Emotional Labor vs. Emotion Work

Not the same thing.

At all.

Emotional labor, you may recall (and if you don’t, look here), is masking your emotions so as to appear professional. Which can be difficult when you’re facing a classroom full of dysregulated, disrespectful, desperate students.

Emotion work is

• acknowledging your emotions

• being courageous enough to work through your emotions (ideally with a psycho-coach)

• coming up with a plan of action based on the information your emotions contain about the state of relationships in your classroom

• implementing that plan of action

While emotional labor can be exhausting, emotion work is

relieving.

Note that emotion work isn’t the opposite of emotional labor. Emotion work is not expressing your emotions freely without giving a hoot about their consequences. No. Emotion work is contained work — done on your own, in a support group, or with a professional — and is aimed at

• accountability (owning your shit)

• mentalizing (formulating what others’ shit might look and feel like)

• understanding (seeing how your shit and their shit fit and how it all makes sense)

• compassion

• a theorized plan of action (that will probably work because it’s based on data)

All this to say:

When you slip up

and your emotions break through your professional mask, don’t give up on yourself. Don’t eviscerate yourself. Find someone who can do emotion work with you. It doesn’t take a lot of time. And there’s so much to learn.