A few weeks ago I noticed that the TikTok algorithm kept serving me videos of 20-somethings speaking directly to camera, admonishing me to “do the work.” They wanted me to know that they were doing the work and that doing the work would eventually turn them into self-actualized beings poised for greater success in life.
Exactly what “the work” meant wasn’t entirely clear. Sometimes it seemed to suggest going to therapy. Sometimes it appeared to involve typical self-care practices like journaling or meditation.
While “the work” was vague, it was clear that it was always being done on the interior. I sometimes detected a whiff of disdain for older generations when this phrase was used, with the implication being: If only you olds had done the work, you’d be as enlightened as we are.
This was a new-to-me iteration of a phrase I previously associated with calls for deeper engagement with politics or antiracism (something like “doing the work of unlearning racial bias”) and celebrity apologies (like the way Will Smith used it after he slapped Chris Rock at the Oscars: “Change takes time, and I am committed to doing the work to ensure that I never again allow violence to overtake reason”).
Others have tagged “doing the work” as a part of the rise of therapy-speak that’s dominating culture and social media — “How to Do the Work” is a 2021 best-selling tome from a clinical psychologist and Instagram influencer who calls herself “the holistic psychologist.” That year, in The New Yorker, the journalist Katy Waldman mentioned the phrase among many others hijacked from the shrink’s office and wrote, “It’s as though the haze of our inner lives were being filtered through a screen of therapy worksheets.”
I confess a visceral aversion to “doing the work” used in this particular way. My gut reaction is: I simply decline to do more work. My life is already filled with many kinds of labor. I work full time; I cook dinner every night; I shuttle my children to and fro. I’m not asking for a medal here. This is just what’s in many people’s inboxes. But does tending to my mind and soul have to be framed as yet another job, another box to check, another task to optimize and conquer?
I asked Waldman over email what she made of my aversion. She also finds “doing the work” a “uniquely annoying phrase” and explained that it “can come off as patronizing.” It implies that our big issues in life “are simple and clear-cut, that everyone agrees on what they are and that the only reason a problem hasn’t been solved is because somebody isn’t working hard enough.”
Jessica Calarco, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, had a similar take. “This idea of ‘doing the work,’ is just the latest manifestation of the kind of self-improvement culture that has long permeated American society and that is closely linked to America’s obsessively individualistic bent,” she told me via email. Self-improvement culture can deny the larger societal issues that often cause people strain, and it “can lead us to punish people who are struggling or deny them the support they need,” Calarco wrote. Therapy is expensive, and having time in your day to reflect can be a luxury, something that’s rarely mentioned when “doing the work” is used.
And when you notice something like this on social media, it’s a safe bet that there’s an aspect of performance at play: “Do the work” isn’t just about doing the work; it’s about being perceived as a person who does the work. This kind of superficial therapeutic halo was noted by Mychal Denzel Smith in an Opinion guest essay last year titled “Why Do People Think Going to Therapy Makes You a Good Person?” Smith interviewed therapists who “confirmed the idea that people are going to therapy without a goal broader than ‘working on themselves’ and sometimes to show others that they are working on themselves. This, they said, can sometimes make sessions slightly confusing or rudderless.”
I called Deborah Tannen, a linguistics professor at Georgetown University and the author of “That’s Not What I Meant!” and several other books about conversation and relationships, to ask her about “doing the work.” She said that what Smith is describing — that “doing the work” may now be associated with being an admirable person — is known in the sociological literature as a “vocabulary of motives.”
That term was advanced by the sociologist C. Wright Mills in the 1940s, and it means that in any given culture, people are going to use whatever vocabulary they think will justify their actions to the listener and allow for a smooth interaction. But there can be a disconnect when not everyone shares the same vocabulary.
Tannen gave the example of a colleague who was puzzled, a few years back, when a student told her that she was missing class because she was so frazzled, she had to take a mental health day. The colleague wondered, “Why didn’t she just say she was sick?” That’s because until very recently, saying “I need a mental health day” wouldn’t have been understood as an acceptable motive for missing a class. But now, focusing on your mental health is more normative. Tannen agreed with Smith that when you’re talking about “doing the work” and tending to your burnout, there’s “a sense that this makes you a good person,” Tannen said. “Everything I think we say is in part expressing something internal, but it’s also, in part, presentation of self.”
None of this is to say that there’s anything wrong with therapy, mental health days or trying to be a better person. But when we talk about introspection and reflection as work, it cheapens the whole enterprise. Learning, growing and repairing rifts with other humans — and within one’s own soul or psyche — is a messy business, one that transcends the temporal tidiness of a job; you can’t clock in and out of it. It is eternal.
It’s also possible that I’m just old and cranky. Tannen said that concepts of self-fulfillment and self-care have been around for decades and it’s a feature of modern language that we just keep renaming old concepts so we don’t sound hackneyed. “The society keeps coming up with new words, and older people will think, ‘Oh, yeah, it’s the same thing. It’s just a new word for the same thing,’” she said. “And younger people will think, ‘Oh, this is so revolutionary.’” God bless them and their TikToks. I hope they help somebody, even if it’s not me.
Tiny Victories
Parenting can be a grind. Let’s celebrate the tiny victories.
Yesterday, dishes sat in my sink, longer than they should have once again, with every cup and utensil in my kitchen dirtied. My 10-year-old child and I both contribute to the disorder, so today I packed away all but two of each of our regular tableware to prevent the buildup.
— Sarah Reynolds Westin, Anchorage
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