Professor Karen Messing in her One Eyed Science sees emotional labour as the management of feelings to produce a publicly observable facial or bodily display. Putting brave face on it.

For a nurse this means being pleasant and quick to answer calls for help; much the same goes for airline cabin crews. Call centre workers are not seen but how they speak on the phone soon tells.

So emotional labour, activity driven by feelings not mentioned in job adverts or on application forms, at interview or in employment contracts or even acknowledged in some Human Resource Departments is an essential part of many jobs.

Whilst management is quick to notice the affect it has on what's happening it won't pay more than the standard rate for the job. Yet five nurses who manage their feelings well are probably as effective as seven who don't. The staff who bring that extra something deserve a bonus but management keeps it for itself. And those who don't can't understand their own sense of ineffectiveness, and are left in the dark.

When we find a relationship hard work (another social construct), as can happen with a 1:1 caring situation, the anxiety built into it is clearly felt. And that, in a curious way decides who can say what to who, and what must not be said. Keeping things on an even keel is the emotional labour involved.

Situations loaded with such irrationality are emotionally hard work and depressing. It's from such relationships that carers, like nurses and others, run out screaming or try another agency.

This project is an invitation to say when we feel inadequate. When we can't cope with the angst and noise in a situation we get depressed simply by being there. Such feelings are not shameful; they are our intelligence and belong to everyone in that situation.

In 1917 Alexandra Kollontai, the only woman in the revolutionary government gave us "The personal is political".

I went looking for her photo and found her autobiography. It's facinating - try it at http://www.marxists.org/archive/kollonta/works/bio.htm

Michael Shooter, then President of the Royal College of Psychiatrists spoke at a MIND conference in Oxford on 26th May 05. I've been labelled mad, bad, sick and thick and was glad to find his approach confirmed my study at Ruskin into the whole sick and sorry matter of the tyranny of the ideal. He spoke of the human resilience in a PROZAC age and that matters.

Find a friend, someone you see worthy of your love, trying too hard and maybe taking on too much and beg them to stop it. Such friendship and affirmation generates confidence and makes sense and is far better than giving advice.