The loose definition of emotional labor is when you have to manage or suppress your emotions. This can be in any environment or around anyone including your family, friends and significant others. It’s used to fulfill the “requirements” or act how you SHOULD act. I grew up in a household where anxiety is just stress that’ll go away causing me to take on a lot of emotional labor in a lot of different environments. I am now in my very early 20’s and hadn’t been diagnosed with anxiety until just the beginning of this year after struggling with it for at least six years. I don’t think I realized how much additional emotional labor I was doing for the last couple of years. Since My family didn’t support the idea of me struggling with anxiety and I was undiagnosed, I often second-guessed and gaslit myself into thinking that I probably didn’t have anxiety, that I was just complaining more than everyone else. Forcing myself to deal with the struggles of anxiety while trying to keep up with the norms of being a 20 year old such as having a job, going to school, and trying to hang out with friends was completely overwhelming. I however felt that I had to push through those feelings so I wouldn’t be behind. A lot of the emotional labor that I encountered was self-inflicted; I was never forced into suppressing my emotions at work, school, or with friends. It was myself that felt the need to suppress my feelings so that I could be “better” at whatever task I was doing. This eventually caught up to me because I was skipping classes, breaking down in school bathrooms, and even at work i would have such bad panic attacks that they almost ended up taking to the emergency room because I couldn’t get myself to calm down, but after twenty minutes of being okay, i forced myself to go back to work despite really needing to take a nap. This is just an example of how I would cause emotional labor on myself. With that, there was also the emotional labor that comes with a job, especially ones that are heavy with customer service. I was forced to replace my intrusive thoughts and anxiety with a smile and be super attentive at all parts of the day. On days when I needed to give myself care, I had to give it to someone else because I was too scared to call out sick because technically I wasn’t sick. I mean I wasn’t even diagnosed so I didn’t even know if I was overreacting or not. At the beginning of this year I got diagnosed with anxiety and I have since been learning how to lighten the amount of emotional labor at my work so that I am not harming myself more than benefitting myself. I now do check-ins with myself and see where my head is at because I now know that if I continue to suppress the stress that comes with my work, it can result in a very bad panic/anxiety attack that can wipe out my energy for the day. I wish that I had gotten help earlier so I could have learned more tools to help manage my expectations of myself and lighten my emotional labor in every environment. To conclude my post, although we naturally experience emotional labor no matter where we are, there has been a period of time when i was taking on more emotional labor than i could handle because I wasn’t listening to my own body and its needs (such as taking a day off or requesting more time for an assignment). 

P.S. as someone who has been working in different environments and wasn’t able to get diagnosed for a very long time because of financial and family support; take a day off at work sometimes just because you need it. I promise you nothing is going to change and they wont be disappointed in you. Even if you don’t have anxiety, you still need to make sure you have time to yourself!