About a blog

I know it's a little peculiar to write a blog about a blog but I wanted to share on here 1) a link to the blog and 2) my thoughts on creating the blog.

'The blog which I wrote' went live today on the educational psychologist website edpsy.org.uk and is entitled 'Tears, fears and stiff upper lips: reflecting on emotional labour in qualitative research'. It is a brief introduction into emotional labour, which is a concept first explored in the 1980's with researchers examining how flight attendants suppressed emotional responses, and my experience and interpretation of it as part of a study colleagues and I are undertaking.

Our study explores emotional labour in the context of our suppressing emotional responses to some of the data we were gathering when interviewing frontline workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Set against a backdrop of repeated lockdowns, isolation from support networks, and endless media messages that included rising numbers of infections and deaths, horrific stories of health workers being spat on, and dubious PPE contracts... researching emotional issues during an emotional time.

I was invited to write a blog for Edpsy after I posted about a presentation I had just given about emotional labour - see here - and was excited to do so. However I was also nervous because it wasn't my usual crowd - educational psychologists - and what did I know? My first attempt just regurgitated the presentation, and although its important stuff, I didn't think it hit the mark. Being so far into the work, I'd forgotten how important it is to set the scene, begin at the beginning and so I rewrote the blog to be more introductory and questioning. I included some takeaways as I think it's important to be able to act on what we read, but it also paves the way for further conversation. I hope you like it.