When Care Becomes Emotional Labor

In this episode, I talk through disrespect in a care=based work environment and the emotional labor that comes with it.  I reflect on what happens when people who are in despair take their anger out on staff, while upper management continues to push the idea that everyone must be kept "happy."  This is an honest conversation about impossible expectations placed on care workers, and the mental toll of trying to stay professional while carrying other people's pain.

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Transcript

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This is unfiltered everyday shit. I'm India Sherell. This podcast is a space for real conversations about life as it's actually happening. The good, the bad, in everything in between. It's unfiltered, it's honest, and it's unapologetic. So. Let's unpack dealing with despair while providing excellent customer service. Welcome, I'm in India, Sherell, and this is unfiltered everyday shit. Before I begin, I want to note that what I'm sharing is based on my personal experiences and opinions. It does not represent the views of any facility, employer, or organization. This space is for reflection and conversations, not agreements. Why is nursing one of the only professions where people can disrespect you freely and you are still expected to serve them with a smile? This is one of these moments where I just need to talk it out. I want to talk about the emotional labor that comes with caring for people, especially when that care is met with disrespect, and yet we are still required to provide service with a smile. Why? Because that's great customer service. When I first became a nurse, We had the right to a safe workplace. We had the right to be respected and not verbally abused. Disrespect wasn't excused, it was addressed. Somewhere along the way, healthcare started treating emotional pain, grief. In anger as customer dissatisfaction and nurse nurses became the buffer for everything. Grief, rage, trauma, entitlement with no protection. This is why nurses are at work getting harmed. Some are actually losing their lives. You don't think before a situation actually happened that a nurse didn't have a complaint and yet it was swept under the rug? Or sometimes you're just, told to grin and bear it, go back to doing your job. Early in my career, I experienced extreme verbal abuse from a family member. But what stayed with me wasn't the insult. It was how the facility responded. They acted immediately. They protected me, their staff, they made it clear abuse would not be tolerated on either parts. That told me something important. Respect will be enforced, and I was valued as an employee. Today we are told to smile through disrespects residents and their family disrespect us on a epic level, and yet sometimes we oppose with the question, what can we have done to prevent that? You know, when I hear that question at that very moment, I'm thinking, you got to be fucking kidding me. Absolutely nothing. But you know, we can't say that. So now I'm back to the residents. They are angry. Angry and who they lashing out on the very people that's caring for them and essentially tolerate it because there is no accountability on their part. All I can think is if I said to you what you just said to me, I would lose my job. Shit, my license for that matter. It's all about the accountability. There is none. And yet when they're angry, surely there is something that we can do to fix it, and that's a deeper problem. So let's talk about that. What we are seeing every day is despair, not dissatisfaction, and leadership that frames despair as a customer service issue is setting staff up for failure. In this setting, we hear often make the resident happy. How can we be tasked with making people happy when they are living? In unresolved grief, trauma, and loss of identity, the expectation is not just unrealistic. It is clinically ignorant. We are told to stay calm, stay professional, and keep going no matter how we are spoken to into, I'm unpacking what that really feels like and why it weighs on so many of us more than people realize. Making the resident happy is a broken directive. Happiness is not deliverable. Safety, dignity, care, consistency, those are deliverables. We are dealing with younger, long-term residents who are grieving their former bodies, grieving independence, grieving careers, grieving relationships, and autonomy. They are living with trauma. They did not choose. You cannot cheer someone out of existential loss. So when administrators or corporate is saying, we need to make them happy, what they're really saying is absorb the pain so the facility looks compliant. That's not leadership, that's displacement. You know, young long-term care is different psychologically. This is not the old long-term care population where people who have lived their lives and they're okay with the end results. We are talking about thirties, 40, 50 year olds, people who in car accidents, violent crime, chronic illness, catastrophic injury, people who feel robbed not complete. So yes, they are angry. Yes. They test authority. Yes, they push staff. Yes, they demand control wherever they can get it. That doesn't make them bad people. But we cannot make people happy when they are grieving a life they didn't choose. this is a no win situation. And that type of environment is not safe for long-term exposure. Not necessarily unsafe physically, even though we know some nurses to be harmed at work, but it's definitely unsafe. Psychologically, we are being asked to manage despair as if it's a customer complaint. And that's why nurses are burning out Care is not the same as happiness and confusing. The two is costing nurses their health. This environment is taking an emotional toll on staff. So I'll leave you with this question. If your role require you to absorb grief, anger, and disrespect every day without protection, how long could you stay and what would that cost you? Well, that's it for today. That was just me talking it out loud. Remember this PO is just freedom. This is me. It's an outlet. It's a voice. It's somewhere I can just speak freely. Thanks for stopping by and thanks for listening.