The Weight We Carry: On the Unseen Emotional Labour of Care

There’s a tiredness that builds when you never stop. It’s not only fatigue from lack of sleep, but the constant effort of holding everything together at work, at home, or for the person you love who isn’t coping. It is the continuous work of caring that runs through every day and rarely lets you pause long enough to recover. 

Care takes many forms. It could be the partner supporting someone living with mental illness while trying to stay composed, or the parent caring for a child with a life-limiting condition. It could be the adult child managing a parent’s decline while keeping up with work and family life, or the single parent who has no one to hand things over to. It could also be the neighbour who checks in on someone living alone because they know how easily days can pass without a word being spoken. These constant acts of care keep lives stitched together and they can come at a cost. 

Even care given with love can take more than people have to give. It drains energy and emotion that are rarely restored. It can bring feelings of guilt for needing a break and, paradoxically, shame for wanting one in the first place. Over time, carers consistently put their own needs last until looking after themselves feels like a luxury rather than a necessity. And if things do get quiet, it can feel unfamiliar, almost unsettling. When you’re used to always being on alert, the absence of urgency doesn’t feel like rest, it feels like something must have been missed. 

People are living longer and may remain at home throughout later life. It is something to value, yet it also means more people are spending long stretches of time without conversation or company. Some have children abroad, others have no close family left, and others have simply outlived the people who once filled their days. Independence can easily become isolation. 

Loneliness reaches across every age and circumstance. Parents caring for children with serious health conditions often find themselves cut off from ordinary life. Adults in mid-career balance work with caring for ageing parents or unwell partners while managing their own pressures. Younger people feel it too; university students far from home, remote workers, or those living alone in busy cities or new countries. 

Both the carer and the cared-for need space to talk and be heard. The carer needs somewhere to exhale and be understood without guilt or judgement. The cared-for person often carries a different kind of loneliness: the fear of being a burden, the hesitation to ask for help, the loneliness between care provision, the guilt of needing care at all. Many hold back to protect the person already protecting them. When both have someone to talk to outside that immediate circle, it can lighten the load on both sides. Support for one becomes relief for the other. 

When connection is missing, the effects reach far beyond emotion. Loneliness increases the risk of early death by more than 25 per cent (Holt-Lunstad et al., Perspectives on Psychological Science, 2015). It is linked to heart disease, stroke, depression, anxiety, cognitive decline and weakened immunity (The Lancet Public Health Commission on Loneliness, 2022; U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory, 2023). For employers, loneliness is estimated to cost £2.5 billion a year, mainly through higher staff turnover, reduced productivity and sickness absence, a figure first calculated by the New Economics Foundation and the Co-op, and later cited by the UK Government in its national loneliness strategy and DCMS summaries. 

Behind those figures are people doing their best to hold everything together, the ones who keep showing up because others depend on them. They’re not unwell, but they are running on empty, giving their time, energy and care with little space left for themselves. And when every day is spent keeping things going so that no one else has to struggle, rest can stop being an option at all. 

Across the UK, Age UK, Carers UK and befriending charities provide vital support. Their work changes lives, but they cannot be everywhere. Loneliness doesn’t wait for appointments or office hours. It appears in the silence after a long day, in the night when worry won’t allow sleep, in the moment someone realises they’ve gone too long without being asked how they are. People need connection at the point of need, not when the next slot becomes available. 

Community programmes help people reconnect, but no service can be present all the time. There are long hours when no one is there, and those hours are where silence grows. That is the gap Sacana was created to fill with structured, one-to-one conversation that offers calm, confidentiality and meaningful connection. Not therapy, not a substitute for professional care but simply time to talk when it’s needed most. 

It should concern us that in an age of instant communication, so many people are living and caring alone. Loneliness harms health, burdens systems and erodes the resilience of those we rely on most. Recognising the need for connection is not a luxury, it is essential to wellbeing. 

Care gives life meaning. It binds families, workplaces and communities together. But those who give care need care themselves and those who receive it deserve the same: space to talk, freedom from guilt and a reminder that their lives still matter beyond the help they need or give. 

Behind every calm exterior and every patient smile is someone carrying more than most people will ever see. And they deserve support when they need it most. 

References 

Holt-Lunstad J. et al. (2015). Loneliness and social isolation as risk factors for mortality: A meta-analytic review. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 10(2), 227–237. 

The Lancet Public Health Commission on Loneliness (2022). A life-course and systems approach to loneliness. The Lancet Public Health. 

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (2023). Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation: The Surgeon General’s Advisory on the Healing Effects of Social Connection and Community. 

New Economics Foundation & The Co-operative Group (2017). The cost of loneliness to UK employers. 

HM Government / Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (2022). Tackling Loneliness Annual Report (citing NEF/Co-op analysis within national strategy documentation). 

Ma R., Mann F., Wang J. et al. (2021). Loneliness, social isolation and health service use: a systematic review. Health Psychology Review.