The Unseen Weight Of Your Mental Load
Do you ever feel physically exhausted at the end of the day, even if your daily tasks are not really physically demanding? Many people don’t realize that the cognitive demands of their day produces physical effects on their body. Yes, you can get physically tired, have physical symptoms, and develop physical ailments from an overly-stressed mental load.
Your mental load is the cognitive effort (think invisible tasks you do in your head) each day to manage your needs, your interactions, your household, your job, your relationships, and your wellbeing. It consists of both your cognitive and emotional labor.
All of the thinking involved in getting through each day and prepared for the next day is included in your mental labor. Managing your emotional responses and assisting others manage their own emotional response is included in your emotional labor. Your mental load is all of those decisions and perceived responsibilities that often go unnoticed by others, but are felt deeply within your own body. It includes anticipating needs, choosing options to meet those needs, deciding on options, and managing the results or the responses of others. It’s the nonphysical tasks that surround all of the physical ones.
Why It Matters?
If the mental load within a relationship, household, or work environment is strongly or unrealistically imbalanced, it can cause chronic stress on an individual. Unseen tasks often aren’t met with appreciation or concern regarding their impact on an individual. Too taxing of a mental load can lead to chronic stress responses and difficulty relaxing one’s fight-or-flight response. It can increase one’s anxiety and depression risk, as well as risks of eating disorders and alcohol or substance abuse, and increase risks of high blood pressure and diabetes. It can also impact sleep, cognitive functioning, nutrient health, immune system strength, gut dysregulation, mood, energy levels, hormone regulation, emotional regulation, frustration tolerance, and cause physical pains and headaches.
What Your Mental Load IS NOT
Mental load is NOT worrying too much or overthinking things. Overthinking would imply that if a person stopped worrying about a task, it would still get done. Many individuals that shoulder the mental load in their particular situation realize that if they don’t think about, plan for, implement, and review a task, none of those stages will be done by someone else. This blog is about finding strategies to change that, because if changes aren’t made about the fundamental causes of your increased mental load, mere breaks from it won’t help to stop burnout.
Individuals burdened with the mental load of their social dynamic don’t just need others to take on physical tasks, but instead they need them to share in the mental load of planning and managing that comes along with those tasks. Below is an example of a parent’s possible mental load during the holiday season for just an hour or so in the morning before they even begin to address any needs of their own.
Mental load may also include:
managing appointments-making & recalling them for the household
being in charge of all scheduling needs & participation needs (sports/activities)
having to give others reminders repeatedly
monitoring when essentials are running low and planning when to restock them
in a household- meal planning & shopping -managing food preferences and allergies
in a household- remembering celebrations and planning, purchasing, wrapping, and giving of gifts throughout the year
planning for and scheduling vacations with family or possibly for staff in a work environment- managing the work schedule with everyone’s requests
monitoring yours and other’s physical health and hygiene
having to ask others to participate or ‘carry their load’ in personal and professional settings
monitoring and positively responding to the emotional and mental health needs of others
anticipating the negative reactions or lack of response from others and planning ahead to take on other’s responsibilities
How To Offset Your Mental Load
Set boundaries and reinforce them. Boundaries are only beneficial if they are communicated and ones that you are willing to enforce. Don’t make a boundary or set a consequence with others that you will not follow through with. If you worry about your follow through, make stages leading up to your ultimate boundary goal. This can mean stages of responses from you. If you really struggle with boundary setting and enforcement, it can signal a need to address the underlying causes of that. True self reflection, reading about boundary setting and trauma responses, habit changes, or working with a therapist can have long-term benefits.
Communicate with your partner if you feel the mental load is significantly imbalanced. This will likely not be a one-time conversation, but start acknowledging mental load as you discuss dividing up tasks for the day/week or start to feel more comfortable saying No when asked to complete the mental load for most daily tasks. One popular debate recently is the “just make me a list” request. It’s okay to say no and to ask your partner to look through the ingredients needed or to take the task of a meal prep and planning on as you are likely managing another task. Explaining why those extra mental steps of list-making takes time away from your current needs is going to be a repeated conversation, but is necessary to truly change the core causes of chronic mental load. This may look like, “If you asked me to do you a favor and make you a sandwhich, but I said that first you had to check if we had bread, lunch meat, condiments, sides, a plate, and any other ingredients before I would even start, it could feel as if you were still taking on the task of making a sandwhich and I was being stubborn and only providing minimal help.
You can also share blogs or podcasts about imbalanced mental loads with them.
The “I would have helped if you’d just asked” request falls along similar lines. You can discuss that if the roles of the mental load manager of a household were reversed and the primary manager stopped anticipating or taking care of the mental tasks of the other members of the household, like not checking on shampoo/deoderant/toiletries, food stock, work meals, laundry, appointments, etc., unless their partner asked specifically at that moment for those things to be checked (and had to repeat the request daily when they wanted something managed) their partner would quickly feel the added stress and frustration of the concept of asking for ‘help’ on a daily basis, multiple times a day.
If you have a partner that refuses to discuss sharing the mental load or any other household tasks, that may be a sign of a larger issue. Working with a therapist for yourself or a marriage counselor may be helpful.
Delegate- take tasks ‘off your plate’ that don’t belong there. Delegate at work when allowed or to your partner and children tasks that you are unnecessarily taking on. You can also delegate the effort it takes to remember tasks through technology by setting up autopay, subscriptions, reminders, shared calendars, and deliveries or pick-ups. If you are working on delegating tasks to your children, you can help them set up reminders as well, like timers to wake up, brush teeth, check homework, etc.
Say No to extras and address any ‘perfectionism’ tendencies and their impact on your stress and anxiety. Stop judging yourself on old ideals and take care of your mental health and emotional needs. Say Yes to selfcare. You and your partner should both have time to socialize or have breaks of your own. Keep in mind, though, that a break is not enough to prevent burnout if you return to the same demanding mental loads. Instead, have the necessary conversations and consistently take time outside of your daily role, perhaps with a class or set exercise time and allow your partner to take on the mental load during those times where they can experience the impact of that mental load and develop their own strategies and habits to manage it without your guidance or direction.
It’s about building understanding and awareness of each other’s unseen contributions and acts of care for each other.
Learn about perfectionism and avoidance below:
As well as responses to generational and childhood traumas and how it impact the way we view ourselves, our roles and importance to others, and our difficulties prioritizing our needs.
Don’t forget to check out the new Therapy-Thoughts digital storefront with booklets on coping strategies, trauma work, and strategy implementation.
