Dear readers, do you ever feel responsible for all the emotional issues in your family? Mental load expert Laura Fröhlich has had enough of it! In her new book, she says it right there in the title: „I am not your feel-good manager„. Here she explains how, as a working mum of three, she put an end to managing everyone’s emotions… and how she finally got rid of her ‘good-girl syndrome’.
Am I your feel-good manager?
Am I the feel-good manager here? I’ve asked myself this question time and again over the last few years. My impression was particularly stark after an evening spent sitting with an old friend. After our conversation, I knew everything about him; I’d asked him lots of questions and listened with genuine interest. But I realised he knew nothing about me. I had steered the conversation and filled every little pause with another question. But he never interrupted me to ask about my life either.
The invisible elf work of everyday life
But that wasn’t the only moment. It gradually dawned on me just how much emotional labour I was doing in every area of my life. I was also the hard-working elf at home. There, I organised birthdays, sought out conversations when I sensed worries and troubles, decorated the house with flowers and candles, or sprinkled other bits of sparkle into everyday life. I was the tooth fairy, the Easter Bunny, the on-call psychologist and the conversation facilitator all rolled into one. I managed all the WhatsApp groups and kept track of everyone’s emotions – just not my own.
Harmony at any price
Typical people-pleasing behaviour. It’s a learned coping mechanism: ensuring harmony, avoiding conflict, putting your own needs on hold for later. Spoiler: ‘Later’ rarely comes. And it’s characterised by the fact that I’m constantly apologising. With every phone call, my first words are ‘Oh sorry, am I disturbing you?’ and at the hairdresser’s, I find it hard to ask for warmer water when they’re washing my hair. It became increasingly clear to me that I wasn’t the only one suffering from this phenomenon.
While there are men who do this too, women in particular become people-pleasers, doing an above-average amount of emotional labour within their family and circle of friends, and acting as the ‘good soul’ in a professional context as well. Buying gifts for colleagues, organising a work party or just tidying up the kitchen – women know that such tasks are expected of them rather than of men, and so they take them on.
Why emotional labour affects women in particular
We women pay a ‘time tax’ for this, and emotional labour takes a huge toll over time; and even though I enjoy playing the tooth fairy, I have to remember to have a coin ready and place it under the pillow every time my child has fallen asleep. It would be lovely if I could just cross such tasks off my list for a change.
Mental load, a phenomenon I talk about in lectures and describe in books, is something we are all familiar with: the burden of having to think of everything that makes everyday life possible. This burden fills up our to-do lists, and emotional labour can also be a strain when it becomes too much.
And it starts early on, because little girls are more likely to be drawn into emotional labour than boys. At school, girls sometimes hear comments like, ‘Why don’t you sit next to Noah? He’s always so restless and can learn better when you’re there.’ Girls and young women are more likely to be encouraged to create a good and positive atmosphere, rather than competing or distancing themselves from emotional labour.
As a society, we expect women to be domestic, to take an interest in children, to value their appearance, and not to put their qualifications or skills centre stage. No wonder we tend to act like the little violet in the moss rather than being a proud rose. This silly saying used to be in my poetry album, and even though I knew as a young girl what nonsense it was, this guiding principle has left its mark. Talking about my achievements, being proud of myself or demanding more presence – even in a conversation with a good friend – feels strange to me as a woman.
Ways out of the feel-good trap
This has to stop! That’s what I thought too when my daughter watched YouTube videos of a mum influencer who, early in the morning, filled lunchboxes with baked muffins and packed them into school bags along with other homemade snacks, themed around ‘fire brigade’ or ‘police’. My daughter found it fascinating, and I was horrified.
On social media, she is confronted with the image of the caring mother and pigeonholed as the eternally anxious woman. Yet I really want my daughter to be able to say “no”, to be allowed to talk about her own capabilities, to care – or not to care. That she makes the flat look nice when she wants to, and allows chaos to reign when she doesn’t feel like tidying up. And that she doesn’t put pressure on herself.
Because society’s expectations have triggered a perfectionism in me as a mother, which meant that, viewed from the outside, I glided through the water like a swan, but underneath I was kicking like mad to keep from going under. In my new book “I am not your feel-good manager” I have written about how insidious the myth of motherhood is. How we women are pushed into the role of carers and can hardly free ourselves from it because we’re immediately threatened by a guilty conscience.
What helps: talking about it, sharing experiences and realising that we’re not alone in this. That care work and emotional labour are important parts of our lives, but we don’t want to be reduced to them. Because it’s annoying when unpaid work is expected of us.
I’ve made a few changes that help me keep my inner people-pleaser in check. I pay attention to my choice of words and leave out every “gladly” and every “sorry” that isn’t necessary. In conflict situations with my family or friends, I think carefully about whether I’m responsible for the other person’s emotions. Because almost always, I’m not.
In conversations with men, I take up space, because I too have interesting things to say. Every now and then, however, I still don’t dare to stand up for myself. But for my daughter and my goddaughters, to whom I have dedicated my new book, I want to be a role model as best I can. A woman who looks down at the table and says: not with me. I’m simply not your feel-good manager!
Laura Fröhlich: I’m Not Your Feel-Good Manager. Stop Feeling Responsible for Other People’s Feelings at Last, Kösel Verlag. Publication date: 25 February 2026
