecognised, and mammoth task of managing a household’s personal needs, all while keeping your own emotions and needs in check. Whether it’s scheduling everyone’s appointments, keeping track of important family items such as insurance policies and spare keys, checking on the state of your relationship, being a sounding board for your moody teen, tactfully encouraging your partner to fit their 40 minutes of exercise into their day, or checking your elderly neighbour is safely out of bed in the morning, it’s a never ending round of acting as the solo-support crew for those who live with and around you. Sometimes it just makes you want to scream – but you never do because holding it together is all up to you! No wonder your body and mind can eventually begin to rebel, and when they do, it comes with symptoms you don’t deserve. Let’s check out just what the symptoms of emotional labour burnout might look like:

Physical symptoms

Appetite and dietary change

You find you’re overeating foods (and it’s often with high-calorie, sugar-laden, comfort food or ultra-processed junk food) that give you a fleeting sense of happiness but which come at a cost. Or you might find yourself skipping meals because there’s just no time to eat, or your stomach is queasy.

Stomach upsets

Your stomach is gripey, and you’re suffering from diarrhoea because stress (not to mention unhealthy food) is playing havoc with your gut bacteria. You may even be starting to wonder if you have the beginnings of a stomach ulcer.

Illness

Stress is suppressing your immune system, so infections may be coming thick and fast. If there’s a cold or flu going round, it’s as though you’re putting up your hand to be first in line to get it.

Sleep-deprivation

You’re utterly exhausted but you just can’t get to sleep – or you wake throughout the night in a hyper-alert state. Cortisol (the stress-hormone) is robbing your body of the melatonin that used to help you drift-off.

Headache

You can only tread on egg-shells or hold-in your emotions for so long before tension-headaches begin to show up. Tight neck and shoulders tighten the muscles in your scalp, and there’s no let-up while you’re taking care of everyone but yourself.

Skin problems

Stress hormones are running riot through your body, triggering inflammation which shows up as a rash, or flare-ups of existing conditions such as eczema. Stress can even trigger viral sores such as herpes simplex (cold sores).

Emotional symptoms

Anxiety

Anxiety rises as you feel like you’re trapped in the trenches with no way to escape. As a result, you may find yourself losing touch with your feelings, and thinking and acting like a robot instead of a human being with their own needs.

Irritability and frustrations

You find yourself on a short fuse, snapping at those around you and frustrated at the way they do something, or the time it takes them – because whatever their actions may be, you feel they’re just making more work for you.

Seeking escape

There are tasks you feel you have to complete but you just don’t get around to them. This is because you’re in ‘escape’ mode as you look for ways to leave the stress behind. You might spend all your time on the net hunting out cruises you know you’ll never sign up for, or checking out job opportunities to get you out of the house and your never-ending round of duties.

Unhealthy self-soothing

You may find yourself reaching for alcohol to ‘relax’ you, or begin taking more anti-anxiety or sleep medication than your GP has prescribed. You may spend hours, endlessly scrolling social media as a distraction from your stress, or even consider an affair – anything to change what’s going on in your life.

Reduced performance

The worse you feel, the harder you are on yourself, and the more you try. But your performance keeps sinking because you’re exhausted. You burn your cooking, you’re late for appointments, you misplace your tools, you injure yourself carrying out simple tasks.

The symptoms of emotional labour burnout don’t paint a pretty picture. In fact they’re the last thing in the world we would wish on anyone – so why do we accept them in ourselves? The fact is, we don’t have to – and we shouldn’t. In our next and final article in this series, we’ll be taking a hard look at how to manage life so you don’t reach the stage of emotional labour burnout. However, if you do, we’ll look at how to take steps to recover. Stay tuned!