Emotional Labour Part Two: The Toll it Takes

Welcome to part 2 of our 4 part series on emotional labour. In part 1, we identified just what constitutes emotional labour: the job of taking care of everyone and everything while still keeping your authentic feelings zipped. It can constitute the unpaid component of your regular job as well as the unrecognised labour holding your home, family, and community together. But wherever emotional labour is required, one thing is true: it exacts a toll on the one who performs it. So, let’s take a look at just why that is:

If you’ve ever had to deal with a loved one (either a toddler or an adult you’re caring for) who’s in the throes of a tantrum, you’ll know immediately how it feels to keep a lid on your own emotions while attending to the one in your charge. Despite your possible feelings of frustration, anger, despair, sadness, desperation, or exhaustion (there are bound to be others), you simply know you cannot afford to display these emotions. It’s not the time, it’s not what you want to disclose to the one you are caring for, and it’s simply not helpful in the moment. It’s the same in your workplace. While a customer (or even a colleague) may be rude, demanding, selfish, or even verbally or passively aggressive, you cannot reproach them for their behaviour. Instead, you need to summon all your strength to swallow your own frustration and get on with the job of serving or working with them. This huge effort comes at a cost.

Research tells us when we are forced to continually suppress our emotions (as in: “I want to scream at you but I mustn’t – I must speak calmly to you instead”), it takes significant mental and emotional energy. That’s because ‘putting on an act’ for the benefit of the one we are caring for, takes a great deal more energy than displaying our authentic emotions. Which isn’t surprising given, while you’re doing this ‘bottling up,’ you’re actually doubling your workload. First, you’re working hard to keep calm, and secondly, you’re also attending to the essential needs of the one you’re caring for.

This situation plays out even in small, daily, domestic situations. You may, for instance, have something you very much want to do for yourself (such as heading out for a walk with a friend or working in your flower garden), yet you know, instead, you have to spend an hour on the phone, scheduling your partner’s medical appointments. The result is you expend energy bottling the frustration at having to do this, while all the same time knowing if you don’t make the appointments, your partner’s health will deteriorate further, which will mean even more work for you down the track. You double down and work harder on the task of making the appointments in the hopes you’ll be free-er, sooner.

Equally detrimental to your own health, is you are most unlikely to receive any kind of support from the one on whose behalf you are labouring. Either because you have normalised emotional labour as an everyday part of your life, or because you don’t want to emotionally impact the one you are caring for, you keep tight-lipped about how you’re feeling. This leads to being under- appreciated, taken for granted, or being labelled as the ‘capable, strong one’ by others who come to expect no less from you. In other words, your ‘acting’ means you are effectively denying yourself any kind of support mechanism. If and when you do show signs of distress, the ones you care for are more likely than ever to go into a decline – which only means you are more ‘needed’ than ever. It’s a no-win situation.

If being an emotional labourer sounds unfair, it is, especially when the toll it takes impacts your own well-being. In our next article on emotional labour, we’ll take a close-up look at the symptoms of emotional burnout, and the effect it can take on your physical and mental health. Until then, be sure to look at your own behaviour – are you bottling things up in an unhealthy way, or are you finding appropriate and acceptable ways to express how you really feel?