Emotional labor is the new women's work.

High functioning womanhood is killing you softly.

There’s a kind of labor that doesn’t come with a job title, but somehow you’re always the one doing it.

It doesn’t get clocked, tracked, or compensated. It slips in between everything you’re “supposed” to do. Like catching the shift in someone’s tone and calculating if it’s worth the emotional detour. Like tiptoeing around his buddy’s divorce so he doesn’t spiral. Like cleaning up the mood at dinner like it’s your damn job.

You’re not doing this because you’re just so sweet and thoughtful. You’re doing it because if you don’t handle it, everything implodes. People get weird. Rooms go tense. And somehow, even if no one says it, guess who ends up shouldering the blame?

This is emotional labor.
And if you’re anything like me, it’s been running in the background of your life like spyware since puberty.

It’s the ongoing, unpaid gig of managing everyone’s emotional climate, preempting tantrums, reading the room like a psychic, keeping everything “chill” so nobody has to confront their own mess. And you’ve done it so long, so well, it stopped registering as work.

They call you chill. Easygoing. The peacemaker.
What they mean is… you’re the emotional sponge who soaks up everyone’s bullshit and doesn’t complain.

You’re great at it. Too great. So now it’s just “who you are.” Not labor. Not energy. Just a woman who magically knows how to make everyone else more comfortable, without ever asking for the same.

But let’s be honest. This isn’t some cute personality trait.
This is performance.
And if emotional intelligence only ever benefits them, it’s not intelligence. It’s exploitation.

The Role You Inherited Without Knowing It

You didn’t sign a contract. No one sat you down and said, “Here’s how to manage everyone’s emotions while slowly forgetting your own.” But you got the memo anyway.

You learned by watching.
Watching your mom change the temperature of a room without ever raising her voice.
Watching her apologize for your dad’s moods, steer conversations like a hostage negotiator, and smile like nothing was wrong while everything was.

She was the thermostat. Everyone else just reacted.
And you were taking notes before you even had the vocabulary for it.

You learned early that someone had to hold the room together.
And somehow, that someone always wore heels and carried guilt like a handbag.

Maybe she called it strength. Maybe nobody called it anything at all.
But the message landed… better to preempt the discomfort than deal with the fallout.

So you got good at reading the room. Smoothing things over.
Taking care of what no one asked you to, but what you knew would explode if left untouched.

And you didn’t leave it at home.
You brought it everywhere, into friendships, classrooms, jobs, beds.
You mastered the art of making things easier for other people, so they stopped noticing that you ever needed anything at all.

This wasn’t called labor. It was called grace.
It was maturity. Emotional intelligence. “She’s just really grounded.”

And sure, it gave you power, for a while.
You got to be the one who always kept it together.
Until you realized that meant you were never allowed to fall apart.

You didn’t ask for this role.
You inherited it.
And the more seamless it became, the harder it got to imagine living any other way.

But let’s get something straight…
This wasn’t your instinct. This wasn’t your “nature.”
It was a role. A routine. A performance.
And you learned your lines too well.

The System That Keeps Them Emotionally Unskilled

Some people are trained to track the tension in the room. Others are trained to assume someone else will handle it, like magic. Or more accurately, like you.

It’s not always about gender… but let’s not kid ourselves. Most of the time, the invisible load ends up on women’s shoulders, not because we’re naturally better at it, but because we got handed the emotional mop before we could even spell “conflict resolution.”

You got taught to read the room before you could read a book. To notice the vibe shift and neutralize it before anyone else even clocks that something’s off. You became fluent in the unspoken, and got praised for being “so mature for your age” instead of “wildly overburdened with other people’s emotional baggage.”

Meanwhile, there's a whole other script playing for the emotionally untrained masses. They get to roll in late, say whatever pops into their head, and call it authenticity. They don’t regulate shit, they assume the vibes will self heal. Because, historically… someone else (you) always handled the clean up.

And once someone else always does it, you learn you don’t have to. Congratulations, you’ve unlocked Emotional Free Trial Mode, lifetime access, no work required.

That’s the hidden curriculum. Some of us were cast as the unpaid emotional support team before we even figured out what we were feeling. We don’t walk into rooms, we enter bracing, adjusting, scanning like we’re getting hazard pay (spoiler: we’re not).

You see it everywhere.
In families, where one person smooths things over while the rest get to spiral freely.
In offices, where “she just really understands people” means she’s absorbing everyone’s dysfunction and still sending thank you emails.
In friend groups, where one woman is basically the HR department and no one thinks to ask her how she’s doing.

It’s not that the people doing less don’t care. They just never had to lift what you’ve been carrying since someone called you “mature beyond your years” and thought that was a compliment.

And the system makes damn sure they stay comfy. They coast. You collapse.

The Discipline of No Longer Doing It

I didn’t notice how much I was carrying until my body started dropping receipts. Not a breakdown, just death by a thousand paper cuts. Thinning hair. Chronic irritability. A level of tired that sleep couldn’t touch. That haunted feeling of being everyone’s emotional support animal while they somehow still managed to disappoint me.

They didn’t mean to. They just didn’t see it. Because I had gotten too good at keeping things smooth. At catching the tension before it snapped. At preemptively managing the emotional weather so nobody else had to bring an umbrella.

But just because you’re good at it doesn’t mean it’s sustainable. And just because it looks like “calm” doesn’t mean it’s peace.

What people call burnout is often just emotional labor that’s reached its boiling point. It’s your nervous system staging a coup. It’s your body saying, “We’re done being everyone’s unlicensed therapist.” It’s your instincts, once sharp and sacred, muted by years of serving other people’s comfort.

When you’ve trained yourself to scan the room before you check in with yourself, you start losing signal. You don’t notice your own rising frustration, because someone else’s discomfort feels louder. You minimize your needs, because somewhere along the way, you learned theirs mattered more.

And here’s where the shift happens. It doesn’t take an outburst. It takes discipline. The quiet, almost boring discipline of not doing what you always did.

Stopping chasing closure. Letting silences breathe. Letting messes unfold. No longer rescuing people from the natural consequences of their own emotional laziness.

And guess what, the world’s not going to end. But my clarity is rushing back like a wave that finally had room to crash.

Because this wasn’t just my habit. It’s a generational inheritance. Emotional labor, sold to women as strength. Packaged as virtue. Rewarded when it’s silent, punished when it’s named.

So I’m naming it. And I’m stopping. Not out of spite. Out of self respect.

I’m learning to tolerate the guilt that bubbles up when I don’t overextend. I’m rebuilding trust with my own needs, the ones I used to treat like distractions.

And if any of this feels familiar, if you’re carrying a tired you can’t explain, it’s not weakness. It’s the weight of a job you never applied for. A job you’ve been showing up to every day like it’s love.

But it’s not love to abandon yourself.

You’re not withholding. You’re waking up. You’re letting the silence speak for once. You’re withdrawing labor, and reclaiming your energy like your life depends on it. Because it does.

Something I’m Still Learning

There was a version of me that wore self sacrifice like a flex. Thought holding it all meant I was just built different. That being the one who never crumbled was something to be proud of.

And maybe it was, for a while. Until I realized I had no memory of what it felt like to not be holding something.

That’s the trap of emotional labor. It doesn’t just exhaust you, it disconnects you. From your body. From your wants. From your own damn mind. You get so used to monitoring everyone else’s moods that you forget how to check in with your own. You forget what rest feels like. You forget how long you’ve been functioning on fumes because nobody ever taught you to stop and ask, “How do I feel?”

I’m not writing this because I’ve got it all figured out. I still catch myself offering comfort I don’t have. I still swoop in to fix things before they’ve even cracked. I still feel guilty when I choose silence over solving. But I’m learning.

I’m learning to pause. To not jump in. To stop auto-volunteering. To let other people sit with their own discomfort for once, and not treat that like a crisis.

The goal isn’t to be immune to emotional labor. The goal is to know when you’re slipping into it out of habit, and to choose yourself anyway.

And no, that doesn’t happen in one glorious “aha” moment. It’s a thousand tiny shifts. A hundred interruptions to the old programming. Breath by breath. Choice by choice. Until your nervous system realizes it’s finally safe to stop bracing.

Until the part of you that always steps in starts to sit back instead, and notices the world still spins.

That’s where I’m at. Between awareness and instinct. Still unlearning. But finally unlearning in the right damn direction.

From one ex-emotional receptionist to another,

Ash Pariseau