What is Emotional Labor and Why Does it Matter?
I think a lot of people think I just lay down with strangers for 40 hours a week for my job.
As awesome of a life that would be if that was all I ever did, I know almost no cuddlers that actually do that (though some weeks I come close to that). That’s because the actual cuddling part of my job is only one of many acts of labor that’s required for me to run a professional cuddling practice that can sustain me.
What else do I do for my work? I do administrative labor. I do content creation labor (like writing this article). I do public speaking and networking labor. I do sales and prospecting labor.
But there’s one type of labor that a lot of people don’t realize I do that’s in between the cracks of a lot of that labor, something which takes only a little bit of time but is a HUGE output of energy, more so than any amount of cuddling or writing or networking or sales could do. It’s a huge piece of why my work is so valuable to my clients, and that thing is emotional labor.
And most of the time my clients don’t even know I’m doing this work because they don’t even know what it is or that it IS work.
Before we get into what emotional labor is, let’s talk about what it isn’t.
One of the biggest arguments I’ve heard against the existence of emotional labor is that it seems that everything is emotional labor these days. For that argument, this article does a good job explaining that there’s a lot of things that people label as emotional labor but is something else. That doesn’t mean it’s not an unrecognized type of labor, but sociologists have other terms to describe some of these things. So when I say ‘emotional labor,’ I’m not talking about household or parenting task management (“maternal gatekeeping” is the term for that, not my word choice), and I’m not talking about organizing office parties or unassigned, silent cleanup after office events (that’s clerical labor, also not always recognized especially when it’s not in the person’s job description). Those are separate issues than this.
It’s also not a new term. This term has been around since 1983 when Sociologist Arlie Hochschild first coined the term in the book “The Managed Heart” to describe the work that flight attendants and bill collectors were expected to do so they get people to do what they want (deliver bad news and collect payments, respectively).
Lastly, it’s not exclusive to women and just because you’re a woman doesn’t mean that you don’t benefit from emotional labor too. I fully recognize even as I write this article that I’ve forced people to take on emotional labor I didn’t explicitly ask them to do, but they probably felt forced to do it because of the very real possibility that I could easily create consequences for them for not doing so (whether I would actually hold it against them or not is another story; the perception that I could do it in the first place is what matters more and affects our actions). As I’ve said before, I’m not perfect and I’m still learning too.
So now that we know what it’s not and that it’s not just some new hipstery feminist thing that’s catching on these days, what is it then?
The first few lines of its Wikipedia does an amazing job giving the summary, although the complexity of its simple definition is easy to miss:
Emotional labor is the process of managing feelings and expressions to fulfill the emotional requirements of a job. More specifically, workers are expected to regulate their emotions during interactions with customers, co-workers and superiors. This includes analysis and decision making in terms of the expression of emotion, whether actually felt or not, as well as its opposite: the suppression of emotions that are felt but not expressed.
On the surface, it seems simple. I’m sure many of you reading this have done this sometime this week. It might look like not arguing with your boss over how they want the job done and accepting the work you’re given by them. Or it could be staying super positive and validating when your anxiously self-conscious friend needs to be told seven times that yes, they do look really good in that selfie they’re about to post to Instagram and they should just hit the post button already.
It could be as simple as listening to a hard situation your friend is going through and trying not to react too strongly so your friend can let their emotions out and process without you having to actively do anything other than be there. This type of emotional labor is called “holding space”
So if everyone does this all the time, why do we need to talk about it? I mean, if it’s a part of everyday life, why does it matter so much if people are doing more of it? That’s their choice, right?
Well, not always.
Emotional labor tends to be given more often to people that are good at doing it whether they ask to take it on or not, but those people are usually still expected to do what the people with less emotional workloads are given.
Emotional labor as a one-time thing is still work, but it begins to become an even bigger energy tax when it’s happening repeatedly and frequently over a short period of time.
Going back to your friend with the selfie, let’s say they’re super anxious and your friend keeps going to you for reassurance about that Instagram post for hours after they post it. You tell them that it’s great, they look great, no it doesn’t mean anything that their ex liked it, no don’t look at their posts now it doesn’t matter what he’s doing now leave him alone… all the while trying not to get annoyed and staying patient with them. If you’re like me, you’re probably trying really hard not to shake them and tell them to cut it out because you know that won’t help them to hear that and will probably make it harder for them and you.
Now imagine you still have your regular workday on top of all of these anxious interruptions you attend to. If you have healthy boundaries with your friends, maybe you tell them that you don’t have the time or energy to help them right now (which, by the way, I often teach people how to do this in my sessions).
Many more people will willingly help them and realize afterward that oh man, that was a lot of work to just calm them down and convince them not to do something stupid about their ex. And they won’t have nearly as must gusto to put into their workday as they would have liked. And this is when resentment starts to build if this happens over and over again.
But that tiredness you feel afterward is exactly why we need to recognize emotional labor more. Sure, it might have been a few texts here and there in the middle of work, but the mental load it puts on you is the indicator of how much work it really is.
Now think about someone that does that as their job— a therapist, social worker, for example. It’s their job to do emotional labor. They charge more because while they don’t necessarily work 40 hours a week making money with clients, they do so much in the short period of time that they do work. They’re not on the same playing field with someone that doesn’t have to do as much emotional labor or as intensively for their job.
And often, the people that are good at doing emotional labor do a lot more of it than others, and they don’t get paid to do it.
Aside from my cuddle work, let’s talk about an office work environment example.
At my previous job, one of my bosses couldn’t get contractors to pick up the phone and talk to him because he pissed off so many people. We couldn’t move the project forward because no one wanted to deal with his bad attitude. They had me work under him because I had spent the better portion of a year and a half developing relationships with these contractors in another capacity.
That meant for about 2 hours a day when I called them I not only had to get the deliverables from the contractors sent to me (the original job that needed to be done), but I also had to
break the news that I’m calling about the project for my boss
not react strongly either way when they badmouth him
still sound sympathetic and empathetic when they badmouth him so they’d stay on the phone with me
offer them an out to talk to me instead of my boss in the future
Even though this wasn’t a lot of extra time to do this work, it was WAY more mentally taxing than just doing the original task alone would have been. And it meant that I had less energy to do my other work at full capability. This does make a difference in someone’s workload.
This doesn’t mean we should be paying our friends for the emotional labor our friends and family give us all the time.
But it does mean we should be mindful of how often we inadvertently ask for this from people and how it affects how we view them when they don’t do it for us.
Emotional labor is something friends do for each other sometimes. We do it as parents. We do it in relationships. We do it as strangers even. We do it in so many other relationships that don’t necessarily have money involved at all.
But sometimes we need more emotional labor than any of these people can give us (or want to). That doesn’t make them bad friends or family members. It just means they can’t help you at that moment. They might later, but if they say no to you, it doesn’t mean they think you’re a bad person.
Going back to our anxious selfie friend, I’ve been that friend that said, “Hey, I’m sorry you’re freaking out about this right now. I think you look great. If you need more reassurance can you ask someone else for it today? I’m dealing with a lot right now and won’t be the best support for you right now.”
Not everyone says it that eloquently. Sometimes it’ll sound like “I can’t do this right now, can you talk to someone else?” However someone breaks it to you, it’s really easy to interpret it as “I don’t want to deal with you right now because you’re awful” when that might not be the case at all.
And putting those kinds of words into someone else’s mouth is how big assumptions get made about other people, big fights happen, relationships die, friendships fade, “I’d like to speak to the manager” conversations happen, employees get fired, and entire demographics get stigmatized labels made about them.
And just because your friend has the time to listen doesn’t mean they have the energy to.
Like I said previously, emotional labor doesn’t necessarily take a lot of time to do, but it does take a lot of energy. I’ve personally lost clients that asked for me to do extensive emotional labor outside of sessions that I wasn’t willing to do. I decide to do emotional labor and trust my boundaries around offering it, but I’ll do it in sessions when I’ve set aside the energy to do it.
So what can you do if someone close to you won’t do emotional labor for you when you ask them to?
Accept that they can’t help you right now because they have their own lives to deal with without holding it against them. You can evaluate later if this is a recurring thing that happens in the relationship and if you need to talk about it with them later.
Ask someone else to help. That could be a friend or a professional.
See a therapist.
Call a hotline (like this one)
Or use an app (like this one)
Or maybe see a professional cuddler (like me).