How Do I Address Invisible Emotional Labor at Work to Protect My Well-Being?

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Dear Liberators,

If you’ve ever found yourself mediating conflicts, comforting upset coworkers, organizing team celebrations, or mentoring others without it being part of your job description, you’ve likely experienced the burden of invisible emotional labor. Emotional labor is the unacknowledged work of managing feelings—your own and others’—to maintain harmony, productivity, and morale. Women, femmes, and non-binary folks, particularly those from marginalized backgrounds, disproportionately shoulder this burden at work.

Supremacy culture depends on this imbalance. It reinforces the expectation that certain people—especially women of color—will perform emotional labor without recognition or compensation. This expectation mirrors the labor that Black and Indigenous women were historically forced to provide, from caretaking roles under slavery to domestic labor in white households. Today, the legacy continues as emotional labor is not only expected but demanded in workplaces under the guise of “teamwork” or being a “good employee.”

But this labor has a cost. It drains energy, time, and mental well-being, leaving little room for personal or professional growth. In fact, when unacknowledged, emotional labor often leads to burnout and resentment. The answer isn’t to shut off empathy but to disrupt the systems that exploit it. Addressing invisible labor requires setting boundaries, advocating for change, and rejecting the narrative that your value is tied to how much you can give.

This week, we’ll examine how emotional labor shows up at work, how to name it, and how to push back on expectations that leave you overextended and undervalued.