Department of Emotional Labor
We help you help each other
We help you help each other
Explore our resources for identifying and processing your feelings, both in relation to others and yourself.
If you believe you or someone you know has been denied proper compensation, you may file a complaint by mail or in person.
We're looking for experienced providers of emotional labor to help keep the Department running smoothly. Apply today!
The Department of Emotional Labor is here to help facilitate communication and clarity between individuals, enforce regulations on emotional labor to keep you safe and healthy, and provide appropriate resources and guidance. The Department of Emotional Labor does not directly provide emotional labor. Remember, we help you help each other.
Managing anxiety about actual or potential problems - recognizing worry as a sometimes necessary yet destructive aspect of care.
Structures and support for you to continue the maintenance now, or the greater work of repair later.
Promoting emotionally safe and healthy conditions for all parties involved.
Official resources and forms for emotional labor support
For naming, identifying, and processing your want, craving, or desire. Will you take the first step towards your longing, or will you choose to live with its absence?
For more awareness around a fundamental relationship.
For those seeking finality.
For articulating your own needs in a relationship, and what types of care you are most receptive to.
But what are we to each other? What are we not?
Forgiveness only needs a single party; it does not require the participation of the accused offenders to complete.
Two-part form - reconciliation requires both parties to agree to resolution (see FORM 4-GV for single-party forgiveness).
An addendum to the Forms of Reconciliation.
For considering what actual rest and recovery would be, and how to reach it.
Permission for your justified anger and earned pride.
The Department of Emotional Labor was an immersive theater production about a speculative "soft bureaucracy," where emotional labor is protected and regulated the same way as physical labor. Just like the real-world Department of Labor does not directly provide physical labor, the Department of Emotional Labor does not directly provide emotional labor. Rather, it exists to facilitate communication and clarity between people, and provide the appropriate resources and structure to do so. It was initially performed in San Francisco in 2019, then 2020 performances in NYC were indefinitely postponed. This new iteration of the Department of Emotional Labor began in October 2025. Learn more
The Department of Emotional Labor is written, produced, designed, and created by April Soetarman, with the DoEL logo by Kelli Anderson.