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Erin, welcome to unlearning work, where we empower you to redesign your job by rethinking work habits, behaviors and strategies. I'm your host. Erin Merideth, a work behavior enthusiast and leadership strategist, join me as I explore various work related topics and provide practical insights and real life examples. We'll examine the nature of work from the ground up and deliver bite size episodes with actionable advice twice a month.
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Welcome back to the unlearning work Podcast. I'm Erin Merideth, and today we're exploring something invisible but incredibly costly, the emotional tax we pay at work. This isn't a tax you see on your paycheck, it's the toll your mind, your heart and even your body, pays just to show up and get through the day. I know this tax firsthand. Back when I was in corporate leadership, I was checking all the boxes, delivering results, leading big teams and managing massive projects, but even after long days, I'd come home exhausted, not just from the workload itself, but from everything swirling around it, the politics, the second guessing, the pressure to show up in a certain way I was spending energy I didn't have, and that's the hidden tax, and I see it with my clients all the time, too. A site manager who can't sleep because he's replaying a tense meeting in his head, a high potential leader who spends more time trying to look confident than actually making decisions. These hidden costs add up. So in today's episode, I want to break down what the emotional tax really is, why we keep paying it, what it's costing us, and, most importantly, how to reduce it.
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Let's start with a definition emotional tax is that extra energy you spend managing your emotions other people's expectations or unspoken pressures on top of just doing your job. Here's what it looks like replaying a conversation from your boss, wondering, did I say that wrong? Did I sound unprepared? Editing your emails three times because you don't want to sound too direct. Sitting in a meeting where a colleague takes credit for your idea and instead of speaking up, you swallow your frustration. It's not the task itself that's hard. It's the weight layered on top. One of my clients, let's call her Maria, is a brilliant operations leader. Her work is solid, but she spends so much of her energy anticipating how others will react, she'd start emails with five caveats, soften her tone until her message was unrecognizable, and then worry about it all night. The task of sending the email was simple, the tax of emotional management exhausting, and it's not just in leadership. I remember early in my career, sitting in a conference room where every decision was second guessed by layers of approval. I'd walk in confident and leave drained, because the real work wasn't making the decision, it was navigating the hidden rules about who got to say yes. That was emotional task. So if we all feel it, the question becomes, why do we keep paying it? Why does this tax show up consistently across industries and roles?
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The truth is, we're conditioned to pay it by one unclear systems. So when expectations aren't clear, we make up stories. So I had a client who led three different factory sites. He told me he spent more time wondering if his boss approved of his decisions than actually executing them. The lack of clarity forced him to over analyze every move. That's the tax A second way is cultural pressures. So that hustle culture trains us to equate exhaustion with value. I fell into this trap myself. I once led a team where I'd intentionally stay on late night calls, even when my part was done, because I didn't want anyone thinking I wasn't pulling my weight. No one asked me to do it, but I was paying the tax to look committed. A third way is fear of judgment. I coach a young manager who keeps her ideas to herself in meetings, not because she doesn't have solutions she does, but because she's terrified of sounding too Junior, that fear is a tax she pays daily, and it slows her growth. And the fourth way is identity factors, and that's not ignoring the fact that emotional tax isn't distributed equally. Research shows that women, people of color and underrepresented groups often pay it more. So I've worked with clients who are only the only one in the room who looks like them. They're not just doing jobs, they're managing stereotypes, biases and constant pressure to prove themselves.
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So the tax is real, and the reasons we pay it are systemic. But what's the true cost of continuing to pay it? Let's get into that. Well, when you add it up, the cost is massive, and it shows up in ways we don't always connect back to work. The first way is productivity loss. One executive I worked with would spend entire afternoons replaying conversations with her CEO instead of focusing on strategy, her mental bandwidth was drained by what ifs imagine what she could have created if that energy.
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Wasn't leaking. The second way is health impacts. I've lived this one during one season of my career. I was so weighed down by stress that I barely slept. My body was in a constant state of on and I know many of you listen can relate, tight shoulders, grinding teeth, exhaustion that coffee can't fix. That's not just stress, it's attack showing up physically. The third way is career impact. Here's something we don't talk about enough. By avoiding risk to protect yourself, you can actually stall your growth. I had a client who avoided presenting to senior leaders because it felt too vulnerable. He was brilliant, but because he was invisible in those rooms, he got passed over for promotion. And fourth, emotional burnout. This is the one I hear most often. I'm exhausted, but I don't even know why. That's the tax. It's the compounding effect of constantly carrying invisible weight. So if we know the cost is that this high, the next question is, what can we do about it? How do we stop paying such a steep emotional tax at work. Well, here are four unlearning work moves I teach my clients and practice myself to reduce the emotional tax. The first one is to name the task awareness is power. Start noticing, is this actually work, or is it emotional tax? On top, I once kept a log for a week, jotting down when I felt drained. It was eye opening the actual work wasn't what drained me. It was the overthinking, the self censor, censoring, the unnecessary late night calls Secondly, shrink the task. Ambiguity feels, fuels worry. So break work into smaller, clearer steps. For example, instead of finish the strategy deck, shrink it to draft three bullet points for one slide, I had a client who used this method and said it was the first time she ended a week not feeling overwhelmed. Third set clear agreements, not assumptions. This one's big. Instead of guessing what someone expects, clarify it and say, here's what I'm planning. Does that line up with what you need? A director I worked with tried this with her VP, and she told me it cut her stress in half, four, build recovery into the system. Taxes deplete energy, recovery restores it. But don't think recovery has to be too big for me, it's walking my dog between calls for one of my clients, it's a rule to eat lunch away from his desk. These micro recoveries matter,
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and here's the deeper unlearn. Stop thinking the tax is a sign of weakness. It's not. It's a sign that the system around you is demanding more than it should. The real work is redesigning your approach so you're not constantly paying out of your emotional reserves. So let's bring this full circle. Emotional tax isn't something you can eliminate overnight, but you can lower your bill.
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The emotional tax at work is real. It's costly, and for many of us, it's silently shaping our careers, our health and our happiness. But here's the good news, you don't have to keep paying full price by naming it, shrinking tasks, clarifying expectations and building recovery into your day. You can reduce the burden, because the real measure of success isn't how much emotional tax you can tolerate, it's how much energy you have left for the things that matter most, whether that's leading your team with clarity, growing your business, or simply coming home with something left to give your family. Well, thank you for joining me today on the unlearning work podcast. If this episode resonated with you, share it with someone you know who might be paying too high of an emotional task. And don't forget, you can take my free work style assessment linked in the show notes to uncover whether where your own hidden taxes might be and how to lower them until next time do less of what drains you and More of what matters you.
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